YouTube TV Hikes Price To $72.99 Per Month Due To Rising 'Content Costs'

Posted by msmash

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  Ha (Score:5, Insightful)

  by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday March 16, 2023 @04:48PM (#63376543)

  I pay that much per year for a torrent proxy.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re: Ha

    And...? What, you want a medal for being the first person in the world to figure out that it's cheaper to steal something than to pay for it? Are we supposed to be impressed that a simple proxy can sell their services for less than it costs to produce quality content? Or are you merely choosing to out yourself as an idiot for paying anything to pirate stuff when the while fucking point is that it's supposed to be free?

• YouTubeTV is really just a cable TV bundle delivered over the internet. It is no real surprise that it's price is behaving in a similar manner to the tradition cable TV bundle.

  An antenna/DVR combo (if you live close enough to transmitters) and rotating through the various streaming packages will be much cheaper, the only thing it does really cover is sport and with the Bally RSN issues that may be moving to streaming packages quicker than expected.

  • 2 hidden comments

  • the only thing it does really cover is sport and with the Bally RSN issues that may be moving to streaming packages quicker than expected.

    Wish these were better priced. The NFL one is $300 a season and you don't even get all the games.

    • Re:

      Yep, was talking with a co-worker about this the other day. If they had a reasonably priced package for the ONE team I actually care about, I'd definitely be in. But someone apparently ran some numbers and decided they don't want on-the-fence people like me, or that there aren't enough of us to be worthwhile

      • Re: Cable TV-like service has Cable TV-like price

        300 bucks is nuts... I have the nba pass for a 100... and that's all the games... and there's a helluva lot more games than in the NFL
  • Yep, not sure why anyone would be surprised by this. Cable and broadcast network operators are constantly increasing the prices they charge to carry their stations. Even if Google never increases its profit margin it will inevitably go up in price, and continue to, just like regular cable.
    
    Up side, at least right now, is no contracts, so you can turn it on and off as you like. And no cable boxes to rent.

  • Re:

    Yeah, it's no surprise - but the bottom seems to be falling out even faster than expected from under all those lucrative cable TV licensing deals with MLB.

    Good riddance to artificial scarcity, I say. Don't let the door hit you on the way out... because I don't want ass prints on my new door!

• the price of your internet connection and or cellular data fees too,
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  • Re:

    And the cost of your electricity, rent/mortgage, property taxes, and TV/PC/Phone as well. Because none of us would have any of those things if we didn't have that one streaming service.
• Or whatever we are calling channel-bundlers for a fee these days. The "add-ons" are just other streaming services you can also get probably directly for same $. Didn't look, don't care that much.
  To wit, from digitaltrends.com:
  Here are the channels you can watch as part of the main YouTube TV plan, as of February 2023:
  
  ABC, ABC News Live, ACC Network, AMC, Animal Planet, BBC America, BBC World News, BET, BET Her, Bounce, Bravo, BTN, Cartoon Network, CBS, CBS Sports, Cheddar News, CMT, CNBC, CNN, Comedy C

  • Re:

    That is a lot of shit I will not watch.

    • Re:

      So don't sign up?

  • Re:

    And every one has advertisements. Why? one tends to subscribe to remove adverts. Makes no sense to me

    • Totally Agree

      one tends to subscribe to remove adverts. Makes no sense to me/em

      Me either, I will never pay to subscribe to anything that has ads. I don't care if I pay more because of that.

• have true al-carte? I'm pessimistic about the possibility, and wonder why market forces haven't driven us to that. I personally would probably pay a premium on top of whatever my chosen individual channels cost inside a bundle just to get what I want.

  • the mouse said no so you are forced to get ESPN

    the mouse said no so you are forced to get ESPN in just about all plans.

    • Re:

      And that was the moment I cut the cord. $7 per month "sports fee". I don't watch sports save the superbowl, maybe. Sorry, can't take it off.

      $100 a year to ESPN for no reason ?

      Snip.

      • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    But bundles amortize cost across channels, so a la carte channels should be expected to be more expensive. The content producers and media distribution companies target a certain amount of revenue both to cover costs and to gain a target profit. Whether that is collected with bundles or a la carte purchases, the sum needs to achieve the target.

    Often what consumers want is to pay less for what they use. That's not a bad thing, as that's one part of the invisible hand of the market. However, it's unrealis

    • Re:

      But that's wages are. One hour work for a fixed cost. piece-rate would be paying per episode.

  • Re:

    A) No, the content producers won't allow it and B) you probably wouldn't save as much as you think, since popular channels would be priced high anyway.

  • Re:

    Arr matey, tis truly a question for the ages!

  • Re:

    Don't all the studios have their own streaming service now? I don't think they're worth $15/mo or whatever but they seem to exist.

    I can't imagine any value to having somebody line up a sequential stream of shows they've chosen to play at specific times.

  • Re:

    Quite a number of years ago there was an estimate as to what each channel would cost al-la-carte and what households tended to watch. The clear winners (lower price) would be those households that watch less than a handful of non-sports channels. The clear losers (higher price) would be anyone who wants sports content (ESPN alone would go up to around $40/mo, and the RSNs around another $30/mo)). And many households would end up paying about the same (unless they went on a serious channel diet).

    And in

    • Re:

      So for some reason everyone has to subsidize sports fans or get cut off from the common entertainment sources...

      Very annoying.

• The new monthly price is an $8 increase from the current $64.99 monthly fee.... To soften the blow, the company announced that it's lowering the price of its 4K Plus add-on from $19.99 per month to $9.99 per month.

  So what I hear you saying is this: You have far more base subscribers than 4K Plus subscribers. Because you make way more profit on 4K Plus subscriptions than you do base subscriptions, you've priced them so closely together with the expectation most of your customer base to say, "Well, it's on

  • Re:

    Except here's the problem: they have very few channels that actually broadcast in 4k, so you're really just giving up an extra $10 because you want to. They had a free 30 days back in December and I gave it a go for college football bowl season, and there were like two games I got to watch in 4k. Everything else was still 1080p which my Nvidia Shield TV upscaled to 4k just about as good as their native 4k streams.

    Fuck their $10 upcharge for almost nothing.

• I mean seriously. Google is now just Comcast... but they don't even have to provide a special box or a cable to my house. How can they justify these continuous price hikes? What value add are they providing?

  • Re:

    They can't and none.

  • Re:

    > How can they justify these continuous price hikes?

    People will pay a lot for sedatives. Cheap beer and cable TV. It's almost like they go together.

    Personally I haven't had broadcast or satellite for about 12 years and I look back at it like an alien landscape.

    Video streaming sites are far more interesting. I pay $20 for the family to have YouTube without ads and that's plenty to spend.

    I can rent a movie from Amazon or a Redbox Bluray if I really really want to. Or if it's not commercially available

• They ought to be charging the advertisers, and when the advertisers refused to pay overriding the network advertisements for ones that have paid.

  If those who double dipped had their houses burned down a little more often, there might be some real reason in their life for fair play.

• Youtube and its content providers can keep their content. I didn't drop cable just to be ass-fucked by someone else. Expect bigger increases every year in perpetuity. But remember, you don't have to take it, you can walk away and everything will be okay.

• Might as well start screwing its customers over like cable companies do.

• Who were these people? Can I sell them a bridge?