YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99 • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#141

Post by adrr » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #85

diogenescynic wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I want is CNBC and baseball. I can subscribe to MLB.tv which covers baseball, but as far as I can tell there is not a reasonable way to get CNBC a la carte. Paying for CNBC Pro is $30/month and that seems more than I'd like to pay.

CNBC averages around 250k primetime viewers (under 200k during the day). Its top show attracts fewer than 400k. Imagine how much lower viewership would be if it wasn't a "free" channel. There's essentially no economic model that allows them to stay in business in an a-la-carte world. But if they are guaranteed to be in 80 or 100 million homes via bundling, then yes it can (and does) work. https://ctv.kwayisi.org/netw…

According to wiki CNBC has the highest income audience of any cable station and made $300+mm on $600mm+ in revenue. I’d watch it but I don’t have cable, I bet they are missing a bunch of Ad revenue from people who cut the cord.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#142

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #130

strangescript wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.

You think Youtube is getting strongarmed by Comcast? That’s surprising. Google could easily hold out for a la carte if they wanted to.

Comcast? Viacom recently merged with CBS and is effectively its own company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViacomCBS.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#143

Post by tyingq » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

notyourwork wrote: post #112

texasbigdata wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same. Only works at home

What do you mean by only works at home? I use Youtube Tv on my mobile and while traveling.

Likely they were referring to the "Spectrum is offering more channels for $45/month" bit.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#144

Post by kangaroozach » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:38 AM UTC

sutterbomb wrote: post #132

strangescript wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.

Everyone thinks they want a la carte, but (most) everyone is wrong. Bundling is generally better for consumers and producers. https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this

In aggregate sure, but individuals only care about optimizing their own purchase.

Ie more choice more better.

Personally I was pissed when my reward for early evangelization of YoutubeTV was a Hike from $35 to $50. But now that it’s $65, I’m donzo.

This will take people back to the days of torrents and piracy.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#145

Post by Plough_Jogger » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #42

keithwinstein wrote: post #12

ObShameless reminder that https://puffer.stanford.edu remains free of charge. The site streams San Francisco affiliates and local stations of NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS/FOX/CW as part of a university study on video streaming algorithms -- it's essentially a big A/B test to try to reproduce or clarify some of the findings in the research literature. We're now posting all our data and analysis each day. Research talk here: https:…

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1] It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site,…

An interesting aspect of Aereo's model is that they attempted to circumvent these regulations by leasing each customer an individual antenna which they could access remotely. They maintained "antenna farms" full of tiny antennas.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#146

Post by draz » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #81

eslaught wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: why do big organizations do this? I mean, I get it: you're making people pay for stuff they don't need. You can charge a higher price despite users not actually watching everything they buy. Clearly, this tactic must work at some level, or else they wouldn't do it. On the other hand, there are users like me who take one look at that and say, "ew", and walk away from TV completely. And it's not like I…

Subsidizing new content and making it easily discoverable are the primary reasons for bundling. When new content comes to you for free with your existing purchase, the only thing stopping you from trying it out and potentially getting hooked is your willingness to commit time to it. If every piece of content had a price associate with it, people would be much less willing to try new things. This same principle applie…

That’s exactly right. I can’t talk numbers, but a consumer is more likely to stick with a channel/app by X% (where X is a significant number) if s/he watches Y shows. Y increases as X increases.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#147

Post by caymanjim » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

Volundr wrote: post #140

29athrowaway wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for YouTube Red because I can skip through ads. It's worth it. In YouTube TV you get to see unavoidable ads, unlike in TV where you can switch the channel while those ads are running.

I use YouTube TV and this comment confuses me. What exactly do you think is stopping you from changing channels?

Yeah, it works just like TV. There are no unskippable ads or interstitials. Also with unlimited DVR and time-shifting, I rarely watch live, and I can skip all the commercials (albeit manually).

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#148

Post by newbie789 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

sutterbomb wrote: post #132

strangescript wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the services fault. These big tv conglomerates don't want their channels optional because they know no one wants them for the most part. Or, at the very least, you won't accidentally start watching something on their network if you don't even have the channel.

Everyone thinks they want a la carte, but (most) everyone is wrong. Bundling is generally better for consumers and producers. https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this

That's an interesting perspective, but it kind of looks like a lot of graphs saying "You should pay for stuff you don't want because otherwise it would incentivize the sellers to price gouge you for the stuff you do want"

I'm kind of confused, if it's an adversarial relationship where the seller is going to extract as much money from you as possible in either scenario, wouldn't some consumers prefer to pay specifically to starve out content they'd prefer not to see?

Maybe I'm not understanding this page, but it looks like it's "good" for me because instead of paying $9-10 for the History Channel alone I'll be paying $11.70 for History Channel + ESPN (which I will literally never watch)?

I'm not a calculus genius but I'd prefer to spend less money and only have what I want. This model assumes that I'd be willing to spend $3 per month on ESPN, but how does the graph look if I were willing to spend $0 per month on it? Or hell, since pricing is arbitrary, I'd like to pay -$3 per month as a courtesy for having to scroll past content I genuinely do not want to consume let alone subsidize?

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#149

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

kemonocode wrote: post #115

So it's just cable with extra steps now. Nice. I really don't expect too many people to stay subscribed, unless they're relying on the (sketchy) revenue stream that's people who subscribed once and then forgot all about it.

I would doubt more than 1% are in that category - $50 (now 65) a month raises more mental alarms than your old $11 Netflix subscription.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#150

Post by kangaroozach » Wed, Jul 01, 2020, 2:42 AM UTC

Plough_Jogger wrote: post #145

crazygringo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't exactly seem legal. Streaming free local network broadcasts was definitively ruled as illegal by the Supreme Court in 2014 -- remember that was Aereo's entire business model. [1] It seems like the Stanford service is trying to justify themselves by being an academic study and limiting to 500 concurrent participants... but it's telling they don't list any legal justification on the site,…

An interesting aspect of Aereo's model is that they attempted to circumvent these regulations by leasing each customer an individual antenna which they could access remotely. They maintained "antenna farms" full of tiny antennas.

It was a brilliant $100m bet that backfired for no good reason.