I may have to rethink my TV habits...
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YouTube TV Pricing Goes Up $5 Per Month Starting Tomorrow
I may have to rethink my TV habits...
me and the wife use hulu live. its about $40 a month and its mainly..LOL to watch food network(chopped for me) and HGTV all the home hunting/improvement shows. We use it on the roku and it works great. The best thing is that it is unless we are watching LIVE tv, it is commercial free. at least most of the shows we watch.
Susquehannock
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Meh .... did the free trial thing so I could watch some Winter Olympics. Nothing there I would pay for.
I don't get the fuss over cord cutting. There really isn't that much of a price difference. I also have Tivo's. I have control over what I watch, including skipping over commercials. I dunno why anyone would pay for streaming services where you can't skip commercials (let alone that they have them in the first place). I was a Netflix subscriber for a long time, but I found more often than not content I wanted wasn't available. It really hit me how dumb it was when sites that track what was coming and leaving the service started getting popularity. Seriously?
Nothing in any of the streaming services surpasses what I have with Tivo and cable overall. On the rare occasion I really want a movie I just pick up a RedBox rental - $2 for a real disk that's not overly compressed? That I have to leave my house and go a mile down the road to a kiosk isn't that big a deal.
It would be nice if there were a service that had all the content and it was consumable in a consumer friendly way but I haven't seen it yet.
w1retap
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You can really go forward from that time to other things that were supposed to be commercial free when you paid for them too --- XM/Sirius radio, paid streaming video services, paid streaming radio services, paid games, etc. Everything is chocked full of ads or commercials now. I won't be surprised if the day comes when we have autonomous cars that need to stop every 5 miles so you can get targeted advertising fed into your infotainment system before it lets you go to your destination.
funkydmunky
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Consider yourself lucky. I can not get any single one of them for $40, never mind all of them.
M76
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Yeah, cable prices are out of control in the US, I'm in europe. There are some providers who give you 1 gig net for like $15 / month. Mine is only 240Mbit, but it's enough for me.
I am just going to ask this because logic normally seems to be a very bad subject for most people here. You do realize that there is a difference between 66% of watcher being female and 66% of females watching something is different right?
If i sell something to 3 people, 1 is male and 2 are female that means that 66% of those that purchased it are female, but that doesn't mean i sold to 66% of females alive. I only sold to 2. So you haven't proven that 66% of females watch a station or that being a female means that you have to watch a station.
That all said, i was just joking around originally given that i watch the same shows, then was asked what the fuck my point was. Honestly no surprised that women would watch more cooking shows than men. Especially given the age range you said. I would expect in a family where the couple are over 35 you are looking at the age group raised where it was still the mindset that it is the wife's job to cook and clean. So more of them would be wanting to watch shows to get an idea of different things to cook. For people under the age of 35 it is probably more mixed as far as who cooks, also they would be more ready to just to look at something online than they would watch a tv show as going online you can find exactly what you are looking for. Same goes for HGTV, as again it was viewed as the wife's job to clean and decorate the house. So again that age range would be the one to watch shows about that vs those that are younger and would be more split and also looking online.
Google doesn't get to decide is USA or the Disney channel has commercials. They have to air the stations as they are. As for it dying, actually surprising it isn't dying as quickly as everyone thinks. Some people cut the cord only to come back, some leave and never come back, and then you still have the new subs that are signing up because of various reasons. It is a down hill slope for sure, but surprising it isn't going straight down (yet)
you are already paying for tv service so you aren't the target audience for such a service. That is like a person with D cup for breast size not understanding why a plastic surgeon offers a surgery to get D cups, they already have them so why should it be offered to anyone else.
dark_reign
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A cheaper version of cable TV might work for some, but if you have a data cap then there's little to no cost savings unless you rarely use it.
Unless they severely limit the number of commercials, this thing is doomed.
