YouTube TV announced several new features and bundled offerings this week, amid the backdrop of an overall virtual MVPD market that apparently has stopped growing.
For starters, the live streaming platform is bundling HBO Max, Showtime and Starz for $29.99 a month, a discount of about $5 off the combined price of purchasing these premium OTT programming services individually.
Earlier this week, Google’s top YouTube product manager, Neal Mohan, published a blog post in which he said that YouTube TV will “introduce a new add-on package with 4K streaming, offline viewing, and unlimited concurrent streams at home.”
YouTube PR has not elaborated on Mohan’s comments. But observers have noted that he also mentioned YouTube TV’s subscriber count, placing it at 3 million—flat with what Google announced back in late October.
Notably, the other market leader in the vMVPD business, Hulu, lost around 100,000 Hulu Plus Live TV users in the fourth quarter. Dish Network, which operates the third biggest virtual pay TV service, Sling TV, reports fourth-quarter earnings Monday.
YouTube TV’s last price hike came in June of last year, and it was a major one—fresh of signing its first carriage deal with ViacomCBS, the vMVPD raised prices from $50 a month to $65.
YouTube TV boasts one tier with more than 85 channels.
