YouTube TV jumps 30% in price effective immediately

Enlarge / An odd coincidence: YouTube TV and AT&T rolled out price hikes on the same day.

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Chances are, if you pay for a streaming alternative to live cable TV in the United States, your bills are about to go up, thanks to a glut of Tuesday announcements.

First up is YouTube TV, which announced a 30 percent price hike, its largest since rolling out as a product in 2017, effective immediately for all customers. The news came at the end of a lengthy announcement of various new channels, which users cannot opt out of, all coming from the CBS/Viacom family of cable TV networks.

Brand-new customers can expect to pay $65/mo for the service from here on out, while existing customers will see the price jump from $50 to $65 on their July bill. Shortly after mentioning the new price point, YouTube TV VP Christian Oestlien directed users to this landing page to pause or cancel their service if they want to.

If this whole story sounds familiar, you’re not imagining things. In April 2019, Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin wrote an article titled “YouTube TV adds channels and raises price—you can’t opt out of either change.” That move saw the service raise its monthly price from $40 to $50 (25 percent) while adding nine channels. Today’s $15 jump adds the following eight networks: BET, CMT, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, TV Land, and VH1.