And… We’ve Rebundled
YouTube TV now sure looks a lot like cable TV…
A funny thing happened on the way to an a-la-carte cable offering. That funny thing is that we’re right back at the cable bundle. And it’s not funny.
I speak, of course, of the news today that YouTube TV is raising their prices.¹ They’ve done this before, and they’ll undoubtedly do it again. But there’s something about this jump — from $49.99 to $64.99 — that feels more significant this time. Perhaps it’s as simple as the large 30% price increase here. But I think it also has to do with the breach of the $50 threshold. It feels like we’re at the point now where people are fully questioning if this is, in fact, a better deal than cable, after all.
The answer, of course, is that it’s complicated. But certainly, you could sign up for a cable package tomorrow, likely bundled with internet, that would give you most of the channels YouTube TV is offering, and some other ones, for a cheaper price (for the TV part of the equation — which matters because many of us are already paying the cable providers for internet now anyway).²
To YouTube’s credit — and I’ve been a happy subscriber and user since day one — they have a compelling offering. Channels aside — I’ll get to that in a second — the Cloud DVR is the key in my usage. You can tell the service what you want to record and it will find those things and record them. It sounds simple because it is simple.
For example, I decided I wanted to record the English Premiere League recently because well, it’s the only major sport that’s back in a real way.³ With a few clicks, I can now record not just one game, not just one team, but the entire league. You set it and forget it, and watch when you can or not at all. You don’t worry about storage or other limits.⁴ It works on the web, on the iPhone, on the iPad, Apple TV, etc; it’s well done.⁵
Because I also recently got Hulu (by way of Disney’s own bundle), I was looking into their live TV offering to see if it made sense to switch. Long story short: YouTube TV does indeed seem like the better offering, perhaps even with this price hike (their marketing actually feels fair and accurate).
Okay, with all of that out of the way… Fuck, I’m annoyed.
The email on the change hit my inbox today. It starts out well enough, with a thank you for subscribing and noting YouTube TV’s high level accomplishments after three years in business. Then they dive into what is at first framed as good news:
Today we are also adding more of ViacomCBS’s family of channels to YouTube TV, which includes 8 of your favorites: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1.
7 to 15 year old me would have been more excited about all of this. But yay, I guess? Of course, the very next graph is the nut kick:
To continue delivering the best content and service possible, we’re also updating our price for new and existing members to $64.99/month.
Having these paragraphs back-to-back is actually quite perfect. Because it highlights the real key here. I don’t actually want any of these Viacom channels. Not a single one. Yet I can’t say “no thank you” and keep my current deal.
And actually, going back to first principles, let’s think about what we all really want here. Reality aside — we’ll get to that — what I would want from YouTube TV or any of these services is the following:
I sign up for a service. I pick the individual channels I want. I’m told how much this will cost. I pay how much this will cost.
It’s so simple. And yet this is impossible to do because the powers-that-be (meaning, the studios/content owners/etc) don’t want us to have nice things. Well, they do, as long as they’re their nice things. And as long as you take all of their nice things. Even the ones you don’t want. This is what ruined cable, and it’s what’s ruining the services that have replaced cable.
Why get and pay for the 5 channels you want when you can get 50 channels and pay 10x the price? Okay, that’s a little unfair, the economics of the bundle make it such that it’s not 10x the price — but it’s some multiple that is extremely annoying mainly because I have no choice in the matter.⁶
That’s what I’ve never understood about the people who were so quick to point out that the cable bundle was actually a good deal. Sure! But that’s not the real issue here. The real issue here is choice. Again, I have no choice in the matter if I want that “good deal” or not.⁷
Thank you sir, may I have another channel? It’s bullshit.
While we can’t have my true pie-in-the-sky a-la-carte dream scenario above, we can’t even settle for something slightly worse but still much better. Say: sign up for a service, pick two packs of five channels, get quoted a price, and pay the price. It is all or nothing.
I know Sling and others have tried different tiered offerings (I know because I’ve tried all of these services at various points). Their blue package and orange package and what not. But they’re so humorously convoluted that they’re almost worthless as a “choice”. And again, I know it’s not their fault, it’s all they can do if they want to offer the content.
So many companies and services have tried and failed to change these equations. Some aspect of the above ideas is what Apple was trying to do at one point before they fell back into Apple TV+ mode. Now Amazon is sniffing around the space (again?). Perhaps one of the original TV disrupters, Hulu, has the best shot at something interesting now that they’re owned by Disney, which itself owns ESPN, which, along with sports in general, is the linchpin of the cable bundle.⁸
But probably not. All the other powers would just yank their content if Disney tried to do something interesting with Hulu. Then you’d need yet another bundle to cover what’s not in this bundle.
It increasingly feels like we need an outsider to come in and change this status quo, much like Spotify did with music. Big tech clearly has the means, but perhaps not the will? In a way, Netflix has done this, at first by repackaging shows and disintermediating the idea of “channels”. And now by creating their own content which makes us increasingly forget about those channels over on “television” in the first place. Still… sports!⁹
So we’re left in this really weird place where the streaming television services are getting worse over time even as they add more content. And it’s because they’re adding more content! Because we have no choice in the matter.
I was happier when I was paying $35/month for YouTube TV a few years back even though they offered far fewer channels than they offer right now. Because I don’t actually want those other channels. And I know that some people do, but they probably don’t want others that I do want. Yet we all have to get them all and pay full price for the convenience.
It’s all just so disappointing. Because with the move to streaming, many of us thought — naively, as it turns out — that perhaps the great unbundling would lead to change. While the services themselves are better in terms of cloud storage, device usage, ease of cancellation, and a few other factors, content remains king. And the king has not been dethroned. And while he may have unbundled for a bit, he’s now here, right in front of us, all bundled up again.
Look, am I going to unsubscribe from YouTube TV because of this price hike? No. Am I disappointed because this is not the future of TV that I wanted? Yes.
¹ Here’s where I’ll disclose that the fund where I’m a partner, GV, is a sister company under Alphabet to YouTube-parent Google. These opinions are my own, as you can hopefully tell in good and bad ways!
² For a set period of time, naturally.
³ Also, a beautiful game for television.
⁴ There is a 9 month storage limitation for recorded shows.
⁵ The Apple TV YouTube TV app does leave some things to be desired… But it works! It’s mainly UI and UX quibbles.
⁶ And yes, I recognize that without a bundle, the cost of individual channels would rise substantially. Given the low number of channels I would want, I’m okay with that. I know others would not be, which is undoubtedly why we’re heading back towards the bundle!
⁷ And here’s a good counter on the element on choice in bundles (and bundles in general, by Shishir Mehrotra, who incidentally used to work at YouTube — now the CEO of Coda), though I don’t think it applies to this YouTube TV example in particular. Because what I want to choose is actually what I already chose, but now I have no option to choose to stay with that choice…
⁸ Incidentally, how nuts is it for YouTube TV to implement this price hike now in a time of basically no live sports beyond the aforementioned EPL? I know this was the main thing keeping me signed up for “traditional” TV, and now that it’s gone… They better hope those leagues do indeed come back in July…
⁹ Interestingly enough, ESPN Plus is also hiking their price (by $1/month). It’s unclear why, as it’s not like they’re offering more. Maybe in the face of the Michael Jordan documentary, which was a huge success and they aim to do more like that? I’d still love a full streaming ESPN offering. But it sure seems like the sports leagues will beat them to that…
