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Hey, it's Michael here, and first up today
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will streaming TV look more like cable in 2023? Live TV streaming services
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you know, like YouTube TV and Hulu Live, they're already a whole lot like cable
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I refer to them as cable 2.0 on this channel. Their bundles are made up, well
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primarily of traditional cable networks. But for the most part, live TV streaming services don't have contracts
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or hidden fees. YouTube TV highlights that right on its website. A major exception is FuboTV
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which as you may know, charges regional sports fees in select cities
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Question is, will other services start to add hidden fees like this one
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Now, for the record, I'm against them, but services do add these fees because it allows them to advertise
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a lower base plan price. So you may think the service is 70 bucks
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but when you get your bill, it's 80 or more. I wanna know what you think in the comments, but I think we're getting to a point
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where these premium live TV services, they just can't keep raising prices year after year
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if they wanna keep growing their subscriber counts. And why do I say that
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Well here just one example I reviewed Variety list of the most watched networks for 2022 and only five of the top 50 networks increased in the ratings ESPN Paramount Grit ESPN2
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and Oxygen. That means the other 45 out of the top 50 networks were either down or flat in the
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ratings. By now you probably know these premium live TV services continue to exist for three main
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reasons. Live sports, cable news, and local stations. Number two, more sports shifting to
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streaming. We already got Thursday Night Football on Prime Video and Friday Night Baseball on Apple
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TV+. Now YouTube TV and YouTube are getting NFL Sunday Ticket. This is a premium offering
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so I'm going to be watching to see how much it costs through YouTube TV as well as the price
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through YouTube primetime channels. Expect an announcement ahead of football season. Number
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three, more ads? Nearly all of the paid on-demand services have launched ad-supported plans. I know
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some of you don't like them, but these are in addition to the ad-free plans. So Netflix right
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here that is one of the latest And in the case of Netflix the ad load is pretty light four to five minutes of ads per hour But I curious to see how quickly that changes and not just with Netflix with other services too
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These ad-supported plans have turned out to be very good for business. So will they eventually just increase the number of ads
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Number four, password crackdowns. In previous videos, I've told you about Netflix's plan
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to limit password sharing, and that's expected to happen in early 2023
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Depending on how subscribers react to these changes, I could see more services cracking down just to make sure that multiple households are not sharing the same account
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We're up to number five and let's talk about the launch of the combined HBO Max and Discovery Plus service
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CNBC reports it's going to launch in the spring and it's likely to be called just Max
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And since the merger Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav, he's been making an argument that these two very different services somehow belong together
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Meanwhile, other company executives have suggested, well, they flat out said, they want people to pay more for the combined service
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I got my doubts We going to see what happens Free ad streaming services also made my list and that comes in at number six There more to say about Warner Brothers Discovery here Variety reporting that some content pulled off HBO Max is going to end up on free ad
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services. And Warner Brothers Discovery also plans to launch its own free service. My favorites in
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the free ad-supported streaming category are Pluto TV, Tubi, Freebie, and the Roku channel
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all worth checking out. Number seven, will consumers cut back on streaming? I often recommend
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that people stick to two or maybe three paid services per month to control their cost. But
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many households, they've got double that number. I just put up a poll on my YouTube community tab
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to ask how much you spend on streaming services per month. But in a recession, I think people are
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likely to cut back on subscriptions, streaming or otherwise. And the decisions people make about
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the services to keep or cancel, that could have a huge impact on determining the streaming services
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that survive for the long term. I want to know what other big streaming changes should I be
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following for 2023? Let me know down below in the comments. And thank you for watching. Michael Saves
