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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

#341

At $20 they were disruptive, at $65, they are dead to me. I will be interesting to see how many others leave. The "teaser" cable package is more channels and half the cost. I think it is just a continuing trend in Google getting squeezed harder and harder by the falling search advertising margins and no replacement or even side hustle to compensate. Just before Google winks out of relevance I expect to see them try t…

> try to charge people to use maps I think lots of consumers would be willing to pay for Google Maps.

Honestly, I'd be happy to pay for Google Maps if it meant my recommendations would be free of sponsorship bias. Google Maps is hands-down my favorite app.

But, I'd feel pretty bad if everybody had to pay for Google Maps, since so many people rely on it.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#342
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube also lets you subscribe to individual channels. Go to some of the popular ones and you'll see a price next to the subscribe button. Channels can choose to publish videos to subscribers only.

Got link? I've literally never seen these. (Or maybe I'm just in a geo that doesn't support this?)

https://youtube.com/user/ryukahr

There's a "join" button next to the "subscribe" button. You have to be logged in to see it.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#343
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the first time I've watched live broadcast US TV since leaving the country ten years ago. Are there any shows on, or is every channel besides PBS just advertisements all day?

Try listening to a music radio station sometime. I turned one on for the first time a 10 years a couple weeks ago and in a 45 minute drive heard approximately 2 songs. The entire rest was station identifiers and commercials.

Most of the time, I prefer silence to the radio. It is really bad…

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#344

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.

And buying DVD's is a terrible value compared to a service like Netflix, so congrats, you just reinforced their point.

Like, a single movie DVD/Blu Ray costs about as much as an entire month of Netflix. Unless you're hardly watching any TV shows or movies on Netflix, that's just an awful value.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the first time I've watched live broadcast US TV since leaving the country ten years ago. Are there any shows on, or is every channel besides PBS just advertisements all day?

Even PBS has ads nowadays. At the beginning of a show, "sesame street was brought to you today by support from viewers like you, and..." (ad for abcmouse, some minivan, etc plays)

The advertisers (?) are different, but more than 35 (!) years ago, I remember the same format, just different sponsors for different programming.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#346

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

I'm not sure about other people but I don't "think" I want a la carte, I absolutely know I do. So much so that I don't pay for anything because nobody offers what I'm willing to pay for.

No you don't.

It's like saying that you'd be willing to pay for a $2/month Spotify subscription for only the genres of music you want. That's not how the economics work. Going a la carte would mean paying as much as a bundle, for less content.

The problem here is that people's mental models are fundamentally self-centered. They imagine paying half or less for just the channels they want.

But in total, that would mean media companies getting half or less the revenue, for producing the same content -- since the marginal cost of giving extra channels is basically zero, they don't gain any money back by giving you fewer channels. Now, media companies aren't that profitable, the math simply doesn't work out, they wouldn't be able to actually make all that content. Many channels would simply be cut.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#347
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.

Long before home computers were affordable, in a magazine for electronics hobbyists, I saw a design for an analogue circuit that could, it was claimed, remove advertising and DJ waffling from radio broadcasts. I think it just looked for the frequent short periods of silence that occur in speech so it can't have been very reliable. But it had a certain low-tech beauty.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And buying DVD's is a terrible value compared to a service like Netflix, so congrats, you just reinforced their point. Like, a single movie DVD/Blu Ray costs about as much as an entire month of Netflix. Unless you're hardly watching any TV shows or movies on Netflix, that's just an awful value.

I watch less than one movie a month.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#349

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.

Well Netflix 4K is $16 a month. Which pretty much puts it above Disney+ let along D+ with Hulu/ESPN. Then you have HBO which still acts as if they are truly premium, if anything they are the binge a month channel.

Many made the joke when Cable companies started losing subs to internet streaming sites that people would end up paying more. The big catch is most people forget to factor in their internet cost writing it off mentally as "I was already going to have it", a sentiment the streaming services want you to have.

Re: YouTube TV sharply increases monthly subscription to $64.99

#350
post #79

For any YouTube TV PMs reading, I just added an event to my calendar marking the day I'll cancel my account. Thanks for the helpful reference to the exact date my current rate expires. Spectrum is offering more channels for $45/month and you don't even need a cable box if you're using an Apple TV. YouTube TV is an OK service that is very rough around the edges and I won't miss it a single minute after I cancel. "This…

Just cancel now. You still get the rest of the current month you paid for and there's no need to worry about forgetting. I just cancelled mine. "Rough around the edges" is a nice way of describing an app that doesn't play what I click on but random shit it feels like.

Thanks, I did the same.
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