Roger Fingas
Hulu is closing in on 2 million live TV subscribers, while YouTube TV has topped 1 million, illustrating the odds Apple may face in launching its own streaming video service later in 2019.
Both Hulu and YouTube are adding "hundreds of thousands" of subscribers every quarter, Bloomberg said on Friday, citing multiple sources. The gains may be coming at the expense of rivals like Sling TV and DirecTV Now — the former is offering a 40 percent discount to new subscribers, while DirecTV Now saw its customers drop 14 percent in the last quarter following a price hike.
While Hulu's live TV package costs at least $44.99 per month, that includes over 60 channels and all of Hulu's on-demand content. YouTube TV offers a similar number of channels for $40, plus unlimited cloud recording.
Apple is expected to reveal its service at a March 25 press event, but launch sometime later, possibly this summer or fall.
Initially at least Apple's service is expected to target on-demand content, including a mix of original shows and movies and subscriptions to outside services. Netflix and Hulu are believed to be holdouts, yet other media giants like CBS, Viacom, and HBO are either onboard or in talks.
Apple's first wave of original video could be free to people that buy its devices. It's reportedly searching for "tentpole" shows that could sustain a paid plan, much in the same way that people will spend on HBO Now for access to "Game of Thrones." The company is even rumored to be ditching family-friendly content rules that blocked earlier projects.
William Gallagher
Malcolm Owen
Charles Martin
17 Comments
Ball is in Apples court. These companies seem confused.
BTW These numbers would be a disaster if they were Apples.
A plus with YouTube TV: far less value to Hulu since YouTubeTV will offer up past network shows which was Hulu's first specialty. So I've discontinued that one.
Just finished a binge-watch of The Gifted. A bit campy but no need to give it your full undivided attention so it's a fun show.
And then there's Netflix, 140M.... Geeshh!
I wouldn’t wish the Apple TV YouTube app experience on anyone. It’s so awful. Because it’s a repackaged console app, it ignores all the platform-specific UX, such as the universal swipe-down pull-down menu for subtitles and audio output devices. And its scrubbing UX is simply horrid compared to the platform’s.
These subscriber counts are just going to go up and up until the behemoths like Comcast figure out how to pull their heads out. We had a moderate package through Comcast and finally drop kicked them when our bill shot up to $260 for a mid-level TV package, 300mb Internet (with only 10mb uploads), and a home phone we weren't using (because Ooma's VoIP service is better). I tried and tried to get them to lower our bill, but the best they could do is drop $20 off for 12 months. We couldn't drop the home phone because our bill would actually go up $20, and our Internet speed would be cut in half. I even tried to turn in their cable modem to save the $10 rental fee, but that wouldn't fly either because our package required compatible equipment - meaning we *had* to have their voice-enabled bridge even though we weren't using their voice service. All this on top of countless issues of them screwing us over by sneaking in hidden charges and not honoring their contracts (and refusing to provide any written contracts so we could hold them to those contracted prices).
We ended up moving our Internet to the local telco (CenturyLink) who offers gigabit fiber (downstream *and* upstream) unmetered service (as opposed to Comcast's 1TB of data, a cap we were actually up against every month) for $75 (for life!). Ooma is about $10/month for their premium service. For IPTV we opted for DirecTV Now because it's the only service that streams all of our local channels. The other services have some local channels, but not all of them. Something not ever mentioned with comparing the IPTV services is the cost of add-ons. DTV has HBO and Cinemax for $5/month and Showtime for $8. The other services charge $15 each. So if movie channels are important to you, the cost savings (of nearly $30) adds up.
I admit that Hulu's offering is attractive, simply for the fact that we are paying separately for their add-free service.
The problem with these subscription services is that we're already suffering from subscription exhaustion. We're currently paying for DTV Now (with HBO, Showtime, and Starz), Hulu, Netflix (which we admittedly rarely use anymore), Amazon Prime (even though we've had it long before it came with anything beyond free shipping), AcornTV, Apple Music, di.fm, and probably a few others I'm forgetting about. I don't see adding any of the new services that are coming up because, at some point we'll be paying out the same amount of money we were paying Comcast and that's just too much.