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AT&T Television Entertainment

AT&T Raises DirecTV Prices Again Amid Customer Losses and Possible Sale (arstechnica.com) 74

Posted by BeauHD from the going-going-gone dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T has announced another round of price hikes for DirecTV satellite and U-verse TV services, with monthly prices set to rise up to $9 starting January 17, 2021. "Due to increased programming costs, we're adjusting the price of our video packages," AT&T said in a notice on its website. "Periodically, TV network owners increase the fees they charge DirecTV for the right to broadcast their movies, shows, and sporting events." Of course, AT&T itself determines some of these programming prices because it owns Time Warner.

A $5 monthly increase is coming to DirecTV's 160-channel "Entertainment" package, which currently has a standard rate of $97 a month. A $7 monthly increase is coming to the 185-channel Choice package, currently at $115 a month. A $9 increase is coming to both the 250-channel Ultimate package (currently $142) and the 330-channel Premier package (currently $197). New customers can get those packages for $64.99 to $134.99 under promotional pricing that expires after 12 months. "If you currently have a DirecTV TV promotion, you'll keep that discount until it expires," AT&T said. "Once your promo period ends, you'll pay the new price for your package."

There are also $1 and $3 increases for DirecTV's Basic and Preferred Choice packages for international customers, $6 increases for certain Spanish-language packages, and $8 increases for "Xtra" packages. Only the Minimum service, Family, and ChineseDirect Plus plans are not getting increases. AT&T is raising U-verse TV prices by $5 to $9 a month depending on the package, while keeping the price of the most basic U-verse package the same. U-verse provides TV over AT&T's wired network. As with DirecTV, customers on U-verse promotional pricing won't see the increase until the promotional period ends. DirecTV is also adding a "Federal Cost Recovery Fee of $0.19 per month," similar to a fee that used to be charged once per year. Despite the name, the fee is not mandated by the government. AT&T said the fee covers "expenses that DirecTV pays to the Federal Communications Commission." Ars Technica notes that AT&T did not include any increases for the Regional Sports Network and Broadcast TV fees. It's also decreasing the price of some premium channels. "That includes $3 decreases for Starz, Cinemax, and Showtime," the report says. "There are also decreases of up to $3 for certain add-on bundles that include sports channels. But even with premium channels, there are some price increases, including a $2.96 boost to an add-on bundle that includes HBO Max, Starz, Showtime, Cinemax, and a sports-channel pack."

The full list of price changes can be found here.
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AT&T Raises DirecTV Prices Again Amid Customer Losses and Possible Sale More

AT&T Raises DirecTV Prices Again Amid Customer Losses and Possible Sale

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  • You know what makes me really admire a company? Well, it is not the exploitation of the elderly. The only remaining customer base for this service are people who are not mentally able to deal with big changes to how they consume content.

    • Or people without broadband . . .

      I have family that either have no access to broadband or their "broadband" is pitifully slow (like 3 Mbps or less) so even if they stream they get lots of buffering and such.

      For those people satellite service still works rather well.

  • Who are these people? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Who is paying $130+ a month for this shit? You have to be insane.

    • Who is paying $130+ a month for this shit? You have to be insane.

      Or old, and not know any better. My mother is one such. I have tried for years to convince her that she doesn't need cable, she just needs an internet connection.

      • Market survey, suggests customer churn to be unaffected by a price increase. Those leaving unwilling to pay current fees, those gullible enough to stay, well should be intuitive enough. Bides some time to update resume, hopefully ride out the COVID recession with vaccines on way and herd immunity growing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Or people stuck without high-speed internet and no real options for TV other than sat. And even with internet, don't think over-the-top CATV services are going to stay cheaper forever. As they gain customers the networks are hiking up their carriage fees. We are seeing that already with Hulu, YTTV, DTV Now, etc. Anyone who insists on linear TV is going to be paying one way or another and it's just going to keep going up.
        • When I lived outside of high speed internet area I tried dish for a while. The main thing that caused me to cancel it was that I just couldn't deal with paying that much money for the service and then still have to watch loads of commercials during the shows on top. If that kind of money got you the content without commercials, it might be a reasonable value proposition. But having them "double dip" on me just made me feel like I was getting ripped off. Now I just have better things to do. Its been ove

          • When I lived outside of high speed internet area I tried dish for a while. The main thing that caused me to cancel it was that I just couldn't deal with paying that much money for the service and then still have to watch loads of commercials during the shows on top. If that kind of money got you the content without commercials, it might be a reasonable value proposition. But having them "double dip" on me just made me feel like I was getting ripped off. Now I just have better things to do. Its been over a year since I even watched live TV other than casually while sitting in a pub.

