11 ms·

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,

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 channels (depending on quality of programming). I might even land at $50 or more with my channel choices, but I'd prefer to pick what I'm paying for instead of subsidizing dozens of channels of programming I dislike (and quite a few that I would prefer to boycott entirely).

29athrowaway 6y ago
Paying $65 to watch ads, no please.
- D2187645 6y ago
  10 dollars felt too much compared to free youtube, and now they want 65 for whatever they are selling.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    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.
    - Volundr 6y ago
      I use YouTube TV and this comment confuses me. What exactly do you think is stopping you from changing channels?
      - caymanjim 6y ago
        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).
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > I pay for YouTube Red because I can skip through ads. It's worth it. Hard to see how this could possibly be worth it, since you can also skip the ads for free.
      - rbrtl 6y ago
        This isn't necessarily true. I don't have any behind the scenes knowledge, but I suspect that enough money or reputation can buy you unskippable ads. I've had several ads I have been unable to skip, running to as long as 15 seconds for the TV+ Tom Hanks movie from Apple. Almost every ad for a Google product has also been unskippable. Could just be an extension of Google's anti-Apple UX design, but I would be rather surprised.
        tpm 6y ago
        This probably depends on the client you are using - using Youtube in browser with adblockers, I have never seen an ad on Youtube, much less an unskippable one. So I take this is what the parent comment meant by "you can also skip the ads for free".
      - 29athrowaway 6y ago
        Not all ads can be fully skipped, and skipping the ad takes at least a couple of seconds. You can also get multiple ads in a video. I use YouTube for many purposes: music, learning, recreation, etc. and i'd rather pay like $10 a month than spend 1 hour a month watching ads. For the record, I do not care at all about YouTube Red exclusive content.
        thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > Not all ads can be fully skipped, and skipping the ad takes at least a couple of seconds. You can also get multiple ads in a video. You're not watching them right. All ads can be fully skipped, preemptively, at a time cost of zero. If you don't like the ads, just don't watch them. There's no reason to pay for YouTube Red.
    - driverdan 6y ago
      What do you mean? YouTube Premium removes ads, there is no skipping through them.
  - caymanjim 6y ago
    YouTube TV has nothing at all to do with YouTube proper. It's purely branding. TV is comparable to Sling or DirecTV or your local cable TV option.
strangescript 6y ago
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.
- prepend 6y ago
  You think Youtube is getting strongarmed by Comcast? That’s surprising. Google could easily hold out for a la carte if they wanted to.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Comcast? Viacom recently merged with CBS and is effectively its own company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViacomCBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViacomCBS.
  - draz 6y ago
    You need to think about it more holistically - not just YouTube, but Google as a whole (think about all the various Google enterprise products, cloud, etc).
- sutterbomb 6y ago
  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-and-buyers https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this
  - kangaroozach 6y ago
    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.
CivBase 6y ago
I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too [edit: as in "sub to each channel a la cart"]. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription tiers that add flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch. Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy. Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue. Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  > Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income They already do and have for quite some time. https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m
  - CivBase 6y ago
    That is not a la cart. I want the option to subscribe to individual channels - ideally with multiple tiers.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      In your parenthesis you said, "or ten dollars a month on YouTube premium." What did you mean by that? I thought you meant that a YouTube premium subscription for $10 a month would be acceptable but maybe you meant something else.
      - CivBase 6y ago
        "YouTube Premium" is a subscription service that allows users to disable ads on the entire platform (plus a few other minor perks) for a flat monthly fee. I guess it's actually $12/month, not $10/month. That subscription fee supplements the platform and creators for the lost ad revenue. I meant that they could continue to offer YouTube Premium as a way to disable ads on all channels and support premium subscriptions for individual channels as an alternative for users who might not be interested in buying YouTube Premium just to support one or two channels.
burlesona 6y ago
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 any one of the channels, and how many people would actually buy them all? I think everyone would love to just get their favorite channels for (let's say) $3/mo/channel with no ads... but that would be a huge loss for the media companies, so they won't sell that way. Instead what we're seeing is disruption via alternative models, like Netflix, HBO, Apple TV+, and now even the biggest media owner (Disney) offering Disney+ and ESPN+ direct. I'm not sure if conventional TV will still exist in its current form in a decade, but I don't think we'll ever see today's bundled TV become available a-la-carte, because it isn't compatible with that business model.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Mind you, they're also not getting any money from the people who are currently not interested because the price is too high.
- voodootrucker 6y ago
  America has a lot of problems, but they all look strangely like anti-trust: https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/
  - Zenbit_UX 6y ago
    What about obesity?
    - voodootrucker 6y ago
      Large chains pushing cheap, processed crap food in food deserts that the poor are trapped in? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667 https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667
verandaguy 6y ago
This sounds like cable TV packages with extra steps — and the precedent there is to still have ads even after gouging the cusotmer.
seansmccullough 6y ago
Just cancelled. The value proposition of YouTube TV was great a few years ago, for $40 a month. They've added a bunch of channels I won't watch several times, and raised the price multiple times now. I wish they had a cheaper option, with the original channels.
bonestamp2 6y ago
Now they're doing the exact thing that drove everyone away from their cable company to them in the first place. It's clear misunderstanding of their customers. I'm sure most of the HN demographic would have no real trouble affording this 30% rate hike, but it's not about the actual money, it's about the principle.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  They're also no longer price-competitive with traditional cable TV, which many people rely on as their only source of wired Internet. When it costs $60/mo for Internet, and only another $40/mo to bundle cable TV, why would I spend $25 extra for YouTube TV instead? The unlimited DVR is nice, but most cable providers also offer some DVR functionality and tons of on-demand content. They also increasingly offer streaming to other devices. YouTube TV is only a marginally better experience in some ways, and worse in others, with a smaller channel selection. At $40, it was monetarily a wash; at $65, they need to offer something that cable isn't giving me, and at the moment they don't.
  - bonestamp2 6y ago
    Yes! I noticed the next time I launched the YouTube TV app they added a screen I've never seen before where it reminded me how much value they were providing (basically the DVR) and showed me a list of shows to add to my unlimited DVR. I agree the "unlimited" DVR is nice but even then it's not truly unlimited and it doesn't give me the part of unlimited that I'm interested in. I don't need unlimited shows saved for a year, I want to save a few things until I get to them or the odd rare special thing I want to save forever.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Paying $65 to watch ads, no please.

