YouTube TV Raises Prices From $50/Month to $65/Month

[jaduffy007]

Yep...just canceled my subscription. 30% price increase to watch MTV and VH1?!!!? Judging from here and cordcutters news, reddit, etc...I suspect Google vastly underestimated the number of cancellations coming their way due to this price hike. And once people leave, ain't so easy to get'em back.
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Nobody in the US would settle for an European paycheck either. Median household income in the US is nearly 2x that of the EU. Things necessarily cost more.

Indeed, I'd move to Europe in a heartbeat if it didn't require a 50% pay cut.

 

[windowsblowsass]

Even though I work for one of the networks, in EVERY case in which my cable system gets into a game of chicken that has ANY network or channel demanding higher fees or threatening to cut off service, I always side with cable. It's not that I think cable companies are nice guys. But I know where the pressure for higher rates is coming from. Go ahead. Cut service. See if I care.

You can't put a price on freedom! 😄 /s

guess who owns SKY. Don’t expect it to stay that price.

 

[mthomas184]

So glad I cancelled and set up an HDHomeRun and antenna for $8 a month. Soooo much better.

 

[gavroche]

At this price point, what’s the appeal of this service over cable?

im about to re-splice that cord I cut.... not much advantage anymore. And all claim to be 'a la cart'.... when in reality each has just a couple plan options, no different than cable.

 

[nickgovier]

.

 

[Mr. Heckles]

it’s not up to them. It’s the channel providers jacking up their rates.

i don’t have cable, but my parents cable bill has been the same foe 2 years. It seems like these streaming services go up every few months. I get stuff cost more, but this is nuts. When I had DirecTV Now, it went up 3-4 times in a year? I have written down somewhere, but that’s ridicules.

 

[gbc204]

Yep...just canceled my subscription. 30% price increase to watch MTV and VH1?!!!? Judging from here and cordcutters news, reddit, etc...I suspect Google vastly underestimated the number of cancellations coming their way due to this price hike. And once people leave, ain't so easy to get'em back.
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Indeed, I'd move to Europe in a heartbeat if it didn't require a 50% pay cut.

I mean, don't you have until August for the price increase to take effect? I may cancel, but might as well wait it out.
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Same. Additionally, I have immediate access to the same programming on my phone, iPad, or computer. I was an early adopter of Sony's Playstation Vue (still the best overall value, IMO. RIP.) and jumped over to YouTube TV early when it was less than $40/mo. When they kept raising their rates AND were losing all of their regional sports programming, I left for Hulu TV. Normally, for $62, I have live TV, traditional Hulu access, Disney+, and ESPN+. Since there are no sports, it was easy to step down to the Hulu/Disney+/ESPN+ bundle for only $13/mo. When sports once again resume, a quick change to my account on their website brings back live TV. It was NEVER remotely close to being that convenient to do the same sorts of changes, if possible at all thanks to yearly contracts, with traditional cable or satellite. Same goes for cancelling service outright.

To be honest, if it wasn't for watching live sports, we'd have ditched the traditional cable/streaming services long ago. Unfortunately, my family are huge sports fans--NBA, NFL, Premier League and especially NHL--and there are few stand-alone options outside of cable or these streaming services to watch sports.

Yeah, same. If not for wanting to watch live sports I may have ditched cable and streaming services altogether.
That said, i like the YouTube TV service WAY better than ATT TV Now. I had DirecTV for years and am more than happy having left that all behind last year. Especially after the massive price hikes for DTV after the first two years.65 bucks might be a big hike for YT TV, but even with HBO Max added on its still 80 bucks, which is about half of what I was paying for DirecTV and HBO by the end.

 

[FlyingTexan]

Att TV Now on Apple TV 4K is better than any service I’ve used and I’ve used them all

 

[Mimiron]

65$ for this ? How about no.That's insane!

 

[konqerror]

The number of Cable TV cord cutters is also growing. Next Generation TV / ATSC 3.0 is launching with even more free channels in the coming year, some of which will be free on your cell phone too.