            I absolutely agree. There's so much to do, and we waste so much of our lives sitting in front of the boob tube.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            Yea after ditching linear TV and going all streaming, I can't stand trying to watch live TV anymore. I couldn't go back. But before that, it was normal. You just didn't realize how bad it was because that's all you were used to. I imagine people still using DTV and cable in general are still in that boat.

            They could go ad-free, but they would need to basically double their carriage fees to do it and keep the same revenue. Right now it's about 50/50 carriage fees/ad revenue for most networks. Small cable n

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Sports fans I guess. Sport seems to be the last real hook for cable TV services.

      Sport also seems to be making the same mistake as the RIAA did back in the Napster days. Scared of the internet, worried about password sharing and bars not paying commercial rates.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jvanber ( 170198 )

        Yup, that's me! Still on DirecTV specifically for sports. It's amazing to me how little I actually watch of DirecTV, mainly just news and sports; that's it. The rest of their programming is all garbage and obsolete. I used to enjoy documentaries and such on Discovery, History, and NatGeo back in the day, and now it even seems that all those channels are just reality show reruns about rednecks trying to live in the wild, people trying to build houses in the mountains, or people catching different kinds o

    • Fewer and fewer people which is why the price keeps going up it seems leading to ... well, you don't need to be a business genuis to see where this is going.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tflf ( 4410717 )

      Who is paying $130+ a month for this shit? You have to be insane.

      It's still a large pool that includes the lazy, the poor, the technologically challenged, hard-wired conservatives (resistance to change is a big part of that mind-set), the gullible, the confused, and those who do not have access to options.

      BTW: Live streaming is not an option everywhere, thanks to poor internet service, and/or no competition. When you have one choice for internet service, and it's a cable company, odds are good prices are higher, and caps and other strategies are put in place to try to re

    • Who is paying $130+ a month for this shit? You have to be insane.

      Well, insane is perhaps a rather harsh term, so let me use a far more accurate one.

      Addicts. That's who.

    • Businesses. We have close to 30 boxes in our office. With cable each box shares the same bandwidth and can max out quickly. Satellite throws the entire ball of wax at you and the box pulls out the channel you want to see. That scales where cable cannot.

      • As someone who used to work in this industry, I can confirm businesses. I'm not sure how "scaling" factors into it, because the businesses I serviced all multiplexed it back into NTSC over coax or IPTV over ethernet downstream of the satellite receivers anyway. But a lot of these businesses are in remote areas that might not have a cable run, or satellite seemed like the best option 20-30 years ago when they set it all up. Organizational inertia is a real thing, and a bigger thing than it is at a residence.

    • Sat is great for remote locations like farmers/ranchers or people that have summer cabins on lakes that may not have high speed internet or even cable, hell you can even mount a sat on a Camper/RV/Ice house Now obviously these are not the majority of people but sat does have its benefits that you can usually go just about anywhere , places with out internet or cable and still get tv
    • Just goes to show you there are lots of people with more money than good taste...
    • People like me pay for it, because we have no other option. My Internet connection is too slow and too capped for video streaming, or even downloading. Four hours of 4K video would consume my monthly data allowance.

  • Arg this makes me so mad. My mom (in her eighties) is paying over $200 per month for TV, because of her perception that this is how much cable TV costs. I absolutely can not convince her otherwise. UVerse gives her 24 Mbit internet, some kind of cable TV service, and DirecTV gives her some other channels. Of hundreds of choices, she maybe watches five channels. But they're scattered over different services and different tiers, so the only way to get them all is to get a package deal that includes prett

    • In the UK, I pay 5.99 pound a month for Netflix. I could pay more for high resolution (but my wife says she can't see the difference), or for watching on four devices at the same time, but there's no need for that.

