YouTube TV Marks 5 Years, 5M Subscribers

YouTube TV has amassed five million subscribers after five years in business, the streaming service said Tuesday (July 12).

“When YouTube TV started out, a group of engineers climbed onto the roof of YouTube headquarters while holding an antenna in order to build a prototype,” the blog post said.

“Based on this experience, we almost settled on calling the YouTube TV you know and love today as “YouTube Air.” And within the team that worked on this product, our project codename was ‘Unplugged.’ (Watching TV without a cable box — get it?)”

The company also used the blog post to note a few “Top 5s.”

For example, its top five most-DVRed shows are “Yellowstone,” “Saturday Night Live,” “This is Us,” “60 Minutes” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

And its five most popular shows among viewers watching reruns are “Friends,” “The Office,” “Two and a Half Men,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

See also: Retailers Test New Strategies to Avoid the ‘Great Unsubscribe’

This milestone comes at a time when subscription companies are facing pressure to keep customers, as PYMNTS reported recently.

Justin Shoolery, head of data science and analytics at sticky.io, told PYMNTS that churn is proving to be a substantial challenge for companies that offer products and services via subscription models.

Inflation is to blame here. Customers are rethinking everyday expenses — and in many cases, reducing the number of monthly subscriptions they pay for. Recent PYMNTS research revealed monthly subscriptions expenditure fell by 46% in March compared to last fall.

And with the “Great Unsubscribe” underway, merchants offering subscriptions have had to rethink their business models, Shoolery said.

When done well, he said, “Subscriptions add more predictability to the business model — and especially to the revenue model.” That visibility is vital when dealing with complex supply chains, in managing inventory (when there are physical goods to deliver) and managing costs.

“It’s important to drive costs away from acquiring new customers,” he said.