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DirecTV Now Raising All Plan Prices by $5/Month to Stay 'In Line With the Market'

RobNYC said:
I swear to god this is just making me considering buying an hoping I get reception in my apartment so I can just drop the cable streaming all together.
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I have an indoor antenna and I get 30+ channels (some of those are the same network).

It took 2 days of trial and error positioning in order for it to work for me. Positioning the antenna near a large window / sliding glass door is generally necessary for it to work. It's best to search the internet for over the air tv distances and positions from you before you start so you know what channels you might get.

Besides the antenna, I get Sling Blue TV streaming ($25.00) which gives me access to most of the cable channels I want (not interested in Disney, ESPN although I wish I got FOX business / FOX news).
 
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az431 said:
Comparing the number of channels is pointless. What matters are the channels people watch, and for most it's maybe 10 out of the 47, 52, or 66.
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That's a poor way of looking at it, moreso than mine. Channels are sold in packages by their owners. So if you don't have 1 of those 10 you watch, you also won't have the others in that group that comprise the total. So if you watch the Discovery channel and it isn't there, you also lose out on the other 13 channels in that package. There's legacy contracts with what Scripps owned until March this year with HGTV, DIY and the like... so there's a split present. Another big one is Viacom. If all you watch is Comedy Central, and only for the Daily Show, that's lumped together with MTV, VH1, etc...

So yes, the total matters. You can't buy a la carte, and you'll never want to buy a la carte. Those extra channels draw in commercial revenues whether you turn them on ever or not. Subtract those commercials you never see but were still sold going into the overall cost, you'd be left to cover that through a single-channel subscription.
 
BuffaloTF said:
In my spreadsheet- I listed out all the cable channels, marked them as available with a simple X; color-coded them based on packages wherever applicable, and then listed out the price in a summary line - ie, Green = 66 channels for 35 (then), 52 for another, 47 for another... Sling is it's own beast because they have that Orange and Blue service at 25 dollars each...... If additional channels get added in that I notice, I'll slot them in and update.
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What I was getting at is that I believe there are only some of those 66 channels that most people will watch. I get Sling Blue and only watch a fraction of the available channels.

I think it might be more worth to you to check off the channels that you are interested in that each service has before factoring in the cost.
 
BuffaloTF said:
Another big one is Viacom. If all you watch is Comedy Central, and only for the Daily Show, that's lumped together with MTV, VH1, etc...
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On my Sling Blue, I get the Comedy channel without MTV and FH1. I'm assuming that the packages sold by the owners are not the same depending on the streaming service.
 
Well, the $35 grandfather steal of a deal may be coming to an end. Heck, even at $40 it’s still a great deal. I’ll probably accept the increase as it’s still a slamming deal. When it gets to $60 plus, then it’s time to reconsider my options.
 
Jokes on them. I've already switched from my grandfathered $35/mo DirecTV Now package to their new $15/mo Watch TV package. If they raise that much I'll just switch it off and keep using Netflix/Hulu same as always.

Absolutely none of my college interns pay for cable and most of them get their entertainment from YouTube with a few also using Netflix. None of them give a crap about cable. Even myself and a lot of people my age (early 30s) don't give a crap about cable (I only get it for my wife who watches a few channels). I'm always interested in what my interns are using since I work on a team that markets to college and high school students and it's interesting to hear them talk about it. They even make fun of the name "cable" because it sounds so old and dated. Some of them only know what cables are from charging their phones and even that is slowly going away. They think it's a stupid concept to schedule a bunch of things in advance as a big continuous stream that we then have to set recordings for. They don't get why they can't just watch whatever is available instantly, which is why they don't use these services. These companies have a long way to go to become relevant to this new generation. These services mainly seem to be targeted at around my age and up. I grew up with cable but then streaming became popular when I was in college and I was an early adopter. Then you have people in their 40s and 50s who are becoming increasingly tech saavy and cutting the cord as well. But people in their teens and 20s? They're not really buying this.
 