      Don't know what's the cheapest way to get it on your TV; an old refurbished AppleTV will do, but there are probably cheaper ways. And I have a Humax FreeView recorder with about 100 free channels that records a few hundred hours of TV.

      $130 a month just seems bizarre. When I first read it I t

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sphealey ( 2855 )

      That isn't entirely AT&T's fault though. ESPN and HBO forced the "capitation" contract model on the industry in the early days and it is now very difficult for the general-purpose delivery providers to break out of that model. Not that AT&T is fighting very hard on behalf of the consumer to be sure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      If I wanted to watch TV in the evening, something like DirectTV would be about my only choice. Not everyone has a good internet connection or live close enough to a broadcaster to receive a good enough signal to watch over the air TV.

      • If I wanted to watch TV in the evening, something like DirectTV would be about my only choice. Not everyone has a good internet connection or live close enough to a broadcaster to receive a good enough signal to watch over the air TV.

        There are always going to be edge cases. But there's no excuse if you're in a major metropolitan area. Unless you're in some urban area with poor infrastructure that they're still offering 1.2 Mbps DSL and calling it "broadband". Which, I submit, is a different edge case.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          Yea, I'm not that far out from major metropolitan area, but it is mountainous and thinly populated. My basic choice for internet (no cable or fibre) is an LTE connection, last night when I posted, I checked, about 1 Mbps, this morning, about 20 Mbps. There are a lot more rural areas as you move away from the big city. This is Canada, not much different then America.

          • Ok fair enough. In the area in which I live, you have to move a little away from the city to get faster internet. Down town, dead center, they're still using, no kidding, 100 year old phone lines, and the DSL speed is severely limited. There has been multiple attempts to plumb out new infrastructure, but they always give up when they realize the cost. The last attempt was to provide fast wifi citywide, and that petered out also. It's apparently too big a problem to solve.

            But move 10 miles outside the c

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              Which goes to show the variety in cities. I assume yours is an older city, at least by N. American standards. Here, due to the shortage of local TV stations, most everywhere had cable 50+ years back, which made internet easier to put out. The infrastructure here is mostly poles so replacing phone lines and stringing up fibre was easier, at least in town.
              Anyways, what works one place can be lots different somewhere else. And once you get truly rural, the distances just work against good infrastructure. Hopef

  • You can't make money with video as the last mile (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @12:08AM (#60745540)
    Provider. Its a simple fact that the profit for video is in the production of the content not its delivery. By the time those that deliver have paid for all of that content there is very little profit left. Cable companies can provide internet service. This is the only way they make a profit. In the old days the government would step in with regulations but companies bribe or lobby the politicians and convince the foolish consumers that regulations are bad. Its true they are bad for lazy business models who don't have to provide decent customer service. Too bad there is always some idiot willing to defend their right to be shitty.

  • Who cares about customers if the revenue stream doesn't go down?
    Running a business is really simple.

  • Reason #13 why I don't have cable anymore (Score:3)

    by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @12:36AM (#60745598)

    #13: constant price increases, with no additional value

    Among my others:

    #23: having to endure the insult to my intelligence that is referred to by broadcasters as "commercials"
    #74: bullshit Geo-restrictions
    #5: being tied down to stupid show schedules (they all fight for the same viewer timeslot, instead of trying to let the viewer have a chance to view each show by each having a different timeslot)
    #2: fucking around with the show schedules, confusing viewers as to when or even if the show runs
    #3: cancelling good shows because of 'poor viewership', because of idiot execs doing #2

    and #1: the fact you even have to pay - I don't have to for radio, why the hell should I for TV? (ask and I shall explain further if you want to hear my reasoning).

    • #88 A 14 year old kid knocks on the door and says 'You don't need all that junk and costly subscription - Here let me install this magical box and pay me $11 per month, I will knock and collect (as bluetooth is easy to send status on). #89 Like newspapers, and buggy whips, your business model is under one way pressure - DOWN. Downloads prove the magical price point is $15 month, or those with no alternative internet isp. #89 Pay your child to bait the cable company call center with new subscriptions.It hu

    • and #1: the fact you even have to pay - I don't have to for radio, why the hell should I for TV? (ask and I shall explain further if you want to hear my reasoning).

