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Cable TV Coming To YouTube With Bundle Packages

By Nick Younker
Published on: 07:14 PST, May 10, 2016

Cable TV over the internet is about to get bigger with some serious new competition from streaming video giant, YouTube. With the new streaming media revolution that has been taking place over the last few years, the news of this move for YouTube has come on the heels of several other media streaming giants making similar announcements.

One thing that’s for sure is that most Americans have paid excessive fees to cable TV companies over the years and have been quite annoyed with ever increasing prices that have plagued the business, especially as of recently. There has also been a mass hiatus from the market over the past year. Several million Americans have opted to “cut the cord,” the cable TV cord that is.

With the onslaught of the internet and the many different avenues of consumption it has to offer, people have left their traditional cable TV packages behind and taken to internet streaming or broadcast antennas to watch their favorite TV content. That includes streaming YouTube for their entertainment. So, YouTube is going to offer them something that they miss, according to Bloomberg.

But leaving cable TV has also come with a price for many viewers who love shows like The Walking Dead or American Horror Story. Many of those fans have opted to watch those shows on streaming video buffets like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, but they have to stay off many social media sites for months at a time to make sure that no spoilers come up from other people that still watch the shows with their cable TV.

The mass departure for many cable TV subscribers was not due to the quality of the content, but rather because the prices of their cable TV packages were not affordable. Most cable TV and satellite providers force their customers to buy exorbitant packages that feature 100 or more TV channels, most of which they never use. Cable TV companies then charge those customers for all of the channels, no matter what they watched or how much.

There have also been many markets where there is a monopoly on cable TV services, most of which are from giants Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and now, Charter.

Now that millions of Americans have ditched their standard cable TV services, they are looking for skinny packages that can be offered to them over the internet. There is also no better known streaming giant than that of YouTube, so it just makes sense that consumers all across the country would flock to the website to watch their cable TV shows. There is also the heavily reduced price they will be paying, which is for networks that they actually watch and not those that they do not like to watch.

But YouTube is not the only major video streaming network on the web that is breaking in to the cyber cable TV market. Hulu, which is best known for its streaming TV show buffet, has been making waves lately about getting into the skinny cable TV business. There are also the plans that have been made by Apple TV to make their desktop streaming box a cable TV tuner as well. Then there is the service that is already on the web, Sling TV, already offering skinny cable TV bundles to consumers via an app.

There is also something else that is strange to note about Hulu entering the internet cable TV business. Although they would be competing directly with cable TV companies, one of those companies is Comcast, who owns a stake in Hulu.

YouTube has already developed its own infrastructure for the platform and is expected to launch cable TV services by 2017.

[Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]

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