YouTube TV is raising its price to $40/month starting Tuesday, plans to add more channels; current subscribers will keep $35/month pricing
Jordan Crook / TechCrunch :
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after [[a:916939|debuting at $35/month with broadcast networks, roughly 30 cable channels, and unlimited cloud DVR]], YouTube TV is taking its first price increase to $40 — but softening it by letting current subscribers keep the original rate. The channel expansion promised alongside the hike signals the cost pressure is coming from content, not infrastructure.
The move set a template the service would repeat: a jump to $50 for all customers in 2019, then $65 in 2020 explicitly blamed on rising content costs, with later increases pushing the base plan far higher. This first hike is where the grandfathering strategy appears — and where it starts its slide toward becoming meaningless.
First-order effects
- New subscribers pay $40/month starting Tuesday while existing ones are held at $35, so YouTube TV is segmenting its base rather than repricing it — trading immediate revenue on loyal users for churn protection.
- The planned channel additions mean YouTube TV is buying more content at the same moment it raises prices, putting the added programming on the hook for justifying the difference.
Second-order effects
- Competing live-TV streaming services face a pricing benchmark: once the cheapest full-bundle option moves up, rivals gain cover for their own increases or must differentiate on price alone.
- As streaming TV services fail to negotiate their way out of the cable-era bundle system, content owners gain leverage in every renewal — the same dynamic that pushed YouTube TV's later hikes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, grandfathered pricing becomes a marketing gesture rather than a shield: each subsequent increase erodes the legacy rate until the whole base converges on the new price.
- The structural endpoint visible in this arc is streaming live TV reassembling cable's economics — bundle-driven content costs flowing straight into subscriber prices, with 'cord-cutting savings' shrinking toward zero.
The trend: Live-TV streaming is on a one-way price ratchet, with each hike reframing the prior price as a bargain and pulling virtual MVPDs back toward cable-style economics.