YouTube TV said it now has 5 million subscribers, making it the biggest of the virtual multichannel video programming distributors.
“When we launched YouTube TV five years ago, we wanted to make watching TV even more enjoyable — featuring a modern product experience without all the commitments, equipment fees and hassle,” said Christian Oestlien, VP of product management for YouTube TV and Connected TV at Google, in a blog post Tuesday. “Today, we’re humbled that five million of you are currently on this journey with us.”
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Wall Street research company MoffettNathanson estimated that vMVPDs have 14.93 million subscribers altogether at the end of the first quarter. As a group, they lost 201,000 subscribers in the quarter, but were up 16.7% from a year ago.
Disney reported that its Hulu Plus Live TV vMVPD had 4.1 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter, down from 4.3 million in Q4, but up from 3.8 million a year ago. Dish said that its Sling TV had 2.25 million subscribers in Q1, down from 2.49 million in the fourth quarter and 2.37 million in Q1 2021.
In the blog post, Oestlien said that when YouTube TV started out, a group of engineers climbed onto the roof of YouTube headquarters while holding an antenna in order to build a prototype. Based on this experience, the company almost settled on calling YouTube TV you “YouTube Air.” The project codename was “Unplugged,” as in watching TV without a cable box.
She said the most DVRed shows on YouTube TV currently were Yellowstone, Saturday Night Live, This is US, 60 Minutes and Grey’s Anatomy. ■
