Hmm, I wonder if there's a disparity between Duolingo's en->french versus en->spanish. Both my mother and I are on the Spanish track. I don't know how far along my mother is, but I'm only about 25-30% of the way through the lessons (still on present tense). And I'm nowhere near dedicated to practicing everyday. Maybe once every few days for 2-3 hours.
However, I can atest that Duolingo provided me with a quantum leap in understanding, writing, and speaking, that all my years in grade 1-12 Spanish classes never did.
I'll definitely agree that Duolingo isn't the end-all-be-all, you'd do best to supplement.
But my girlfriend is a native bilingual speaker (Spanish and English); my barber only speaks Spanish; and I'm able to converse with them to the point where they understand what I'm saying, and sometimes provide feedback on how I can improve.
I'll give a quick example, when saying "cada" (every) my girlfriend wasn't able to completely understand what I was saying because I wasn't putting enough emphasis on the 'd' so to her native ear it was too close to sounding like "cara" (face). I've since improved that.
Nonetheless I understand far more than I speak. I can listen to Spanish speakers and intuit the gist of what they're saying even when they use tenses I'm not familiar with yet. Mainly because I have a grasp on pronouns, determiners, adjectives, etc. A lot of the things Duolingo helped me with.
Back to the supplementation. You need to supplement.
My mother and I have started reading middle-school level books in Spanish, we always keep a Spanish-to-English dictionary close by (eventually we'll move to a full Spanish dictionary), we watch children shows in Spanish, and we've signed up for a class at our local library where you spend half your time helping a Spanish speaker that's learning English and vice versa.
What we've found, especially with the books, is that you begin to grasp things more contextually. It's hard to explain. But you rely less on direct translation back to English, and finally are able to just say "this makes sense in Spanish, I get it." You also run into how words and grammar are used in the real-world. Same with texting a native Spanish speaker, you'll pickup slang/informal speaking that much quicker.
Like you, I can't watch a news channel with full understanding right now. My brain is able to pick apart the words and understand the gist, but it gets lost in the details, and then by then the anchor has moved on. It's frustrating, yes, but you just have to keep doing it. You may have to rewind... you may have to pronounce what they're saying over and over again until it feels natural... you may have to look some things up, and that's all apart of learning.
The more you deliberately exercise at your limits, the quicker you'll develop your capacity.