      Well, at least you've clarified the #1 reason most taxpayers don't have a damn clue as to what they actually pay for.

      (If you really need further explanation, it would likely involve an eye-opening look at what you're being bilked out of at every level of government, which sadly would make a 21st Century cable bill look like a bargain.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sebby ( 238625 )
        HTF does TV subscription fees relate to government services??

        • HTF does TV subscription fees relate to government services??

          I believe you were the one who tried to claim your local radio stations are free of charge when comparing it to TV. That's hardly the case, taxpayer. I agree, we shouldn't have to pay for any of it, but we also shouldn't be subjected to commercials in cable TV either. There's a lot to be said for both the addiction that feeds the cable industry as well as the fracturing of content that now basically adds up to a cable bill or more.

          And that fracturing was painfully predictable as I argued with cord cutter

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sebby ( 238625 )

            Again, WTF was taxes or government services mentioned in my original post? Nowhere, because I never mentioned it, because only you did.

            But since you're obviously ignorant about what I exactly I meant, here's my reasoning (which you could've just asked for, like I suggested in my original post):

            Forgetting the pricey (and oxymoronic) 'pay TV' channels that lack commercials, you end up paying to watch commercials; why?!?

            The argument of "must pay for the distribution costs, which subscription fees don't cover

            • Again, WTF was taxes or government services mentioned in my original post? Nowhere, because I never mentioned it, because only you did.

              Here, let me try and clarify this once and for all. You tried to claim your radio services are free. They are not. You pay for those, taxpayer. That is where your "free" argument, falls apart, and the entire reason I even brought up taxes. Just because it's not a line-item expense on an invoice in your hands doesn't mean you're not still paying for it.

              That's it. Nothing further. Make accurate statements next time to found your arguments. And for the record, I completely agree with your arguments abou

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Sebby ( 238625 )

                Here, let me try and clarify this once and for all. You tried to claim your radio services are free. They are not. You pay for those, taxpayer.

                Explain to me, in great detail, exactly how, as a 'taxpayer', my "tax money" and a private radio station are related. Prove your argument.

                • Here, let me try and clarify this once and for all. You tried to claim your radio services are free. They are not. You pay for those, taxpayer.

                  Explain to me, in great detail, exactly how, as a 'taxpayer', my "tax money" and a private radio station are related. Prove your argument.

                  First off, this is the first time you've clarified private radio stations, so there's your "argument". Secondly, just because your radio can be tuned to ignore public radio channels doesn't mean your wallet can, and there quite a bit of taxpayer-supported public infrastructure that supports both public and private broadcasts. Lastly, most of your excuses to not pay for cable beyond cost are largely questionable, since most of them were eradicated over a decade ago with the invention of the DVR.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by Sebby ( 238625 )

                    First off, this is the first time you've clarified private radio stations, so there's your "argument".

                    I don't know if any "public funded" radio stations - if there's truly any (that aren't purely weather-type services, etc. something with actual programming) they're few and far between.

                    But, do go on... because you still haven't proven your own argument yet (even though you essentially shoved words down my throat, then demanded I justify them - I'd expect you to prove yours first).

                    Secondly, just because your radio can be tuned to ignore public radio channels doesn't mean your wallet can

                    WTF does that even mean? Think you've run out of straws to grasp at this point, troll (maybe your should have quit while you had

    • To be fair TV over the air is free and satellite radio does cost money in the US. You want a channel whose production costs exceed the cost to give away over the air for free? Well, you need to pay the money. All of the shows I watch are free from over the air channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS). I refuse to pay $100+ a month for the Golf Channel or the Ohio State Football Channel

  • Death spiral (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @12:53AM (#60745630)

    This is the end of the death spiral: when you raise prices to make sure the only people left are the hardcore subscribers that will never leave.

    That way the buyer knows that this is the minimum subscriber base that they have to work with.

  • Wow! no wonder people are fleeing in droves. I had directv in the early 2000's I forget the package I had, but I had pretty much every channel other than the premiums like HBO or the sports packages i think the package was something in the mid to high 30's with a $10 up charge for hd and then taxes. The bill totaled somewhere in the 60's per month. Had one of the HR20 boxes, the last one you could outright pay for and not have to pay a monthly lease fee on. I dropped them when I got a job at the local cable
  • It's hard enough watching commercial television once a week to catch up on Barnwood Builders. Why the heck does anyone pay for the privilege?
  • "Watch the Death Star Explode!"

