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YouTube TV Costs $50 Per Month After Another Price Hike (engadget.com)
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.
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.
The Pirate Bay is free -- $50 is almost basic cable pricing territory. What a joke.
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.
Well it's not going to cost me $50 a month. What is the point of having these services like youtube and hulu tv if they cost you just as much as a cable tv subscription if not more. You have to add in the cost of the internet to get your total cost. I think a lot of "cord cutters" over look this and that is what they want you to do.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
We didn't ditch cable to end up with the same nonsense in streaming. I don't want access to eight Discovery channels. I might be interested in, say Animal Planet. On the other hand, you know where you can stick OWN.
NO BUNDLING, PEOPLE! I want to pay for what I want to watch. I do NOT want to pay for what I despise, which I am not going to watch anyway. Ergo, Google, you know where you can stick your YouTube TV.
I was on the $40/month DirecTV now with 105 channels. It went up to $65 a month which was too much for me. Why can't we do a cafeteria plan? Give me ABC, CBS, NBC, HGTV, ESPN, and that's it. I don't want anything else. I don't even need DVR capability, I just need my login to the tv provider to work to OAuth into the various channel apps so I can do their shows on demand.
- Vincit qui patitur.
What I celebrate most in YouTube is the death of the channel. I've never "subscribed" to one damn thing.
Obviously, if you find someone who produces smart content, it's nice to be able to browse that person's back catalogue. But you can do that with Andy Warhol, too, and he never had a "channel", he just had whatever he had made up to that point.
Channels are the natural domain of lazy, content-consuming slobs. Honestly, should what you watch next be a function of your recent viewing history? Only if questions pertaining to fresh material remains insufficiently answered.
But many people seem to prefer the girl-next-door algorithm. If the girl-next-door to the girl-next-door is even prettier, you continue to incrementally change your address: hill-climbing algorithm, one back-yard fence at a time.
Or you could head to a street cafe in the center of Paris, and skip all these silly "channel" increments.
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.
Because I don't feel like having 10 different places to go to manage it if I ever decide to change things, or have my CC bill 10x as long when I look through it. Yes, I actually audit my CC bill to make sure there's nothing funny on there.
Yes, I actually audit my CC bill to make sure there's nothing funny on there.
Weirdo!!!
...how?
Simple. Do you remember back when traditional media was laughing so hard at the thought of downloading music? And when CD and traditional media was dying slowly, but surely?
Do you remember when news became more popular on the internet than the printed Traditional media?
Do you remember why Netflix succeeded? Because they put YOU in control of what you see and when you want to see it. Same with the original youtube, the idea was the little person being able to share their experiences, life, friends with the world. If they had an idea, they could produce it themselves and upload it, and it would instantly become available to everyone.
In traditional media - this kind of freedom would be unthinkable, simply because they are used to a controlled audience, professional actors, journalists and other media professionals - all one big payroll machine, a club of people who "made it" through the censorship. It was a comfortable club of a life with good pay, friends who had the same social status as you, had the same schooling as you, background as you - and a safe job in the spotlight or not (depending on the position) for life.
They had guaranteed funding, either from the government, or by advertisement where they had TOTAL control of what gets published or not, no competition whatsoever. This also meant they could basically decide what you'd like to watch, because there weren't other alternatives.
They also had a much more sinister power, the power of information distribution. Traditional media has always conveyed to the public that they represent neutralism and honest journalism, but history has shown us over and over again, it's paid media - paid by our officials and those with money enough to control the influence, and them being the trusted traditional media - they don't really want to give that power away, without a world war class fight, this has been a comfy place for a certain amount of people - over 100 years.
Now - in less than 10 years, all of this changed so fast that the big boys didn't even know what hit them, people stopped buying traditional media, because they had tons of new alternatives. Sure - you didn't get in-debt journalism, you often had to sift through 1000s of hours of amateur-garbage, but this grew too - and people soon realized they could earn money on their content too.
For traditional media - this is a disaster, they KNOW this is the final nail in the coffin, and they're prepared to fight tooth and nail to cling to life - and they're about to actually do that.
HOW?
Did you see what happened in E.U not one month ago? A certain law was passed that would change personal journalism, free media and almost every independent youtube channel for all future. Same with free media on the internet. Just because most people slept during the class, the bill passed and traditional media won big-time.
What traditional media haven't counted on though, is that they're essentially digging their own grave. With the onslaught of planned programming, planned advertisement, and mind numbingly stupid content... we as the public, just got a taste how freedom really tasted like (I'm talking about the early era You Tube), we know what it feels like to just watch whatever we feel like - live in the moment so to speak.
I for once, find it nearly impossible to watch TV after this, even listen to radio in my car. I never turn it on anymore, because I know it's just going to be endless amounts of Casino / betting ads or loan offers, and the little content there is - will be 80's reruns (albeit I love the 80's) it's cheaper to push, and they already own all the licenses to all of this music anyway, remember - they're basically owned by the people BEHIND traditional media.
But it's going to be a breath of fresh air - literally - just entertain ourselves with things we really should be doing, learning something, going outdoors, talk more with friends - and just watch whatever you want to, whenever you want to. I also have a HUGE Dvd collection,
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
So why on earth are companies trying to go back to a world where they bundle a bunch of crappy channels together with a handful that are good?
Because one company owns that collection of one good channel and 7 crappy channels. And they want to sell ads on those crappy channels.
If that company allowed a-la-carte pricing, then you wouldn't buy the crappy channels, and their ad revenue would go down because fewer households have access to the channel.
Despite moving to a streaming model, that company still needs to sell ads on those crappy channels, so they're still using bundling.