Despite (or perhaps because of) a long and
accelerating slide in DirecTV subscribers, AT&T has quietly raised the satellite TV service’s price for new subscribers, along with raising the intro price for AT&T TV — the new
streamer that will eventually replace DirecTV.
The company has not raised prices for existing customers of the two services, nor has it raised prices for its live streaming service, AT&T
TV Now, according to TVAnswerMan, which first spotted the price hikes.
New
customers for DirecTV’s Select, Choice, Xtra and Ultimate packages will now pay $10 more, raising those respective intro prices to $59.99, $69.99, $79.99 and $84.99.
After the first year
of a 24-month service agreement, prices jump to $85 per month for Select, $115 for Choice, $131 for Xtra and $142 for Ultimate. AT&T did not raise the second-year prices for either DirectTV or
AT&T TV.
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The $10 hike essentially reverses a $10 DirecTV decrease implemented last year.
AT&T TV’s Entertainment package now charges $59.99/month for the first year and
its Choice package now charges $64.99/month for the first year.
The first-year prices for AT&T TV’s packages, which also require a two-year agreement, have also been raised by $10 per month. That brings the Entertainment
plan’s monthly intro price to $59.99; the Choice plan’s to $64.99 a month; the Xtra plan’s to $74.99 a month; and the Ultimate plan to $79.99.
AT&T also raised DirecTV prices as of January 19 this year.
DirecTV lost nearly 1.1 million subscribers in Q3 2019, bringing its
total down to about 16.8 million, according to estimates by Leichtman Research Group.
AT&T, which combines its subscriber numbers for DirecTV and U-verse into “premium TV”
totals, lost nearly 5 million satellite and wireline subscribers between the end of 2016 and Q3 2019.
In Q4 2019, it lost 945,000 premium video subscribers, and in this year’s first
quarter, it lost 897,000 premium video subscribers plus 138,000 AT&T TV now subscribers.
"We offer a variety of promotional initiatives including pricing, reward cards and other
offers,” an AT&T spokesperson said in a statement to Fierce Video about the latest price hikes. “We’ve recently increased the introductory rate for new customers on those video
products. Our pricing is still in line with others in the industry and reflects our continued commitment to provide high-quality content at a fair price.”
Please, correct me if my logic is flawed. Consumers are very cost conscious and dislike paying for channels they never watch. The AT&T and apparently You Tube TV solution--increase the price and add more channels, the majority of which most consumers will never watch.
Forgive me, I just heard a big thud and the neighbor yelling. Seems like a sat dish just mystically slid off his roof. I wondered what that ladder was doing there.