Anything For You All: AT&T's new WatchTV service is entering a fairly fragmented market, and it has the power to shake things up

AT&T's new WatchTV service is entering a fairly fragmented market, and it has the power to shake things up

Days after finalizing its Time Warner acquisition, AT&T announced a new pay-TV option that's cheaper and more basic than its current DirecTV Now service — the second most subscribed to option in a fairly fragmented market, according to this chart from Statista.

At $15 a month, WatchTV users will have access to more than 30 live TV channels as well as on-demand content, all compatible with mobile devices and browsers. It won't be bundled with cable, however, making it a more basic and perhaps more feasible option than DirecTV, and that's probably what the industry needs right now.

The 13 biggest pay-TV providers (10 of which are shown below) — used by 95% of the Americans unwilling to cut the cord for services like Netflix or other over the top content — lost a total of 300,000 subscribers over the course of Q1 2018. Netflix alone had almost as many subscribers as the top three pay-TV subscription services combined.

While WatchTV might cannibalize some DirecTV users, an unbundled service could also encourage cord cutters to double up on their payments: Netflix and cable, anyone?

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