Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

YouTube TV Costs $50 Per Month After Another Price Hike (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the price-hikes dept.

YouTube TV isn't immune to the latest wave of rate hikes plaguing the streaming world. From a report: The Google-owned service has announced that it's raising the base monthly price to $50 ($55 if you subscribe directly through an Apple TV), effective immediately for new subscribers and from May 13th onward for existing customers. You'll at least get something for your trouble, though, as YouTube TV will finally offer a host of additional channels.

You now have access to eight Discovery channels that include the original as well as Animal Planet, Food Network, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, MotorTrend, TLC and Travel Channel. Oprah Winfrey's OWN channel is coming later in 2019, and Epix's movie-oriented channel is available today if you're willing to spend extra.

3 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. by flippy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    These companies just don't get it, do they?

    Give me an option where I can choose exactly what channels I want, and exclude the channels I don't want, and I'll be more than happy to pay for it.

    I want a single place where I can have a single bill, not 17 monthly bills from 17 different services. I don't even care if the cost is the same. I want the simplilcity.

    1. Re:Wow. by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, they know _exactly_ that you want TV a la carte -- the thing is they don't care. What are you going to do? They know they have you over a barrel.

      A few piddly people "cutting the cord" isn't going to get them to stop.

      If people were smart they would **cooperatively organize** a month of no cable / streaming to send a message. But they won't so nothing will change with licensing shenanigans like this.

  2. Re:Sweet spot? by LostMyAccount · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's cross subsidies within a channel family, like ESPN subsidizing ESPN-3 or MTV subsidizing VH-1 Classic 3 or something.

    I think mostly these channels exist because the "root" channel is too valuable for a cable system to lose, so the root channel owner can strong arm the cable system to carry the lesser channels, too.

    I think the original idea was to grab up channel space when cable systems had more limited channel capacity, effectively blocking competitors and extending the brand. Now that cable channel capacity is expended via digital encoding, its probably more about branding and additional capacity during large-scale events.

    It's not really a "subsidy" in the traditional sense, since the channels are all owned by one company and the company itself is profitable, but the channel wouldn't exist if it didn't have a powerful parent channel to force it onto the cable system. It's not profitable enough from an advertising/carriage fee perspective to actually support its production costs -- to the extent that it has production costs and isn't just running tape delayed content from another channel or other content they already own.

    I don't know how you get rid of this, really, as long as you have cable systems willing to play along to keep the likes of ESPN. My guess is the relationship is so symbiotic now that cable systems actually don't mind so long as the total carriage agreement works financially. Bundling keeps cable systems alive by preventing a lot of individual channels from being ala carte, and channel owners just extend it to new "cable-like" streaming services.