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BuffaloTF said:
They offer up considerably more channels than the competition at this price point... 66 channels, to 52 with Hulu, the next highest, to 47 with Youtube TV... then it plummets. I threw these all into a spreadsheet to track the prices in my hunt for what would be the best deal.
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Trouble for me is that only 20 of the available channels are ones I’m interested in. I already have a plethora of unwanted channels, I don’t need to change from satellite to streaming to get more of the same. Quit offering packages and allow me to pick what stations I want, even if that means you don’t offer a package price. Every time I want one new channel I need to get 5 or more that I will never watch just to get it.
 
blacktape242 said:
then add more channels to the packages.
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More isn’t always better, especially in television. That was the issue with cable programming, a handful of programs you actually watch regularly are spread out among networks (channels). The rest of the channels are just noise that you have to click through. People watch programs, not channels.

Streaming—specifically a la carte options—attempted to solve this. Instead of buying channels, you buy the programs you watch. Unfortunately, the latest streaming packages are nothing more than cable tv pretending to be something better.
 
So it begins...
macduke said:
Jokes on them. I've already switched from my grandfathered $35/mo DirecTV Now package to their new $15/mo Watch TV package. If they raise that much I'll just switch it off and keep using Netflix/Hulu same as always.

Absolutely none of my college interns pay for cable and most of them get their entertainment from YouTube with a few also using Netflix. None of them give a crap about cable. Even myself and a lot of people my age (early 30s) don't give a crap about cable (I only get it for my wife who watches a few channels). I'm always interested in what my interns are using since I work on a team that markets to college and high school students and it's interesting to hear them talk about it. They even make fun of the name "cable" because it sounds so old and dated. Some of them only know what cables are from charging their phones and even that is slowly going away. They think it's a stupid concept to schedule a bunch of things in advance as a big continuous stream that we then have to set recordings for. They don't get why they can't just watch whatever is available instantly, which is why they don't use these services. These companies have a long way to go to become relevant to this new generation. These services mainly seem to be targeted at around my age and up. I grew up with cable but then streaming became popular when I was in college and I was an early adopter. Then you have people in their 40s and 50s who are becoming increasingly tech saavy and cutting the cord as well. But people in their teens and 20s? They're not really buying this.
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I couldn't agree more with your post. I grew up in the cable era (I'm 36 now), but when I left home and moved out on my own, I originally paid for the best cable subscription I could find. Over the years, I realized how much money I was wasting when I didn't even watch half of the channels I had. When I met my wife, she primarily streamed movies and TV shows via Netflix and Hulu. I told myself I could never do that because I love watching live sports too much. Fast forward to three years later and we do not have cable at all. We have PS Vue for live TV, but I really only make use of it for sports and the handful of shows my wife and I DVR to watch them together. Otherwise, we're primarily using Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and HBO Now on our two Apple TV4 devices.

Although I think my wife is a bit embarrassed our house doesn't have cable. The two times we have hired a dog sitter when we're away, my wife informs the sitter that we unfortunately do not have cable. The two sitters we've had stay at our house are in their mid-20's and probably couldn't care less about not having cable. The one girl even said she doesn't watch TV, and when she does, it's on her iPhone.

While I don't think cable will ever die off completely, a lot of people are tech savvy nowadays and are looking for ways to save money, but still able to access the content they way on their favorite devices.
 
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You pay so much for tv in the US. Jeeze.

I used to pay 29€ for all in but I cancelled it 1,5 years ago and it still works to this day. I did my research and apparently it costs them more to send someone to switch off the connection so they don’t bother
 
Stuff like this reminds me of why I use over the air TV and one subscription service. It’s just a ridiculous price otherwise and I can live without most of the content anyway. I’m not sure how people have so much time to watch all this content anyway.
 
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The $5/mo increase for me isn’t too objectionable as long as the AT&T credit from their unlimited data plan and free HBO remain active. I just want to be able to pause live TV for longer than just a minute or so, and have it buffered. It’s the feature I miss most since ‘cutting the cable’.
 
Major companies all gradually stair-stepping their prices over a longer period of time?

Smells like price-fixing/collusion to me. I hope there is a class action lawsuit against all of them.

Congress, thank for not doing your job when it comes to Anti-Trust, again...
 
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“Our anti-competitive friends have recently told us we are less expensive then them, we are remedying the situation”
 
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