Many of us no longer pay a cable fee nowadays, as Internet-based video streaming services offer competitive replacements to the TV packages we've enjoyed for decades.
And here comes a new challenger.
Video-sharing platform YouTube plans to launch a live TV service in the next few months, offering major US broadcast networks and cable channels as well as its own original programing, YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki announced on Tuesday.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki introduces the company's new television subscription service at the YouTube Space LA venue in Los Angeles, US, on February 28, 2017. /CFP Photo
The service, called YouTube TV, will cost 35 US dollars per month for six accounts, Wojcicki told reporters in Los Angeles.
It was part of an effort to satisfy younger users.
"Millennials love great TV content, but what we’ve seen is they don’t want to watch it in the traditional setting," Wojcicki said.
YouTube's announcement of the TV service on Twitter. /Twitter
More than 40 networks will be offered and subscribers will be able to watch them on their mobile phone or computer via an app, YouTube executives said.
YouTube is not the first service to appeal to so-called "cord cutters" - viewers who dropped traditional pay TV packages or never signed up in the first place. Other services, from Sling TV to DirecTV Now and PlayStation Vue already exist.
But chief product officer Neal Mohan said YouTube hoped "to reinvent the way TV works."
The service will launch in the US at first.
(With inputs from Reuters)
