Hey everybody, Craig here talking about YouTube TV this week.
I hope you're excited, I am, because recently we gave YouTube TV a pretty great review.
We especially like their DVR service, but we were surprised, because recently our friends
over at CableTV.com did a survey with hundreds of different streaming TV subscribers, and
the numbers they came up with were actually pretty interesting, because YouTube TV didn't
score the way that I would've expected them to, with what I think is a pretty great service.
It's not that their scores were bad, but their general satisfaction score had them lagging
behind a lot of their major competitors, which again, I was pretty surprised by.
So we thought now would be a great time to dig back into YouTube TV, see what sort of
changes have been made, what the state of YouTube TV is, whether they're growing, whether
they're making money, and why you might actually care about that.
But ultimately, the question we're going to get to is whether YouTube TV is the right
service if you're new to streaming TV, if this is the one you should sign up for, or
if you're already signed up for another streaming service, if YouTube TV is worth switching
over.
Anyway, we're going to dive into that in just a second, but first, make sure you subscribe,
hit that subscribe button below, because we are here every Wednesday and every Friday
with a new video exploring these topics of whether the latest and greatest thing is right
for you.
So I hope you'll join us, thanks for being here this week.
Let's get started.
Alright, now let's start with the history of YouTube TV, which isn't all that long.
They only started a year and a half, two years ago.
Let's go over here and take a look.
YouTube TV at the start of 2018, they were sitting about 300,000 subscribers, compared
to the rest of the market, it really wasn't all that much.
Now, six months later there was a huge jump; up to 800,000 subscribers in the middle of
2018, again, most of the market is still growing also at this point, so maybe that isn't so
impressive, and most of that growth comes from expanding to new markets.
There is a lot of expansion in the beginning of 2018.
But now, we get to the beginning of 2019, and we've flat lined a little bit for YouTube
TV.
We don't have hard number, because Google doesn't give those to us, but now we're looking
at between 800,000 and a million.
Let's just say it's a million for simplicity's sake.
There isn't a lot of growth, compared to what they were seeing in 2017 and the early part
of 2018, and the question is, why?
As the rest of the streaming TV market is growing almost exponentially, YouTube TV is,
if they're growing at all, not going as fast as I'm sure they would like to, and why is
that?
Well, I don't know all the reasons, I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but there
is at least one thing that I can point to, and it's the naming convention.
It makes a lot of sense if you have a property like YouTube, everybody knows what YouTube
is, you just capitalize on that name, right?
But, what's the difference between YouTube, and YouTube Premium, and YouTube TV?
I mean, I know because I'm paid to know, and you might know because you're a wonderful
savvy person, but do you think the average person who's shopping around is going to understand
what the difference is between YouTube and YouTube TV?
I'll bet most people around this office don't even know.
Adam, what's the difference between YouTube Premium and YouTube TV?
Um.
Wow.
That's hard to answer because I have no idea.
They all seem the same, and it looks like you get the same kind of content from every
single one, and even if you subscribe you don't get any kind of content that seems really
special.
I've never heard of YouTube Premium, I have no idea what the difference is.
YouTube TV is live TV, YouTube Premium is premium YouTube content that's not live.
He got it.
Well, at least one person got it, right?
I guess that's something.
But you can see how confusing it might be.
YouTube is, well, what you're watching this on right now.
YouTube Premium is the premium version of that, but YouTube TV, that's just live TV,
it barely has anything to do with these two other than the name.
I actually really like Sling TV's naming convention there, because whatever you might think of
the service itself, I love that although it's owned by Dish, they went with a completely
different name so that they're not saddled with any of the old baggage tied to their
brand.
You can't say the same for Direct TV now, of course, and now YouTube TV, Hulu with live
TV, these are all integrated with older brands.
But even more interesting than that I think, is the reports that YouTube TV is actually
losing quite a bit of money.
Now, here's what we're looking at; a customer signing up for YouTube TV right now is paying
$40 a month.
YouTube TV, to get all those channels that you're watching, they are paying $45 to all
of those channels to get that content for you.
Now, if you're really good at math like me, you'll understand that 40 minus 45 means that
YouTube TV is losing $5 of profit every month for every customer.
