YouTube TV prices will raise to $50

[M76]

Speak for yourself. Not all of us lack morals.

Yeah, some of us lack a backbone.

 

[sfsuphysics]

It looks reasonable until the bill comes and the taxes and broadcasting fees .

Oh the great scam that is broadcast fees... so OTA stations broadcast for free, cable companies want to rebroadcast local channels and the OTA channels fry foul because potential commercial revenue they're losing out on because cable can put their commercials into the broadcast and make money from that, government steps in requires cable to pay fee to OTA channels for the rebroadcast rights, ok sounds reasonable (and for sake of argument let's ignore the large companies that overlap ownership).

Now here is where it gets abit suspect.. cable companies pass their fee (and yes it is a fee against the company not the consumer) onto their customers, but do so in a deceptive way do they can still advertise lower rates this part is not news to anyone. But if we're paying for the commercial revenue the OTA channels are losing out on why are we also having to watch commercials the cable company injects into the broadcast? The cable companies are definitely double dipping, making us pay for commercials we don't see and making money off us for commercials we do.

 

[TheMadHatterXxX]

Yeah I'm leaning toward cancelling this... $50 a month = $600 a year ...and I rarely even watch TV, maybe I'll watch sports occasionally like on the weekend but that probably doesn't justify the cost. Had no complaints about the service tho, just not worth the cost for the amount I watch.

 

[robjordan406]

Sling TV has a special for 15.00/month for 3 months then back to 35.00/month. They now include the Discovery Channel. I will be turning off my DirectTV Now when it goes upto 50.00...

Robert Jordan

 

[nightfly]

only care about 2 channels, can't see paying 50/mo for them...

Corporate executives and shareholders want their piece of the pie. And they have paid off congress to get it. So we're screwed. We pay either way.

We should be at the stage where you´re able to pick which channels you want for say a buck a month each.

Oh, they'll give that to you, but it will be $10 a month per channel. For lousy channels. Premium, same as it is now.

I swear if TIVO was smart they would work to get their own integrated internet TV service with thier guide and one pass abilites??

And it would very soon cost just as much as cable does now.

This is correct. The way I think this goes is that the heads of these various companies seek to maintain their same margins even though a massive hole has been blown in their business models, via piracy

They just raise prices or decrease what they pay the content providers. Usually some combination of both. Which is why periodically, we get blacked out sports channels while they dicker with each other over what they have to pay, and what garbage channels they have to carry. They they claim '200 channels' of which 160 are garbage that they have to carry in order to get the ones that customers want.

. Piracy exposes the real costs associated with distribution... and they are far less than what should be ordinarily charged

They don't care, they're going to charge whatever it takes to make the amount of money they want. Corporations have never been about being fair. It's always been about squeezing the maximum amount of money out of the customer before they quit buying the product. Then back it down just enough to get the customer back. Today, that's changed, as the corporate executives now figure out ways to insure that the customer cannot legally avoid buying the product. Witness the automotive insurance industry. You HAVE to buy it. Or walk. They gotcha.
Rural electrification was a push for equal services. But the companies got wise the second time around, and when big city OTA TV was being rebroadcast to rural areas, the local cable companies got legislation to stop it (I remember that going on up in Steamboat Springs, CO, some thirty some years ago, so I assume it was happening elsewhere too). Cable got a lock on what we could see, and then DRM was the next step to the gotcha.

these prices are held up by price fixing/cartels at various points in the logistical/supply chain. They are entirely too accustomed to living on the easy money gravy train and when their gravy train is threatened they lash out like spoiled children.

They just pay off more legislators.

Additionally, with no coherent anti-trust enforcement

Probably gone forever. The days of the government siding with the consumer are long gone. Legislators are all beholden to the rich and the corporations, because they are the ones who pay for the campaigns to get elected. Politicians are generally all crooked. Democrats, republicans, all of them. All we can do is try to choose the lesser of two evils. Sometimes both are so evil, we're screwed no matter what we do.

A large number of companies in the US simply need to be broken up

Not going to happen. After Microsoft got away with a slap on the wrist, big business has enjoyed a party of mergers.

