DirecTV Now Rebranded As AT&T TV Now
- by Wayne Friedman , July 30, 2019
AT&T is rebranding its ailing DirecTV Now as AT&T TV Now, according to a subscriber mailing.
“Be on the lookout for changes to DirecTV Now... Coming soon: the same great channel lineups with a new name. Find out what to expect when DirecTV Now is reintroduced as the AT&T TV Now experience,” according to its site.
DirecTV Now, a digital pay TV service of live, linear TV networks, has seen big declines in subscribers in recent periods. It took a recent net loss of 168,000 in the second-quarter 2019, following an 83,000 net loss in the first-quarter 2019; and a 267,000 net loss in the fourth-quarter 2018.
DirecTV Now has a total of 1.3 million subscribers, down from 1.8 million in the second-quarter 2018. It has lagged behind similar services recently.
Dish Network’s Sling TV has 2.5 million subscribers as of the second quarter, slightly higher versus the 2.3 million in the second-quarter 2018. Industry estimates of other live, linear TV digital services find Hulu + Live TV at 1.9 million and YouTube TV at 1.1 million. Both have seen growth year over year.
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DirecTV Now launched in November 2016, an outgrowth of DirecTV, the satellite TV programming service.
DirecTV (satellite) and U-verse (AT&T’s telco TV service) had a net loss of 778,000 subscribers in the second-quarter 2019 versus the first quarter of this year -- now totaling 21.6 million.
A year ago, DirecTV and U-verse had a total of 23.6 million.
I recently experienced one very good reason why DirectvNow tanked; ... it's a pure rip-off. Even though we already have DirecTV at home, and on our phones and laptops, a tech at our local AT&T snuck a "free trial" on our bill without us knowing. So, once the invisible free trial was over, we began getting monthly bills for DirectvNow of over $80, on top of our usual DTV/ATT bill!
Since we already had remote access to DTV through our ATT service, we were paying twice. Lovely. They refunded "their limit" of three months, so we're still fighting them for the remainder. Our fault for not noticing sooner, and their fault for knowingly selling us a service they knew we already had.