*By Carlo Versano* Cord cutters, rejoice! YouTube TV, Google's ambitious live-television streaming service, is going nationwide. The platform will soon add 95 new markets, making it available to 98 percent of U.S. households, Google ($GOOGL) announced Wednesday ー just one of several major announcements in the streaming industry this week. Viacom, which does not make its content available on YouTube TV, agreed to buy PlutoTV for more than $300 million. Meanwhile, Hulu lowered the monthly subscription price of its basic plan while raising the price of its live TV plan, days after Netflix ($NFLX) announced it would raise the price of some of its plans. Those developments follows recent announcements from Disney ($DIS), Warner Media and NBCUniversal about their own proprietary streaming platforms. And, of course, there's the dark horse: Apple, which is expected to roll out its own global streaming service in the first half of this year. For Google, the timing of the expanded availability comes just before the biggest sporting event of the year. That's no coincidence. Consumers repeatedly cite the ability to watch live sports as one of the last remaining reasons to keep their traditional cable packages. Among the live TV streaming services, YouTube TV is unique in that it has already been able to lock down carriage deals with ESPN, Major League Baseball, and the NBA, among others. At $40 per month, YouTube TV still presents a not-insignificant cost for many consumers ー especially when bundled with any of the other existing on-demand services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon ($AMZN) Prime Video. And now, with legacy media companies realizing (perhaps too late) that the future is in owning both the content and the "pipes" to deliver it, the monthly buy-in for popular programming may soon overtake the cost of a traditional cable contract. For Google, it will come down to skinny bundles and scale ー and whether it can get YouTube TV's [reported](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/youtube-tv-shows-tough-economics-of-skinny-bundles) 800,000 subscribers to something approaching Comcast's 20 million. As of now, most streaming platforms are still losing money on each new customer as they build out their content libraries. Even Netflix, the envy of the media world, burns cash at a staggering rate.

Share:
More In Business
Michigan Judge Sentences Walmart Shoplifters to Wash Parking Lot Cars
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
State Department Halts Plan to buy $400M of Armored Tesla Vehicles
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
Goodyear Blimp at 100: ‘Floating Piece of Americana’ Still Thriving
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
Is U.S. Restaurants’ Breakfast Boom Contributing to High Egg Prices?
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
Load More