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YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

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Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#301

Post by FeepingCreature »

burlesona wrote: post #175
caymanjim wrote: post #119

I love YoutubeTV, and I've been using it for years. This is probably enough to get me to cancel, though. It started at $40 when I signed up a couple years ago, they raised it to $50 last year, and now $65 for just a few more channels (and among them, only one I even want). I wish they'd offer a more a la carte option. I'd be willing to pay $10-15 per major broadcaster's channel collection, or $2-7 for individual chan…

The conventional TV channels don't allow their networks to be sold a-la-carte because they all make more money via the bundle than anyone would be willing to pay for their channels individually. Remember that most of these channels are related - for example, NBC owns Telemundo, SyFy, USA, Bravo, E!, Oxygen, etc. They sell all of those through bundles and keep $20/mo or so, but how many people would pay that much for…

Mind you, they're also not getting any money from the people who are currently not interested because the price is too high.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#302

Post by FeepingCreature »

ridaj wrote: post #247
newbie789 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 specifical…

The argument is not about your buying preferences as a consumer. Of course if you had a choice between (a) paying X for watching stuff, or (b) paying Y for the ability to watch exactly the same thing, but Y is overall less money because it is somehow dependent of the amount that you consume, that is the better choice. However, the economic equilibrium of a perfectly unbundled system is not that you get to watch the s…

> You do not have content like History channel because it lies in that tier of things that many people are kind of interested in watching, but only if it comes with something else more valuable that they already paid for.

This seems like you're saying "bundling mis-serves the customer." If the History Channel would not exist if people could pay for it directly, then why should it ought to exist?

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#303

Post by lifeisstillgood »

They seem to be making a fundamental mistake in calculating their prices?

It seems when they add a new channel that costs say 100M pa to broadcast they divide the cost by their existing number of subscribers and mark up accordingly.

surely everyone else does it by "in five years i will have all the subscribers so divide by that number"

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#304

Post by FeepingCreature »

listenallyall wrote: post #284
sutterbomb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anti-bundling rants based on subsidizing unwanted channels are illogical. You're annoyed at paying for cable channels you don't watch but OK paying full freight for Netflix where you'll watch less than 5% of the available content? You're subsidizing the other 95%! Or that a-la-carte channel you want, you won't be watching it 24 hours per day so why subsidize programming that's on when you're sleeping or at work? Do y…

> Or that a-la-carte channel you want, you won't be watching it 24 hours per day so why subsidize programming that's on when you're sleeping or at work?

You have correctly identified the business case for cinema and DVDs.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#306

Post by FeepingCreature »

Analemma_ wrote: post #152
sutterbomb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thank goodness I have economists around to tell me I'm wrong about my own buying preferences.

The economists are wrong about economics too.

That article is an absurdly oversimplified model. In the real world, the networks would find some way to diversify between the $3 and $10 channel offerings, letting them get $3 from the $3 person and $10 from the $10 person.

edit: Correction, they do mention this common and widespread approach... in a footnote. Without saying anything about why it wouldn't work.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#308

Post by masklinn »

Hamuko wrote: post #259
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hour shows are 40 minutes. Half hour are 18.

Didn't it used to be like 22/44 or 24/48?

Apparently it was 22/44 in 2013. By 2016, half-hour shows were already down to ~19mn.

Broadcast was utterly unbearable when I visited the US 20 years back, I can't imagine watching it today.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#309

Post by gumby »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #226
mfkp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I pay ~$5/mo for satellite radio. I don't even drive that much but it's worth it to not listen to ads the whole time.

Even on SiriusXM, the DJs never seem to shut up. One of my fondest "one of these days" project ideas: duct-tape a correlator to an RF front end, along with enough storage to "Tivoize" the local FM band. Record everything, recognize and redact any content that reoccurs within 30-second windows, and rebroadcast it for household/car consumption.

It’s crazy: they used to be just music, but when they bought XM they adopted XM’s model of announcements and such. Why?

Of course that company should have cornered “digital music on the internet” but we’re themselves stuck in the radio mindset.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#310

Post by quickthrower2 »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #304
listenallyall wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-bundling rants based on subsidizing unwanted channels are illogical. You're annoyed at paying for cable channels you don't watch but OK paying full freight for Netflix where you'll watch less than 5% of the available content? You're subsidizing the other 95%! Or that a-la-carte channel you want, you won't be watching it 24 hours per day so why subsidize programming that's on when you're sleeping or at work? Do y…

> Or that a-la-carte channel you want, you won't be watching it 24 hours per day so why subsidize programming that's on when you're sleeping or at work? You have correctly identified the business case for cinema and DVDs.

The cinema business case is “going out” “big screen” and “new release” but this could all be disrupted. It’s not a payg model that attracts people to the cinema and many movie chains have a subscription model!
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