DirecTV Now is AT&T’s plan to take on Sling TV and PlayStation Vue. Yet it seems AT&T is going to take a very different approach to their DirecTV Now service.
DirecTV Now will offer more than 100 channels of live and on demand programming, targeted at younger viewers. But at the Next TV Summit here Wednesday (Oct. 20) at the NYC Television & Video Week, Goncalves the Entertainment Group senior vice presendent at AT&T said while skinny bundles may work for niche offerings, that’s not the case for a broader service like DirecTV Now.
“In a scaled business, addressing the economic requirement that reach the most customers would require the need to cast a rather wide net,” Goncalves said in the fireside chat with Next TV editor and Multichannel News Technology editor Jeff Baumgartner. “You would need multiple skinny bundles to appeal to enough audience to get a scaled product. Our opinion is much of what is called skinny bundles evolve into something bigger. I’m not sure OTT is the driver of that.”
So what does that mean? Well that likely means you will pay the same price for their DirecTV Now service as you would with DirecTV. Or maybe just slightly lower to reflect the lower cost of a streaming service.
“Consumers aren’t telling us they want less content, they want more flexibility and seamless way of engaging with that content,” Goncalves said, adding that although the company has a great relationship with its programming partners, there is still a ways to go, but is confident DirecTV Now will get there.
“I don’t believe there is another OTT approach that gives the programming community the opportunity we’re putting in front of them,” Goncalves said.
Well many may have been excited by the idea of DirecTV Now it seems they may be making a fatal mistake. Just putting something online does not make it a cord cutting option.
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