  • We'd never go back to AT&T, but it's only going to get worse for cable TV. We plan on after our current contract deal runs out, dropping cable TV entirely and going just internet and streaming.... we barely watch cable TV any more.

  • First we are forced by "city monopoly" to use Frontier [was Verizon was GTE] with no fiber or system equipment upgrades, and I believe they are looking for a buyer
    Second by "city monopoly" to use Sputum [the crap you cough up a.k.a. Spectrum owned by Charter] currently $287/mth top tier channels, 100M internet + phone
    Third satellite does not do phone due to latency.

    Fourth last time I did the math going internet only [can't use Roku with out TV package] and the adding Hulu and some lower level for local

  • Knowing what business you are in (Score:3)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @08:57AM (#60746290)

    Southwestern Bell/the new AT&T apparently didn't pay attention to those corporate gurus trainings in the 1990s about knowing what business you are really in. The business AT&T was really in was installing, maintaining, and operating hundreds of millions of high-quality wires (and fiber optic cables) to specific locations and delivering high-quality reliable information signals down those wires for not-totally-unreasonable prices. Everything they have done to try to move away from that model has been a disaster, and they have now pretty much destroyed their own legacy infrastructure/seed corn and have nothing left.

  • We ditched Comcast some years back for DirecTV purely on costs when we got our first HD TV. We ditched the dish this summer once the latest contract was up for Hulu Live + Philo; same channels, half the cost. We kept AT&T's FTTH service, which also gets us HBO Max thrown in. The Deathstar has also dumped their data caps, attack of common sense. The potential reseller that had never had caps was only $5 difference. Google's new Chromecast dongle works great to feed it all to the screen (I did get the

  • Doubling down (Score:3)

    by tflf ( 4410717 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @09:29AM (#60746364)

    Monolithic corporations tend to be very resistent to change, and, are hard-wired to double-down on the core business practices that generated the most income. For cable companies, gouging customers has been the road to financial success for decades.
    It's far easier to keep on doing the same old and tired business practices than to try to innovate and change with the times.

  • The beatings will continue until morale improves.

  • We rented a cabin in the woods to get away for a week. It came with Xfinity. We don't have cable at home, so I played around with it for a few hours. The interface was garbage - there were a thousand channels and it took forever to cycle through them in the channel guide. I scrolled through channels for half an hour looking for something interesting to watch. I settled on watching Columbo on MeTV, which I get at home OTA for free. I will say it was cool that when I clicked on the episode in the program guid

    • streaming is also going to become interesting for the folks that elect for the cheaper ad riddled content? My wife and I tried watching something off the NBC app the other day, and holy hell---having to sit through like 8 different commercials before it would play the content (every "commercial break" was the same)...compared it to some of the other services that keep it to around 30-45 seconds total?

      Either way I basically checked out after the initial onslaught-grabbed the laptop and did something else
    • Cable boxes seemed to stop making any technological progress at a certain point. There's really no excuse for the lag in the UI.

    • I heard a rumor that TV stations tend to show commercials at the same time to stop people from changing away from a show when it breaks for commercial.

  • Federal Cost Recovery Fee of $0.19 per month," similar to a fee that used to be charged once per year. Despite the name, the fee is not mandated by the government.

    Ummm, no.

    If the government is forcing AT&T to pay the fee, it's fine to pass it along to you, dear voter, who are ultimately responsible for the wisdom of that fee.

    Like sales taxes, customarily collected and sent in by the seller, and paid by the buyer, it's really on the transaction, and the government doesn't care who actually coughs up silver.

  • This is some hilariously terrible business direction. I wonder why the shareholders haven't called shenanigans?

  • "The more you raise your prices, the more customers will slip through your fingers."

  • Old customer to AT&T "Hey you raised my rates you S&%&!"

    AT&T, "Sorry, that's not our problem."

    Customer to buyer "Hey my rates are highter for the same S^&*^& service!"

    Ne Company, "Yeah, wasn't us though, that was AT&T, don't forget to pay your bill."

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