AT&T TV is the DirecTV replacement no one asked for (The Daily Charge, 3/2/2020)

[MUSIC] Good morning and welcome to the DAILY CHARGE. It's Monday, March 2nd. I'm Roger Cheng. I'm David Katzmaire. ATT's replacement for cable or Direct TV known simply **** ATT TV goes nationwide today. I've got David here to break down the latest service from ATT. Before we get into it I just want keep in mind I want to break down the services that are actually available from at&t right now and I haven't listed and add any any of any that I missed but I've got universe cable DirecTV satellite 18 TV now, formula DirecTV now ATT Watch, HBO Now, HBO Go. Am I missing any? HBO Max. HBO Max, which hasn't launched yet. Right, yep. It launches in May. Yep. HBO Max, so that was seven? That's seven, those are the major ones. And then now we've got ATT TV, which Yes. Now it's available everywhere, hurray. So eight is enough. Hurray, eight is enough. [LAUGH] That's the magic number right there. I think they just wanted to hit hat number. It's a lucky number in Chinese culture, so maybe that's what they're going for. Beautiful, it's infinity on sideways. Exactly. So if you turn it, maybe they'll go to infinite now. Now, infinite AT&T. Well so let's let's break it down because there are a lot of these different options but what is AT&T? How does it set itself apart from all those other options? So it is very different from all these other options, all those other options well okay, so the direct. TV,which is the satellite service and there's universe which is basically cable right, those guys require a box and so does at&t TV. So I've got right here, this is the remote and the box itself, this little box, which you must have if you're an at&t TV driver. Use essentially this plugs in your TV. It's a it's a set top box. And to be clear, this doesn't operate like a satellite TV or a cable TV service where it's the cable. This is an internet. Yep. Streaming service. Right? So I have to question why you need a physical box when you've got Roku and Apple TVs You've got smart TVs that can take in streams. Why can't we just have that? Well when we asked a TNT that they said because it's a premium service so that I guess is code for cost a lot of money we'll get to that in a minute. Yes, But this you know it the box runs Android TV, which is found on Sony TV's and video shoots Feel devices like that. Definitely not as common or as inexpensive as Roku or Amazon Fire TV. So Android TV means Google. So Google handles everything on this remote. You press the button, you have Google assistance, you can talk and get Google Assistant recommendations. You can search for stuff, launch apps, do that sort of thing. With the remote control the voice systems on a lot of you know, cable devices, things like that aren't as evolved as Google. So there's kind of a pitch you know, you have the ability to use voice to interact with your TV. Okay, and so it was spring down price because it's, you know, a lot of these online services pitch themselves as cheaper. The price for this at least off the bad $50. Yep. Doesn't seem that bad no dollars a month is actually the same as YouTube TV. But wait, wait, there's more. You have to sign it to your contract. Whoo. And in the second year that contract that jumps up to nearly double $93 a month and it's like that for the rest of your subscription. That and that is amazing because they have at&t itself. years passive They've given grief to other companies for exploiting contracts, right? That's a term, right? Promotional pricing is another way to put it, right. Right, the idea that you sign in the super cheap price and then it blows. But AT&T crapped on Sprint for doing that, cuz Sprint has these outrageously low wireless plans. And they're like, year two comes up and then, boom, they just jump. I hope so, AT&T hopefully doesn't take a lesson from From sprint, what happened? I really hope well, yeah, no one actually signed up for those free services. [LAUGH] Like sprint literally couldn't give away their service. Right. Do you think people there's demand for this because we're born a time when people are I think a lot more savvy about where they get their entertainment and then streaming service cord cutting that that this seems almost a test. It is Sorry, that's a cynical attempt. Yes. Sorry. I can't speak it's Monday and apologize for that. But it's Well, yeah, it totally is a contradiction to what we're moving towards with cord cutting, right? Yes. And that's the exact point. I think what they're doing is they're aiming for people who aren't that savvy. So what they're pitching out is a replacement for direct tv or placement for universe right yeah rid of those services. I would I don't think they phase out universe and DirecTV. Absolutely. They've actually already talked about winding down universe I think today they just stopped accepting online new customers on university, call him up on the phone and be a new universe customer so I think they're gonna be winding down the services. To be clear today, you can still be a new customer on the services and they're not going away for your current subscriber. So all those seven services are still gonna be around for the foreseeable future, but they are winding down at least some of the TV services. Well, yay. And then beyond AT&T TV. There was some youtube news on Friday. Break it down for us. So, again, the streaming world moves really quickly. It really does. YouTube TV, which actually is a huge competitor to AT&T TV cuz it is what savvy people, is what I recommend, people subscribe to. And it doesn't require blocks. No, this is an app. It's got a bunch of channel, it's got a cloud DVR. And by the way, You can cancel whenever you want cuz there's no contract. So that service at YouTube TV is our current Editor's Choice. Our favorite recommendation they just actually dropped are actually they haven't dropped them yet, but they're in negotiations with Fox, two or Sinclair. To drop Fox Sports station, which includes Yes network. So these are all the stations that [UNKNOWN] know about. They have the Yankees for example on Yes. They have most of the regular season baseball, basketball games, NHL games are on these channels around the nation. They're going away if these negotiations don't work out. So this might seem familiar to people who had cable and satellite. Yep. Negotiating with x, y, z. So YouTube TV is doing this now. They actually said they were dropping them on Saturday. And then they retweeted and said, by the way, we're still talking. So maybe that tweet was a negotiation to start with. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, that's out now and we're still gonna find out whether YouTube TV customers You can do this. The point is, you are not a subscriber. If you TPT customer you can you don't have a contract, you can just drop it whenever you want. And well I wrote an article on Friday that says hey, if you you know want Yes, you can always subscribe to Hulu with live TV. Right. So that's a competing live TV service. 55 bucks a month again. No box, just an app and they have a bunch of channels and they're pretty good. And if you're a yes network if that's a must have then go ahead and get Hulu for now. It has those networks. Until they start dealing with negotiations. Yes. Got it. These things keep going up. So Daily Charge I'm Roger Cheng. And I'm David Katzmine. Thanks for joining us. [MUSIC]