D2187645 6y ago
10 dollars felt too much compared to free youtube, and now they want 65 for whatever they are selling.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  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.
  - Volundr 6y ago
    I use YouTube TV and this comment confuses me. What exactly do you think is stopping you from changing channels?
    - caymanjim 6y ago
      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).
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > I pay for YouTube Red because I can skip through ads. It's worth it. Hard to see how this could possibly be worth it, since you can also skip the ads for free.
    - rbrtl 6y ago
      This isn't necessarily true. I don't have any behind the scenes knowledge, but I suspect that enough money or reputation can buy you unskippable ads. I've had several ads I have been unable to skip, running to as long as 15 seconds for the TV+ Tom Hanks movie from Apple. Almost every ad for a Google product has also been unskippable. Could just be an extension of Google's anti-Apple UX design, but I would be rather surprised.
      - tpm 6y ago
        This probably depends on the client you are using - using Youtube in browser with adblockers, I have never seen an ad on Youtube, much less an unskippable one. So I take this is what the parent comment meant by "you can also skip the ads for free".
    - 29athrowaway 6y ago
      Not all ads can be fully skipped, and skipping the ad takes at least a couple of seconds. You can also get multiple ads in a video. I use YouTube for many purposes: music, learning, recreation, etc. and i'd rather pay like $10 a month than spend 1 hour a month watching ads. For the record, I do not care at all about YouTube Red exclusive content.
      - thaumasiotes 6y ago
        > Not all ads can be fully skipped, and skipping the ad takes at least a couple of seconds. You can also get multiple ads in a video. You're not watching them right. All ads can be fully skipped, preemptively, at a time cost of zero. If you don't like the ads, just don't watch them. There's no reason to pay for YouTube Red.
  - driverdan 6y ago
    What do you mean? YouTube Premium removes ads, there is no skipping through them.
- caymanjim 6y ago
  YouTube TV has nothing at all to do with YouTube proper. It's purely branding. TV is comparable to Sling or DirecTV or your local cable TV option.

strangescript 6y ago

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.

prepend 6y ago
You think Youtube is getting strongarmed by Comcast? That’s surprising. Google could easily hold out for a la carte if they wanted to.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Comcast? Viacom recently merged with CBS and is effectively its own company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViacomCBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ViacomCBS.
- draz 6y ago
  You need to think about it more holistically - not just YouTube, but Google as a whole (think about all the various Google enterprise products, cloud, etc).
sutterbomb 6y ago
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-and-buyers https://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-... Stratechery also has written about this
- kangaroozach 6y ago
  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.

