The Millennial Cord Cutting Singularity is Nigh

Youtube Bets It Can Persuade Youngs to Pay for Tv.

- Felix Gillette

For years, YouTube has served up almost every imaginable kind of video. The site’s top trending attractions on a recent afternoon included clips of a gymnasium roof collapsing in the Czech Republic, a colossal alligator lumbering across a footpath in Florida, some North Korean refugees digging into American barbecue for the first time, and a guy demonstrating how to wash a car with a baby. (Step one: Hand the baby the hose.) Now, a dozen years after its creation and about a decade after its absorption into Google Inc., YouTube is on the verge of adding yet one more genre—a category of programming that has long eluded it. YouTube is finally getting regular TV.

On Feb. 28, YouTube Inc. announced a new service that will deliver an assortment of major television channels to paying customers via the internet. For $35 a month, starting sometime this spring, subscribers to YouTube TV will be able to watch the top four broadcast networks—ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS—and 35 or so of their affiliated cable channels, including ESPN, Disney Channel, MSNBC, National Geographic, and Fox News. Among other enticements, YouTube TV will give subscribers a DVR tool for recording shows and unlimited storage space in the cloud. The only catch is that shows are automatically deleted after nine months.