THB #79: TV Subscription Madness

Subscriptions. We’re all soaking in them.

I seemed to me that a little journey through the current state of streaming subs, from the consumer perspective, was in order. So I am going to offer up my current state of the subscription.

My vMVPD

Our TV base is YouTubeTV. $65 a month/$780 year. Started at $49/mo in 2020, raised to $65/mo in Sept 2021

We pay, via YouTubeTV for a pay-tv package of HBO/Showtime/Starz. $30 a month/$360 a year. A la carte, it’s $15 for HBO/HBO Max, $11 for Showtime, $9 for Starz.

The total package costs $1140 a year or $95 a month.

This configuration has changed a number of times in the last 2 years. YouTubeTV has offered various bundles. In December and January, they were offering all their pay-tv offerings, aside from HBO/HBO Max, for just $2 a month. So we loaded up. And when it ended… back to our trio of HBO/Showtime/Star.

(As an AT&T unlimited phone subscriber, I get HBO Max free. But it doesn’t show up amongst our YouTubeTV channels, so we pay for it as wel…