CivBase 6y ago

I don't understand why they don't do that with YouTube channels too [edit: as in "sub to each channel a la cart"]. Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income and loosing potential subscription customers to Patreon. They could even offer higher priced, per-channel subscription tiers that add flairs to comments and unlock emojis like Twitch. Twitch, Floatplane, and Patreon are all proof it's a viable strategy. Ad revenue has proven to be terribly unstable and YouTube is extremely expensive to maintain. They should be desperately trying to diversify their revenue. Right now, every video that isn't "advertiser friendly" is dead weight and money on the table.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
> Let users pay $1 or $2 a month to disable ads on a channel (or $10 a month for "YouTube Premium"). That seems much more sustainable than relying exclusively on ads for income They already do and have for quite some time. https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m https://m.youtube.com/premium?persist_app=1&app=m
- CivBase 6y ago
  That is not a la cart. I want the option to subscribe to individual channels - ideally with multiple tiers.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    In your parenthesis you said, "or ten dollars a month on YouTube premium." What did you mean by that? I thought you meant that a YouTube premium subscription for $10 a month would be acceptable but maybe you meant something else.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      "YouTube Premium" is a subscription service that allows users to disable ads on the entire platform (plus a few other minor perks) for a flat monthly fee. I guess it's actually $12/month, not $10/month. That subscription fee supplements the platform and creators for the lost ad revenue. I meant that they could continue to offer YouTube Premium as a way to disable ads on all channels and support premium subscriptions for individual channels as an alternative for users who might not be interested in buying YouTube Premium just to support one or two channels.

burlesona 6y ago

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 any one of the channels, and how many people would actually buy them all? I think everyone would love to just get their favorite channels for (let's say) $3/mo/channel with no ads... but that would be a huge loss for the media companies, so they won't sell that way. Instead what we're seeing is disruption via alternative models, like Netflix, HBO, Apple TV+, and now even the biggest media owner (Disney) offering Disney+ and ESPN+ direct. I'm not sure if conventional TV will still exist in its current form in a decade, but I don't think we'll ever see today's bundled TV become available a-la-carte, because it isn't compatible with that business model.

FeepingCreature 6y ago
Mind you, they're also not getting any money from the people who are currently not interested because the price is too high.
voodootrucker 6y ago
America has a lot of problems, but they all look strangely like anti-trust: https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/
- Zenbit_UX 6y ago
  What about obesity?
  - voodootrucker 6y ago
    Large chains pushing cheap, processed crap food in food deserts that the poor are trapped in? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667 https://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667

verandaguy 6y ago

This sounds like cable TV packages with extra steps — and the precedent there is to still have ads even after gouging the cusotmer.

seansmccullough 6y ago

Just cancelled. The value proposition of YouTube TV was great a few years ago, for $40 a month. They've added a bunch of channels I won't watch several times, and raised the price multiple times now. I wish they had a cheaper option, with the original channels.

bonestamp2 6y ago

Now they're doing the exact thing that drove everyone away from their cable company to them in the first place. It's clear misunderstanding of their customers. I'm sure most of the HN demographic would have no real trouble affording this 30% rate hike, but it's not about the actual money, it's about the principle.

caymanjim 6y ago
They're also no longer price-competitive with traditional cable TV, which many people rely on as their only source of wired Internet. When it costs $60/mo for Internet, and only another $40/mo to bundle cable TV, why would I spend $25 extra for YouTube TV instead? The unlimited DVR is nice, but most cable providers also offer some DVR functionality and tons of on-demand content. They also increasingly offer streaming to other devices. YouTube TV is only a marginally better experience in some ways, and worse in others, with a smaller channel selection. At $40, it was monetarily a wash; at $65, they need to offer something that cable isn't giving me, and at the moment they don't.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  Yes! I noticed the next time I launched the YouTube TV app they added a screen I've never seen before where it reminded me how much value they were providing (basically the DVR) and showed me a list of shows to add to my unlimited DVR. I agree the "unlimited" DVR is nice but even then it's not truly unlimited and it doesn't give me the part of unlimited that I'm interested in. I don't need unlimited shows saved for a year, I want to save a few things until I get to them or the odd rare special thing I want to save forever.