Now, $5 might not seem like that much, but obviously you times that by, say a million
YouTube TV subscribers, and again, if you're really great at math, $5 million that YouTube
TV is losing every month for those subscribers.
Now, you may be saying to yourself, "Hey, it's Google, who cares?
They can take that loss."
And you're probably right, for a while they can do that, it's Google.
But, do you really think they got rich by holding onto entities that are losing that
much money on a monthly basis?
No, of course not.
So that's not going to be the case here either.
Now, why does this matter for you?
Well, in a word it matters because of stability.
Again, not for Google.
Google's going to be just fine, but stability for you, because what is coming up in the
future?
That's the big question here.
There are a few options that Google's going to have to get this number to zero or above.
They can run commercials, they're own commercials on top of the commercials you're already watching
on live TV.
They could raise prices, a lot of services do this.
Sling TV recently, I think in late 2018, they raised their base package from 20 to 25 bucks
a month, so you could see that.
You could lose some channels, if they decide that nobody's watching ... you know what?
I'm not going to name a channel, because maybe it's your favorite.
But if not enough people are watching certain channels, they could drop those and maybe
lower what they're paying to bring the service to you.
But honestly, this is Google, so maybe the most likely option is this one.
They are selling your metadata.
As you're using YouTube TV, Google will be selling that data to whoever wants to market
to you using that.
If that doesn't bother you, great.
If it does, I'll bet that they're going to be doing that.
Alright, now that all the academic stuff is out of the way, now we can get to whether
we recommend YouTube TV for you, whether it's going to be worth it for you, and there are
two questions that we want to ask.
The first one is super basic, and that is what device are you going to be using to watch
it?
Because, frankly, if it's an Amazon Fire device, or if it's a PlayStation, then forget about
it.
Neither of these devices work, these companies don't play well together, and so you can't
download the YouTube TV app on those devices.
Now, if you know that you're going to be able to download the app, now we get to the question
of whether you should, and I would say if you are already streaming TV with another
service provider, maybe it's Sling TV, maybe it's Direct TV Now, maybe it's Hulu.
If you already have one of those, then I think YouTube TV is probably not going to pull you
over, except in maybe a couple of really specific circumstances, and I'll get to that in just
a moment.
But for the most part YouTube TV is going to have the same kind of content that the
other guys do, and the same kind of experience, roughly speaking.
So you're still going to be able to watch ESPN, you're going to be able to watch AMC,
or wherever your favorite shows and events are.
Like I said, this is not going to be much different.
There is the caveat of NBA TV, where YouTube TV is the only service that is going to carry
that, and so if you're a huge basketball fan and that's a deal breaker for you, then hop
over to YouTube TV.
Otherwise, if you're on a different service, like Philo or PlayStation View, those are
fine in and of themselves, but I do think that per dollar YouTube TV is going to have
the better value.
So I might switch over from those.
Now, the other question is whether you are not signed up for any service at all.
If you're looking for the first thing to dive into streaming TV with, I think YouTube TV
is a great choice.
Like I said, it's not much different from these other guys, and so it's not going to
have something that they don't, but it also doesn't lack anything that they have, and
in fact, I would argue that their DVR experience is the best on the market.
With YouTube TV's DVR you get unlimited storage, and nine months of that storage, and so you
can record a show and keep it for nine months with unlimited capacity.
That just blows everybody else's remote DVRs out of the water, and so YouTube TV is great
that way.
The only caveat there is, going back to our CableTV.com survey that they did, they found
that only 28% of all YouTube TV subscribers were even using their DVR.
So for a lot of people it doesn't even matter how good that DVR is, but if you are one of
those 28%, then yes, it's going to be an awesome experience.
Anyway, so the question is; do we recommend YouTube TV?
Yes, especially if you are new to streaming.
So that's out take on YouTube TV, but of course, we want to hear yours as well.
Whether you're a current subscriber, or somebody who is thinking about it and looking into
it, hit those comments below and let us know what you think.
Next week we're going to be talking about Sling TV, this will be an interesting one
because the question here is, what happened?
We loved Sling TV, but something seems to be slipping.
So we're going to be digging into that next week, make sure you join us.
Hit that subscribe button, and the bell icon next to it will notify you right when we post
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Give this video a like, if it was helpful to you.
Thanks for watching everybody, and we'll see you next week.