It is Monday and another black eye for Sling TV hoping to convince people to switch to them. HBO is now part of the growing options one can access through the service so many people signed up so they could view Game of Thrones on HBO. Unfortunately the service experienced technical problems. The Roku app would not load in some cases (that happened to me though I was trying to access ESPN) or took a very long time to load. The upshot: plenty of angry subscribers and Sling having to apologize.

 Tech Crunch said it succinctly:

The network finally risked offering an over-the-top version of its service to the 10 million broadband-only U.S. homes, despite the fact that the majority of its revenues still come from pay TV subscribers, but it could struggle to grow that cord cutting audience if they think that the streaming options are hit-or-miss when it comes to reliability and stability.

And that is exactly the problem. If people believe that services like Sling are hit and miss in content delivery, they will not be so quick to sign up for them. Apple will be the next big entrant into the field with their own service in the fall. Hopefully it will run much smoother.