Armenius
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I never said 66% of all females alive are watching HGTV. Reading is fundamental:
Shadow_Foxx
Weaksauce
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I dont know how everyone in the comments gets such cheap cable. 20 bucks a month? 10 pounds a month? Im looking at another 60 to bundle it with my internet!! 40 bucks for this is way too steep however.
sirmonkey1985
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - July 2010
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i don't know if it'll work with cox but what i do is every year i get the notice that my comcast bill will increase i just call them up pull the "i wasn't notified about my bill increasing when i signed up" and the CS rep just resuba me for 12 more months at the price i was originally paying. most CS reps are pretty cool about doing it right away since they don't care and it doesn't effect their pay anyways but some of them can be a pain in the ass to deal with so i just called back a few hours later to get a different rep.. been paying 90 dollars a month for about 5 years now, lol. originally i was paying 60 a month the 5 years before that til they brought out the 150mbit/5mbit speed along with the new X1/basic plus package and did a price increase which i was fine with anyways since i actually get 225 down/13 up using a docsis 3.1 modem @ 3.0 32/8).
i have 150/5 + digital(basic) plus package.. in my plan i pay 10 dollars + 10 dollar rent for the X1 box, 69 dollars for the internet.. if you really want to get technical i actually pay around 27 dollars a month for the tv package after all the bullshit state fee's that comcast is required to charge us here in washington. my X1 box gets used more to watch netflix than actual cable tv since it's better than using the built in roku on my tv. most of my tv watching is done directly from the channels website or using xfinity online tv service.
with some companies it's going down pretty quickly from what i've seen, with comcast i think it's a fair bit slower just because they're doing a really good job with staying ahead of the competition through various features.. directv isn't bad either other than their crappy satellite service being bundled with shitty ass DSL services in most areas.
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Nenu
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Freesat in the UK or Free to Air TV costs nothing other than the license fee which is £12 per month.
There are tons of channels.
sirmonkey1985
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don't you guys also pay a tv tax even if you don't have service or has that finally stopped?
Nenu
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That is the license fee, there hasnt ever been another fee.
No other pita tactics or problems, its a great system.
Riiight did you miss the part where I said VZ forces me to have it in order to PAY LESS OVERALL? Besides if youtube had content and a reasonable price (ala netflix) I would be more open to subscribing.
How is it doomed?
Just as an example-
I pay $79 bucks a month for 200/35 connection, another $130 bucks or so for DirecTV and I have Netflix and Amazon Prime
I'm planning on dropping DirecTV for their online system, since its only $60 bucks a month for the same channels I'm paying $130 for. That's a decent chunk of change I'll be saving month to month.
dark_reign
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Cord-cutting, cord-nevers, and some are going back to antenna TV. $40 a month isn't going to bring people back to a streaming cable TV service that is chock-full of commercials.
Ok, what does that change? You are getting free tv service right now. Actually negative cost tv. So you are making money by having it. You still already have TV service no matter the reason or cost. Which is exactly what i said, you have tv service so are not the target audience since you don't gain anything from switching.
personally i find it funny how much you guys are bitching and throwing a fit about a service you don't want to use existing. If you don't want broadcast tv then don't get broadcast tv, it is really that simple. companies selling broadcast tv service doesn't hurt you, they are providing a service for those who want it. Google already offers tv on google fiber so this is just a watered down offering of stuff they already have so it doesn't really cost them much more to offer this service to the public for those that want it.
So youtube doesnt want me as a customer because I already have a TV service? Are you familiar with competition and trying to steal customers?
Nenu
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Who do you propose this is for?
If its not to take customers away from current providers, what is its purpose?
The purpose of YouTube TV and Sling TV (which is the same type of service) are not to replace cable / satellite service for all people. You don't have all the same stations, you don't have the same quality. These types of services are meant for people that want to cut the cord or have already cut the cord, but decide they want at least a few stations that they can watch still but for cheap. If you have Comcast with HBO, then HBO NOW isn't for you as you can use your paid service and make use of HBO GO with that. HBO NOW is for people that don't have TV service but would still want to watch Game of Thrones or some other HBO series but without paying for all the other TV stations that you get with a paid service. In this case neither sling or YouTube TV have all the same stations. Sling has added more and more and have a decent lineup option that you can select from, YouTube is missing many stations still and don't have the premium stations as options period. So if you watch Discovery, YouTube TV isn't for you, if you watch MTV or GSN, it isn't for you. If you want to be able to watch news, a couple sports stations and then stuff like USA, TNT, TBS... and that is it then you are fine with the service. If you are in a bundled package that you have to have phone, internet and TV to keep your prices low then you can't switch to a streaming service like this as you would have to drop out of your bundle which then might raise your prices which again means that this (or even switching to a different cable / satellite company) isn't for you. When looking at a more complete package like Sling, which i assume YouTube TV will try to get there at some point, you can very quickly make it be just as expensive if not more expensive once you start to add too much to your package. All for lower quality service.
