As YouTube TV gains channels and increases in cost, what are you actually watching? [Results]

Kyle Bradshaw | Mar 26 2021 - 1:12 pm PT

Every year since launch, YouTube TV has bumped up its monthly cost, with Google using the ever-expanding channel list as justification for the cost. But how many channels are we all actually watching?

It’s almost unbelievable that YouTube TV was once a significantly affordable alternative to a traditional cable package, launching in 2017 at a low monthly rate of just $35. In 2018, the subscription was bumped to $40 per month with the addition of networks like CNN and Cartoon Network, with Google even grandfathering original subscribers into that original price.

Later, in 2019, YouTube TV’s price jumped again to $50 per month, with no grandfathered rate available for existing customers. This bump coincided with the addition of the Discovery family of networks like Discovery Channel, Food Network, and more, bringing YouTube TV to just over 70 available channels.

The most recent price jump was in June of 2020, bringing the cost of YouTube TV up a whopping $15 to $65 per month. While the primary reason cited for the price increase is the “rising cost of content,” the service also immediately gained some of ViacomCBS’s family of networks, including Nickelodeon and MTV, with the remaining networks like BET Her and Nicktoons only just arrived this week, bringing the grand total to 104 channels.

With YouTube TV’s list of channels steadily increasing alongside its monthly costs, we’re curious to see how many channels people are actually watching to make the service worth its cost. Additionally, it could be interesting to know whether those channels are different enough from person to person to justify YouTube TV offering the 104 channels it has.

To that end, we’ve created a short Google Forms survey for YouTube TV subscribers to share the channels you watch and add-on packages you pay for. We’ll leave the survey up over the weekend and report back in the near future with the insights we can glean from the results.

Update 3/26: Our survey is now complete with over 5,000 respondents. We’ve shared some of the highlights of the results, including a surprising number of sports fans among our readers.

While our own predictions put the estimated number of channels watched somewhere around 5, the actual average turns out to be 18, with a median of 16. Some respondents even claimed to watch over 80 different channels on YouTube TV!

In the meantime, how many channels do you think the average YouTube TV subscriber actually watches? Let us know down in the comments.