| | AT&T confirms drastic changes to DirecTV Now and raises cheapest plan to $50
Is HBO enough to make up for losing AMC, Viacom, and Discovery?
By Chris Welch @chriswelch Mar 13, 2019, 10:48am EDT
AT&T has confirmed that it is dramatically reshaping its DirecTV Now streaming TV service beginning today by getting rid of the previously offered channel bundles, slimming down programming for new plans, and raising prices. In hopes of making up the difference, AT&T is adding HBO to DirecTV Now’s latest, smaller channel packages that now start at $50 per month. That’s the most expensive base plan of the big five (DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV, PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, YouTube TV), but none of the others include HBO. The step-up $70 Max package adds Cinemax and a few more sports channels from ESPN and Fox.
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Those are all channels that were part of DirecTV Now’s previous plans but have gone away entirely with today’s new Plus and Max plans. At least for the time being, AT&T is saying that existing customers will maintain access to their current channel bundles so long as they remain with the service and don’t change anything.
But if you cancel your subscription, there’s no getting the older plans (Live a Little, Just Right, Go Big, and Gotta Have It) back again. Holding onto those bundles — no longer offered to new customers as of today — is also going to get more expensive: AT&T will hike monthly rates by $10 across the entire line as of April 12th. And if you’re currently paying the extra $5 monthly fee to receive HBO, that’s going to jump up to $15 with this month’s bill. This is yet another instance of AT&T increasing rates after it argued that its acquisition of Time Warner would result in reduced prices for consumers. This is actually the second hike for those DirecTV Now subscriptions. But AT&T would likely argue that if you were already paying $50 for Live a Little and HBO before, that price effectively continues on with these revamped packages.
Why is this happening?
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