No the purpose of YouTube and SlingTV is to make money. They do that by drawing subscribers from any target audience they can.
target audience being the key words. Somebody that needs a letter sent from New York to Japan is not the target audience bike delivery service. Somebody looking for a 5 coursed catered meal for 1000 weeding guesting is not the target audience of McDonald's new 1,2,3 menu. No matter if making money is the goal of a company or not, that doesn't make 100% of the population your target audience. Like I said they have a certain group of people that their service is targeted it, it is not the entire world.
Glad you work for youtube and could explain that for us. Hope their CEO knows that...
jlbenedict
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This is because the "CONTENT PROVIDERS" still call the shots..
Off topic of Youtube tv.. but this is the hidden gem, that has been making waves lately.. since it doesn't have price inflated sports in it
https://try.philo.com/
Interesting at $16 a month. Between that an a OTA antenna for locals/sports could maybe do the trick. I didn't see anything about DVR functions though... the Mrs is spoiled by that.
jlbenedict
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They include DVR (30 days)
Yup. I work for a service provider that offers phone, internet, cable and IPTV services so I am well aware of these issues as I am involved in more meetings about that type of stuff than I care to be. Mostly because I am not in charge of the content side so I don't care about their issues and partly because it makes me want to strange the people that set the prices and rules at those places which is against the law and thus not something i can act upon. If you want to take X station from a provider they will force you to take others as must carries also. Meaning that they can jack the overall price up more and more by having you take other random shit that nobody wants. Then they have rules so lets say I want to carry the 15 stations from company XYZ. They will want to know two pieces of information every month how many tv customers do I have period and then how many have their stations. They will then have rules that state if under a certain percent of your customers don't carry their station they will pull 100% of their stations. Just to make up some values so that this makes sense. Lets say that I have 3 plans a base package that gives you locals and a few random stations, a middle package that add more common stations then the top package that has everything. Lets assume that there are no Viacom stations in the base package and only the middle and top package. They could have a clause in the contract that if at least 85% of my customers don't have a single Viacom station in their lineup they will pull my ability to offer any of their stations to my customers. So that means that if i have over 15% of my customers on the base package then I will have to drop Viacom stations completely for the rest. Again these are just make up values and a company that does that as I don't know the exact providers but do know that it is somewhere around 20 - 25% that we can have on our base package before we can no longer carry some providers anymore.
In addition to that they also have rules about where you place them in channel lineup, if you don't place them in a certain area they charge you more for the content. You can't have some stations too close to other stations, others you have to have within a certain number of channels from others.. They also like to over inflate their prices thinking that you are going to pay them in order to carry their content. We had a local station that wanted $3.20 per subscriber for us to rebroadcast their one station. We informed them that we would not be paying that so to have a nice day. When you are above channel 40 in the OTA range, nobody is going to care that much if they don't have you as you aren't one of the main stations. Which is the real thing that sets the cost of TV services. The TV service provider probably makes about 5-10% off the service, the majority goes to the content providers.
The big issue is that for many sports are important, inflated or not. That is why so many carry them as for many people sports are going to be the one hold out to keep them from dropping paid service and going to Netflix and other services like that 100%. So sadly if you don't take them you are going to lose out on a large number of people. So you end up having to play by their rules to get the larger percentage of customers.
On a slightly different note, when talking about content in today's meeting I brought up this thread and the argument about $40 for a service like youtube tv being crazy and how it was being debated that a price like that and the fact that tv service providers won't remove all the stations isn't good enough to target people like kju1 who is actually paid by his ISP (given that their bill is cheaper for taking the service that it would be without it) and before I even got any further than that our controller and all of marketing got a very puzzled look and had the same response I had here. Well you don't market expecting to get 100% of people, you have a targeted audience and market to them. If you get more that that market then great but you will never be able to sell anything to 100% of people. Everyone also thought it was crazy to think that any company out there would be allowed to strip all TV commercials and the content providers be perfectly fine with that.
If you see illegal behavior you have a duty as a citizen to report it. That is not "something you cant act upon".
I think you misunderstood my comment. Me strangling somebody is against the law and thus not something that i can act upon. Because then I have to worry about getting caught and going to jail, and i just don't have time for the whole trail and jail thing right now. People setting prices and rules for their content is 100% legal.
That was not clear in your sentence.