In shock and outrage for its subscribers, YouTube TV said that it is raising its price by a staggering amount and even dropping some of its crown jewel channels as a good-faith gesture to Paramount Global.
Price increase details
Up to 13th January 2025, YouTube TV raised the price by $10 from $72.99 to $82.99 per month. That is approximately $995.88 a year. That is what they have referred to, plus the cost of content and extra investment in quality. Strikingly enough, when YouTube TV initially opened shop some years ago in 2017, you could subscribe to it for a monthly rate of $35 a month, that cash years ago.
Struggle with Paramount Global
In addition to that, YouTube TV will cut over 20 channels in the carriage struggle with Paramount Global. The new carriage agreement, whose previous term expired on February 13, 2025, has actually been renewed on a “short-term” basis so there won’t be a blackout at least for now. Temporary residence does not provide one with information on the day one leaves and the viewers are not provided with any information about the networks listed above such as CBS, BET, Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
In a post to the subscribers, YouTube TV referenced the potential effect: “If that happens, this will impact Library recordings of these channels, Entertainment Plus add-on programming on Paramount, and add-on items like Paramount+ with SHOWTIME and BET+“
The company continued to say, “If Paramount programming isn’t accessible, we’ll continue to update our Help Center with the most up-to-date.”.
They complain about the loss and gain of their favorite streams. Some of them did write on the social media platforms that they would switch. “@YouTubeTV loss of Paramount I’m most likely gone. What a joke,” growled one of them. “They’d better shape up or FUBO TV here I come,” wrote another realistic comment. Another requested, “Trying to figure out why I keep it anymore in the first place.”
Company response and options
Company response to the threat of disruption was to provide the subscribers with a discount of $8 from the subscription price in the event that the content goes offline for a prolonged period. The company also provided the subscribers with an option to subscribe to the level one tier of Paramount Plus membership at $7.99 a month as a means of gaining access to the unavailable content. YouTube TV again expressed that it would like to resolve the issue, and further added, “We hope that we’d like to continue to carry Paramount programming on YouTube TV, but if we cannot reach an agreement and their programming is not made available to us for a protracted period of time, we’ll offer our YouTube members an $8 credit.”
Aside from that, YouTube TV also realized that they themselves do have some followers who would not be happy to be included in the value war escalation. The company assured their followers that they are doing all they can such that they may be able to keep the channels without any additional expense to their followers.
Broader industry context
This follows previous price hikes on streaming. Netflix, Paramount Plus, for instance, hiked prices last October 2023 by increasing its most basic ad-supported plan to $7.99 from $6.99, its ad-free plan to $17.99 from $15.49, and its ad-free premium plan to $24.99 from $22.99. Paramount Plus hiked prices last June 2024 too but to consumer pushback and cancellation threats.
Overall pattern across all of the sites is that there is an open competitive market in which providers are competing on content availability and cost of provision to subscriber retention and satisfaction.
