Genre Bundles Coming to YouTube TV Next Year as Tech Giant Sets Cheaper and More Flexible Plans

YouTube TV is planning a major overhaul next year, launching a slew of genre-specific programming bundles called “YouTube TV Plans,” that executives say will offer lower prices and a more refined experience for users of the pay-TV product.

At a dinner in New York Tuesday evening, YouTube VP of global media and sports Justin Connolly framed the new offerings as “the next phase of YouTube TV,” and a major push into the world of sports specifically.

“These will be smaller portfolios of content, think sports, news, family and entertainment, or combinations thereof that I think will really deliver the kind of core experience a lot of fans have been asking for,” said Christian Oestlien, VP of subscriptions for YouTube. “There have been a lot of different attempts at this, and I’m really excited about what we’re building out.”

Given their outsize important to the pay-TV ecosystem, the sports and news genre bundles will likely be of particular interest to consumers, with YouTube noting that the sports plan, which will include the broadcast networks, cable offerings like FS1 and NBC Sports Network, and of course the ESPN channels as well as ESPN Unlimited.

Oestlien emphasized that the tech giant intends to make it incredibly easy to do add-ons, like Sunday Ticket or RedZone, or for users to quickly upgrade or downgrade their packages, in case they want to change their programming lineups. All the usual YouTube TV features like the cloud DVR and multiview will be available.

The specific plans and what they will cost is still to be determined, though Oestlien made clear that they will offer better pricing, consistent with having fewer channels, as well as the ability to mix and match.

YouTube TV, of course, has held a slew of tense negotiations with media partners this year, many of which spilled into public view, including an extended blackout of Disney’s channels (including ABC and ESPN) and near blackouts from NBCUniversal and Fox.

“We spent the last year working really closely with our media partners,” Oestlien said. “A lot of negotiations, very public negotiations as you know, but a lot of it was because we were working with them to kind of show them the data we were seeing, get them excited about what the future of television could look like.”

YouTube TV has emerged as a pay-TV powerhouse, with the company disclosing more than eight million subscribers (it is now believed to have around 10 million), and the smaller packages may be the thing that propels it to the top of the pay-TV heap, passing Comcast and Charter.

In fact, the executive framed the new offering as fulfilling the goal of what YouTube TV was meant to be in the first place, recalling how former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and her team would talk to consumers about what they felt was broken about media.

“What we realized, I think what all of us realize, what we kind of do for a living, is that people were really still deeply passionate about media, news, entertainment and sports,” Oestlien said. “They were extremely frustrated with the way it was being delivered. Fixed contracts, obscure pricing, having to rent your DVR or set top box, the inability have that mobile experience that you can take with you when you travel. We learned a lot from that, and that was really the gestation of the beginning of what became YouTube TV, and we’ve been really focused on what the consumer is looking for, what animates the consumer, what’s going to drive the next phase growth in that core sports, news and television ecosystem, which is what we care deeply about.”