subscriptions

DirecTV lost about 500,000 subscribers in the third quarter, leaving it with a total of 13.3 million, according to a report by credit rating agency Fitch Ratings. DirecTV was spun off by AT&T last year and no longer publicly reports its subscriber numbers. Cord cutting has accelerated recently, but Fitch indicated that DirecTV loss rates “have substantially improved over the last two years, driven by lower churn.”

Netflix and Disney hope a lower price point will convince all of those recent grads, grandparents, old boyfriends, etc. who are still on someone else’s plan to sign up for one of their own. That’s going to be a tough sell.

Revenue from digital advertising fell slightly in the second quarter, but subscription revenue continued to rise sharply, the company said.

FuboTV starts at $64.99 a month, but if you want to sign up, you will need to buy a three-month prepaid package totaling $194.96. It’s unclear if the quarterly offering will be permanent. Plus, as of Sunday morning, the quarterly plans were not available on FuboTV’s site on all platforms.

Amazon is hiking the price of Prime memberships in the U.S., with the annual fee jumping from $119 to $139 — its first increase in nearly four years. In addition, the monthly fee for Prime is rising from $12.99 to $14.99. Amazon last raised the price of Prime in 2018. For new Prime members, the latest price change will go into effect Feb. 18,. For current Prime members, the new prices will apply after March 25, on the date of their next renewal.

Now that Facebook has started to sell subscriptions to publishers’ videos, publishers hope that YouTube will follow suit. And the Google-owned video platform appears poised to do so, stretching its existing subscription product in a way that it could be used to supplement media companies’ standalone subscription-based streaming video services.