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.

Comments

Pirate Bay is free.

[b0s0z0ku]

The Pirate Bay is free -- $50 is almost basic cable pricing territory. What a joke.

Wow.

[flippy]

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.

Re:Wow.

[UnknownSoldier]

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.

Re:Wow.

[Pascoea]

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

Oh, they get it, they just don't care enough to do anything about it.

Give me an option where I can choose exactly what channels I want, and exclude the channels I don't want..

Start with an example: I like Science channel, as it is one of the few "science-y" channels left that actually shows "scienc-y stuff". Unlike The Learning Channel that is hasn't had anything of any value on it in a decade, and I wouldn't pay a dime for. The problem? They are both owned by Discovery, Inc, who owns among others, The Food Network, HGTV, Cooking Channel, DIY Network, Great American Country. You'll quickly find that almost every one of your favorite channels is owned by a conglomerate. And while that large "network" may have one or two channels you like, they likely have a dozen that you couldn't care less about. And from what I've seen, all of the "Entertainment Providers" are only willing to sell them by the bundle. Oh, you only want to buy Science Channel? That'll be $50/month please, but the good news is that it includes all this other useless shit we have that you have no interest in.

Re:Wow.

[flippy]

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.

What I'm going to do is exactly what I've been doing - refusing to subscribe to / pay for such services, until they're willing to offer me what I want. I vote with my wallet.

Re:Wow.

[geekmux]

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.

Addicts are abused the same way the world over. Don't want to be thrown over a barrel and abused? Then fix your addiction problem.

Yeah, it is that simple. No one needs the Boob Tube.

No, it won't

[jwhyche]

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.

DirecTV NOW just hiked prices too

[Arkham]

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.

a la carte vs girl next door

[epine]

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.

Re:What's this garbage?

[jwhyche]

Take a look at Philo then. It's only $20 a month for around 50 channels, and $16 a month for 45 channels. The have all the channels most geeks would like, science, history, and BBC. What they don't have is endless sports and news channels. You get BBC World News and Cheddar.

It also has a pretty good cloud based DVR.

Re:What's this garbage?

[jwhyche]

No, actually I am getting it. What you want doesn't exist not yet. I'm just offering you a cheaper alternative in case you do want it.

The writing on the wall, cable companies see it, and these streaming services see it. They just hope you don't see it. Their business model is coming to an end. With devices like Ruko and Fire tv, channels are becoming a app on the device. It's just a matter of time.

The question on the table right now is how much do you want to pay for a tv service, if you want it, till it does happen?

Re:Sweet spot?

[LostMyAccount]

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.

Re:What's this garbage?

[jwhyche]

Yes, they are. It would be nice if what you wanted existed. But right now if you want to watch these channels you have to deal with the bundling. This is just the cheapest way I've found to get it.