My Thoughts on YouTube TV

A cord-cutting option sports fans can get behind.

Originally published on March 7, 2017

On February 28, YouTube announced YouTube TV. For just $35, a fraction of what cable costs, customers would have access to over 40 channels and all YouTube Red Originals on 3 screens, including tablets, phones, and anything with a Chromecast. You can create your own profiles and preferences, as well as pause, skip ads, and automatically record episodes. This is a big step forward for Google, as well as how we consume content. Cable is becoming too burdensome for many, and people are “cutting the cord” and dropping their subscriptions. People of my generation are not even subscribing to cable, and sticking to streaming services because it costs so much less. However, with that, there is no way to watch live TV…until now.

To me, this is nothing short of revolutionary. Ever since Netflix and other streaming services started to bring about the slow decline of clunky, extremely expensive, barely-used cable packages, I have been waiting for something like this to be created. What I didn’t know before I found out about YouTube TV is there is competition already, through services like PlayStation Vue, and competition is in the works, like Hulu. This competition should keep prices relatively low, which is one of the problems in the monopoly that is the cable industry. Each service has its own particular features that could motivate someone to choose one over the other. I would be partial to YouTube TV just because I am the most loyal to it, but also the added perks like YouTube Red content without actually paying for it separately.

Why am I finding this so revolutionary? It’s not for people like me, but for people who watch sports. One of the biggest things holding people back from cutting the cord is the absence of sports on streaming services. Most serialized shows you can binge or watch the next day through various websites and services, but sports are very much live and don’t adhere to the streaming platform. This fixes that. True, you may not have 10 baseball channels or whatever the bonuses cable packages include (with thousands of channels to choose from, there is an abundance of niche channels that only a few people actually watch), but you have your basic ESPN. As a person on the outside, I think that would be enough. It is true that there are less channels than would be available in your average cable package, but hopefully as this catches on more channels will add on.

I like this idea so much. I asked my parents if we would switch to something like this anytime soon. They were interested (probably not as much as me), and if not for the fact that our cable and internet are the same package there is a possibility they might switch. I for one could do without cable and would consider something like this when I am independently providing my own entertainment. For now, I’ll be watching excitedly to see what comes next from these cable alternatives.