Sling makes live TV free during evening 'Happy Hour'

If you're stuck at home and miss the good old days of idly channel surfing, Sling has something for you.

The internet-based cable TV alternative announced Tuesday that it's making part of its service free for new customers at night while everyone is sequestered indoors. From 5 p.m. ET until midnight every night, anyone who signs up on Sling's "Happy Hour Across America" website can watch TV to their heart's content.

There is, of course, one major caveat to this. Sling isn't opening up its entire service for free from 5 p.m. to midnight because that would probably be bad for business. Instead, it's only offering Sling Blue ($30 per month), which is essentially one half of the total Sling package. Sling has separate Blue and Orange packages with different channel selections, with the idea being that one of them on its own is cheaper than the competition, but combining the two ($45) would be closer in cost to something like YouTube TV ($50).

It's not a terrible selection, to be clear. For the price of zero dollars, you'll get AMC, A&E, NFL Network, Food Network, Comedy Central, History Channel, and plenty of other things to provide white noise while you mindlessly refresh Twitter during those lonely evenings inside. All in all, you're getting more than 50 channels during prime TV-watching hours for free.

It's not the first thing Sling or other cable alternatives have done to quench people's entertainment thirsts during social distancing. Sling had previously made a 24-hour ABC News Live broadcast, old game shows, and some children's programming free during the coronavirus pandemic. If you've been bored to tears in the evenings and/or curious about what this whole Sling thing is all about, there are worse ways to spend your time right now.