Those ten million dummies who subscribe to YouTube TV are still paying $83 a month for the service, but no longer have access to ABC, ESPN, or any Disney Grooming Syndicate channels.
YouTube TV is nothing more or less than cable TV posing as streaming. This means you pay an insane amount ($83 is what the basic package costs) of money for a hundred channels you never watch. This means you fund hate outlets like Disney, CNN, and MSNBC directly through your monthly bill.
Why?
Why would anyone pay this anymore?
I get that older folks are a little dismayed and intimidated by streaming. I’m sympathetic to that. But I doubt very much that those subscribing to YouTube TV are of Boomer age. No, these are young dummies forking out a thousand dollars a year for TV when there is enough free TV out there to keep you entertained until the end of time.
Why pay for all these channels when you only watch, what—five?
Idiots.
Anyway, because YouTube TV is just another version of cable TV that means there are carriage fees—the fees multinational entertainment outlets charge your TV provider to carry their networks. Those fees are then passed on to you—the moron. In this case, Disney, which owns ABC, the Disney channels, and ESPN, wants to charge YouTube TV so much to carry its networks. YouTube TV is saying the carriage fees are too high.
Both sides have leverage. Disney wants access to those ten million subscribers. YouTube TV knows it will lose subscribers if it doesn’t provide ABC and ESPN.
Whatever happens in the end, those ten million subscribers will be the ones who get screwed, but that’s what they get for being idiots.
There is also this issue:
Multiple industry sources involved with those disputes and the current stand-off with Disney say YouTube TV has been trying to leverage its growth and status as a pure tech provider of pay-TV in each set of negotiations. In multiple instances, YouTube TV has sought rights to “ingest” programming from media companies’ streaming services into its main user interface. For media companies trying to nurture direct-to-consumer businesses at the same time they manage the decline of their traditional linear networks, it’s the definition of an existential threat.
YouTube is owned by Google, and Google is a $3 trillion company that has already “ingested” all the online advertising. Now Google wants to “ingest” everyone’s content.
What this means is that if, say, you’re stupid enough to subscribe to Disney+, rather than access a Disney+ show on the Disney+ app, YouTube wants you to have access to that show through the YouTube TV app.
Disney+ still gets your subscription fee, but you never leave the YouTube app, which means you lose your brand loyalty to Disney.
The only way to defeat a Hollywood that hates you and seeks your destruction is to stop paying for TV. There’s plenty free TV out there. PlutoTV, the Roku Channel, Tubi, and on and on. Not to mention all the networks you can pull in over the air with a digital antenna.
You’re a fool to pay for TV.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
