OPINION: YouTube TV isn’t as necessary as yet another price hike would suggest Google believes. There are few things left that demand a subscription to multi-channel live TV service, and that content is dwindling all the time.
Google has confirmed the price of YouTube TV is going up yet again, with the cord-cutting live TV streaming service now well over double the original asking price.
The price for a basic YouTube TV subscription is now $82.99 for new subcribers. For people already being hauled over the coals by the streaming giant, the $10 hike over the current price will go into effect in their next bill, or from January 13.
That $72.99 price was only brought in 18 months ago, which was an increase on $64.99. It’s another startling hike for loyal YouTube TV customers who started off paying just $35 for the service when it arrived in 2017 as a low-cost, no-strings alternative to cable or satellite television. That’s a 237% price increase in just seven years.
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It’s still no-strings and viewing options are still more plentiful thanks to the plethora of streaming devices, but the idea of it being a meaningfully cheaper alternative to the legacy providers is now well and truly dead. Now, it’s just cable and satellite prices delivered over the internet.
Not what it was
We wouldn’t mind so much if YouTube TV held strong as a proposition, but it doesn’t. In the years since its launch, YouTube TV has become immensely less valuable; especially since 2020.
The service has lost pretty much all of the regional sports networks that made it such an intriguing buy at a bargain price in the first place. Users did not see a price cut when they went away. On the contrary, in fact.
The proposition has been diminished by content owners bringing so much on demand content back in house to launch their own streaming services. That didn’t yield any price cuts either. On the contrary, in fact.
The platform has been undermined by lots of live sports now being exclusive to external streaming services and no longer available via traditional linear channels. That hasn’t yielded any price cuts. On the contrary, in fact.
So what has YouTube TV added that would justify price increases? Well, access to some very limited 4K content, unlimited streams, and opportunity to download some DVR recordings for offline viewing. The only thing is, that isn’t part of the deal. You have to pay $10 extra for that, taking the total to $92.99.
There is a limited cool multi-view feature that does enables you to watch up to four channels at once on a single screen, but YouTube TV chooses the options for you and won’t let you pick your own channels like Fubo TV does.
What makes YouTube TV worth it?
So what exactly are we paying $83 for?
Access to free-to-air channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox et al), and a lot of content that is being increasingly simulcast or available on demand via streaming services you might already have access to.
I’ll use the example of live sports, but it also applies to drama, reality TV, and movies.
Loads of the live sport on YouTube TV is available through subscriptions to ESPN+, Paramount+, Max, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and Peacock.
Our you can watch them with a cheap indoor TV arial that carries the free to air channels. You don’t need YouTube TV for any nationally broadcast NFL game on Sundays for example.
On the flip side, loads of what isn’t available is available through YouTube TV is only available on those aforementioned streaming services.
MLS and Friday Night MLB Baseball are on Apple TV+, NFL Thursday Night Football is on Amazon Prime, the bulk of Champions League is on Paramount+, NHL is on ESPN+. Diehards will have those.
Heaven forbid if you want to watch every one of your local sports teams’ games. You’ll need a separate streaming service (my Miami Heat are on the FanDuel network) or a different live TV provider that offers the teams in your market (like Fubo or DirecTV Stream), because YouTube TV won’t pay up for those RSNs, despite charging you much more than it did when regional sports were provided.
What I’m saying is; there are fewer marque pieces of content that keep YouTube TV from becoming totally unnecessary for people with access to loads of streaming services.
USA Network, for example, is one of those remaining carrots. It exclusively offers 3-4 Premier League games a week (the rest are on Peacock), so I have to have some sort of cable package for that. I spoke to a person today who only has YTTV for this reason. I directed her to Sling TV, where you can get a bundle with USA for $40 a month.
Some ESPN US sports games are not available through ESPN+ and only on the ESPN cable channel, the same goes for Fox Sports. WWE Raw and Smackdown are also on USA Network, but RAW goes to Netflix in January.
But these examples are becoming few and far between. And it means YouTube TV and its linear streaming rivals hang by a thread.
As the content landscape continues to shift towards content going exclusive to streaming services, you have a situation where YouTube TV is an exclusive owner of nothing whatsoever. Only what the legacy networks are willing and able to provide it with. And that isn’t a lot these days, folks.
The drastic change in viewing habits towards on-demand means people don’t necessarily need to watch anything but sports and news as it happens. The other example is prestige TV but that’s not on channels carried by YouTube TV either. It’s also on Prime Video, Netflix, Max, Disney+, and Apple TV+. Almost everything else can be caught-up with on platforms like Peacock, Paramount+ and Hulu.
Catching-up is the norm and the new wave of streaming services provide that too, enabling users to pick and choose which is best for them, or rotate to save cash rather than paying almost $100 a month. If you’re savvy about when you subscribe, you can have all the major streaming platforms at the same time. Add the costs together and it’ll still be much cheaper than YouTube TV.
YouTube TV is but another shift away from being completely obsolete. Now is not the time I would be choosing to punish customers again, or tempting them to ditch the cable-cutting live TV streaming service, just as they ditched traditional cable.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