That's the optimistic view. The other view is that with increased spectral efficiency, more broadcasters are just going to sell their spectrum to cell phone companies and share bandwidth to provide a minimum TV service so that they retain cable must-carry rights.

As somebody else here pointed out, there's huge appeal of on-demand streaming over linear TV.

During the last FCC repack, 133 licenses of the ~1700 were sold. In my area, one single carrier already supports 3 different stations with around 10 programs, obviously with dial-up video quality.

 

[Yammabot]

This is just poor management, $50/month was crazy and who needs a DVR with a streaming service? It should include gigabit internet for that price!!

 

[2010mini]

I'm glad at least one person can see the forest for the trees.

Many have clamored for à la carte TV for a long time, but the funny thing is that the market is providing it in the form of indivdiual services, not individual channels within a service. That's how the content owners have decided to offer it.

I remember getting yelled at for bursting people’s dreams of al-la-carte $5 a channel pricing.

 

[Black Magic]

At $40 I felt it was somewhat worth it, mostly for the live news. The service itself is nice.
At $50, I thought about cancelling, considering all I really need is news, but I held on...
At $65... Nope. I just went ahead and cancelled. Zero point to keep it at this price.

At $65, you can get ATT TV Now with HBO Max bundled in.

 

[its93rc]

All TV providers collect and sell analytics, unless you opt-out. Check their privacy policy. Even your Smart TV is doing that by capturing screenshots.

Yeah, I got an LG as a gift recently and they really bury opting out of them selling your data. If I as a tech geek had issues, imagine other consumers.. ugh.

 

[SoGood]

Can just see the day when Youtube would want to further monetise streamed content by adding paywall to particular channels, a bit like what's happening to many news media outlets.

 

[2010mini]

They could save a lot of money if they got rid of garbage channels like Fox News. Fox News is one of the most expensive channels for providers, and they're a completely useless propaganda station.

content dIstributors (cable, satellite, online) have no choice of which channels to carry. Content owners and studios force bundles down their throats. Want ABC? Well you are going to have to buy these other junk channels also. Also cable tv has to negotiate with all the affiliates in every market.

That’s how love tv is marketed. Prices will always go up

 

[powerbook911]

I think $65 would be fair if

They offered 5.1 surround and if there was some way around 9 month storage limit, example you could "favorite" some recordings to save indefinitely.

 

[RogerWilco]

Government: lets see how we can give out more money to ppl
Google exec: lets see how we can get more money out of ppl

You see a lot more daylight between GOOG and .gov than I do.

 

[tridley68]

Coperate Greed

 

[richpjr]

...and just asked those subscribers for an extra $34.5 million per month in revenue in a recession.

Yep, their costs just went up big time because of the licensing ViacomCBS is now requiring. Sucks and some will drop the service because of it. Hulu, Sling and all the other services are going to get hit with the same thing when their contracts come up for renewal.

 

[wood1208]

Don't have it, don't care. Availability of too much contents but too little time to spend. Use time wisely as one life to live !!!!

 

[ian87w]

I have a feeling that due to the pandemic, they see an increase in use/traffic, and then they see it as an increase in demand, thus they think they can increase the price.

 

[harvester32]

YouTube TV has 2.3 million subscribers.

2,299,999 after this news...even Comcast has specials for internet and TV combos at 75/month where I pay for internet separately now. Bye google!

 

[rillrill]

Really what’s lame is that they are upping the price so quickly.

 

[eifelbube]

Why is this so expensive anyway? I mean, for $65 a month you can subscribe to pretty much all the major streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, HBO, Hulu, CBS) and watch pretty much everything.

When I had cable, most of the time the price went up it was due to sports packages $ increase. Streaming services that carry the major sports would be subject to the same. Currently, with so many leagues loosing revenue from shutting down or playing in empty stadiums may look to recover some of their losses by asking more when negotiating rights renewals. Just a guess ...