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YouTube Planning Live TV Service for 2017

YouTube will be offering a live streaming TV service sometime in 2017. Like Apple, AT&T, Hulu, and countless others, the service will hope to disrupt traditional television, but has been slow in coming due to broadcaster licensing. According to Bloomberg, YouTube has been in talks with Comcast/NBC Universal, CBS, Viacom and Twenty-First Century Fox -- but has yet to actually secure the necessary rights for such a service -- despite work on the project starting way back in 2012.

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Whenever it actually launches, the service will be dubbed "Unplugged" and will feature live broadcast networks packaged with traditional cable networks as part of a skinny bundle.

Like Apple and countless other companies however, YouTube has struggled to get broadcasters to sign off on deals that will allow them to offer the service at a truly disruptive price point. Apple, for example, has been toying with a similar idea for most of the last decade. YouTube is rumored to be looking at pricing the package somewhere around $35 per month.

Unplugged would arrive on the heels of YouTube's "Red" subscription service, which allows users to pay $10 per month for ad-free access to YouTube's original programming, much of which is specifically tailored toward Millennials bored by (or unwilling to pay for) traditional television.

Unplugged will join a crowded field in 2017 or whenever it finally launches. In addition to existing services like Sony's Vue and Dish's SlingTV, Apple, AT&T, Hulu and countless others will all be working to disrupt traditional television with similar services. And that doesn't include the countless broadcasters who have launched -- or will launch -- direct to consumer services of their own.


Most recommended from 9 comments



tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

6 recommendations

tshirt

Premium Member

So many plans...

...so few actual products.

If only it was as easy as sending out the announcements.