YouTube TV Price Hike

You know the old phrase "I hate to say I told you so"? Yeah, that's s*%#. I love to say I told you so, and I'm saying it today after YouTube TV raised their prices significantly. And I may get to say it again in a few years because I have another moderately bold prediction at the end of this article. Mostly though, our purpose today is to grapple with YouTube TV's announcement of a $10 price hike. Let's dive into this one.

The price change for YouTube TV went from $73 a month to $83 per month. It's huge. Now, it takes effect immediately. 

I mean $83 a month? Think about it. You add that to your internet bill and you're probably sitting around $140 a month now. If you have a normal cable internet bill or whatever between $50 and $70 a month, you're probably sitting between $120 and $160 if you're subscribed to that plus YouTube TV. Congratulations. You've all just rediscovered your cable TV bundles. Here we are again, right?

Plus, you add onto that whatever on-demand services you've got—Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+—there's another $9, $10, $15 a month that you're paying for other on-demand services. And yeah, the pricing is getting a little bit out of hand because frankly live TV, it's expensive.

>> Read our complete review of YouTube TV.

But let's take a look now at their competitors and kind of see how YouTube TV is stacking up these days.

Hulu Live's pricing starts at $82 a month and they do not have the Viacom networks that YouTube TV just added, probably because those Viacom networks are expensive. They have a lot of the most popular cable channels out there so it's an expensive package to get. That's why YouTube TV's price went up.

>> Read our complete review of Hulu + Live TV.

Now let's move to Sling TV. They are sticking with their $46 per package for the orange or the blue, or you can go $62 if you want to get the combo.

The question here is whether people will be willing to forego a few channels to keep the price low. Because that's the selling point for Sling. If you don't care about Fox Sports Networks or if you don't need the ESPN stuff, then you can choose the orange or the blue and keep that price down. But is the price gap going to be enough to push people back to the OG live streaming service? I'm not sure, but Sling TV could possibly see a resurgence with the other services continually raising their prices because Hulu raised their prices a little while ago. Now YouTube TV has done it.

>> Read our complete review of Sling TV.

So here we are, and here is my semi bold prediction. The writing is on the wall. Anybody who's been watching the industry for a while will know that this is coming. But here's the thing, we thought that streaming would be the end of traditional TV. No more cable, no more satellite, hooray. We're all free, right? We can cut the cord. Well, it turns out that in fact, it's the end of live TV as we know it, or at least as we knew it, no matter how we choose to get it, whether it's through cable or satellite, or now the internet.

It's going to take a few more years. This isn't going to happen next week, but the day is getting closer and closer when live TV will be a thing of the past except for sports. And even then, I think it will start to lose a lot of its momentum. One day, some kid is going to ask his parents what it was like to have to just wait until Thursday nights to watch their favorite show, to watch Seinfeld or whatever. "You just had to wait until every Thursday to watch your show?" It's going to be a relic of the past. The only question in my mind is whether live TV is going to have an epic meltdown and disappear overnight, or whether it will slowly and quietly fade away. Personally, my money is on fading away slowly, but I guess we'll see.

The question here is if YouTube TV is still worth it at $82 a month? My answer, nope. Okay for me, it wasn't worth it at $50, but I'm not really a live-TV watcher. But certainly at $82 a month, that is a tough pill to swallow. But maybe you are a live-TV devotee. Maybe you still watch a lot of that and maybe the awesome DVR at YouTube TV is enough to keep it going in your mind. If so, let us know!