1) Systemic collapse
2) Perpetual dystopian hell hole where corporate cartels get to dictate the terms to their "customers" (i.e. the corporate overlord scenario) a.k.a. Government, Inc.
3) A combination of the above two
Just my $0.02

The system won't collapse. They will carefully take every cent they can, leaving us just enough to prevent a revolution.

We have cheap crap from China, though.

Youku? There's a lot of American copyrighted content on there, but you have to be able to navigate in some sort of Asian language to find it easily.

Speak for yourself. Not all of us lack morals.

It's not that we lack morals, we have morals which say that we refuse to be cheated just because it's legal to cheat us. We know that corporations and their executives and stockholders have zero morals, so why should we be more fair to them than they are to us? Business only holds to one concept, and it's now this: 'There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him'.

And that is why you use an ISP that doesn't have a data cap

Not everyone has that option.

I switch back and forth pretty much every year because I get a deal for a year and then the company I am with raises the price because the deal is up. Then when I call them to say I am switching because I can get service for whatever the other company is offering, they pretty much blow me off until I call to disconnect which is right after the other company has hooked up their service.

So far, I've been calling with the disconnect and if they don't give me a better offer from the customer retention dept, I go ahead and disconnect and then just put up with a week or so of watching stuff on my phone while the new service is hooked up. I don't know if that will work for you, but it's worth a try.

 

[nilepez]

I swear if TIVO was smart they would work to get their own integrated internet TV service with thier guide and one pass abilites?

And it would very soon cost just as much as cable does now.

I belive the point is to have a single interface for all services. You don't have to subscribe to every service.

It's not that we lack morals, we have morals which say that we refuse to be cheated just because it's legal to cheat us. We know that corporations and their executives and stockholders have zero morals, so why should we be more fair to them than they are to us? Business only holds to one concept, and it's now this: 'There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him'.

What's unfair? Do you need every service in existence. Get one or 2, when you get tired of those or there's a bunch of content on other services you want to watch, switch. Rinse and repeat.

I'll say it for the millionth time. I have netflix. I intend to grab CBS All Access for a month this summer to watch Star Trek Discover, The Good Fight and Twilight Zone. I'll get Hulu for a month to watch Hand Maids Tale and if there's time, I'll look at some of their other content. After a month I'm out.


This isn't the same as cable when the main reason for HBO/Showtime/Starz/Cinemax was to watch movie and you often only had a month or so to catch them before they went away. I'm not sure I've ever watched a movie on Netflix or Amazon (I'm not including Netflix Movies in that count).

If you must have everything all at once, you'll pay through the nose. That's on you, not the streaming sites. AFAIC, having much more than 2 streaming services is a waste, unless money is no object. And clearly for most money matters.

Even in the 80s, when my folks had a lot of coin, they didn't subscribe to every premium station (these days I think he has them all, but he's got more money than I do and is less frugal)

 

[nightfly]

I belive the point is to have a single interface for all services. You don't have to subscribe to every service.

We basically are. One provider offers their 'triple play', which is $89 for base internet, Then they will give you basic cable for $10 and a landline 'for free'....for a year, then it goes up to $129.
Or you can pay $99 for their internet alone. Tell me how we don't have to subscribe for both TV and internet services: It's winds up being the same price.

The only other option is DSL, they offer us 15/5 for $69. And no TV. So then any kind of TV is extra, so we're back up to $100 a month. Tell me how we don't have to subscribe for both.
OR...you can get satellite for downloads of the net and TV, but you need a landline too. Again, you have to have both.

Much of the country is stuck this way. Because....they can stick it to us; they make sure they have a certain % of profit, and pass along the rest of the expense from the content providers. Similar to how the recording industry stuck it to us for 50 years, basically having to purchase 10 crappy songs if we wanted the one good one, today the content providers force the package of several crap channels if the local cable companies want to have the one good one. Which is why when they give you 200 channels, you're only getting about 25 that you really want to watch. The rest are reality junk of watching some numbskull doing stuff nobody wants to watch....yes, like most youtube videos.
So now youtube is just getting into the same business. I predict it will all be pay4view except idiot type clips (all sorts of people doing dumb stuff), girls putting on makeup, and cat videos.