Skip to main content

AT&T’s ultra-affordable new WatchTV streaming service is now available

AT&T’s new WatchTV — a streaming service with 31 channels and a $15 per month price — is live as of Friday, June 29. Not cheap enough for you? You can even get the service for free if you have certain AT&T wireless plans. If you’re looking for an affordable streaming service but don’t need too many channels, it looks like this might be just the thing for you.

Announced in June by chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson, the service currently offers 31 channels, which include many of the channels you find on most streaming services. The list includes A&E, AMC, CNN, TBS, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies. The vast majority of the channels are owned by Time Warner, which makes sense considering AT&T’s recent acquisition of Time Warner — and may explain the timing of the announcement.

Not all of the channels are Time Warner-owned, and six Viacom channels — BET, Comedy Central, MTV2, Nicktoons, TeenNick, and VH1 — are planned for the future, but using as many channels from Time Warner as possible is likely helping AT&T keep the costs down. This is why users of AT&T wireless plans with unlimited data get the service for free, while anyone else pays just $15 per month, which is even cheaper than rival streaming service Philo, which offers many of the same channels.

Also like Philo, you won’t find any sports or local channels here, which again is likely to help keep the service’s costs low. If you use AT&T’s new &More wireless plan, you will be able to choose either HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, or Starz to add to your service. You can also choose from non-TV options, like Amazon Music Unlimited, Pandora Premium, or VRV.

WatchTV offers on-demand content as well, with more than 15,000 movies. There are two streams available, so people can watch on up to two devices at once, but there are no DVR features. Considering how long AT&T is taking to bring DVR functionality to DirecTV Now, it doesn’t seem likely that they will be added anytime soon.

Currently, AT&T WatchTV is available on iOS and Android devices, as well as Apple TV, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV devices. There is no word on whether other devices like Roku will be supported in the future.

Editors' Recommendations

Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
What is DirecTV Stream: plans, pricing, channels, and more
DirecTV Stream app icon on Apple TV.

DirecTV Stream is the latest name for what once was AT&T’s live tv and on-demand streaming service, previously called AT&T TV, among other names. It's now jointly owned by AT&T and private equity firm TPG Inc., if you're concerned about such things. That new venture means that we no longer have insight into how many subscribers DirecTV Stream has, but it's believed to be the smallest of the live streaming services in the United States. (The last time we got numbers was at the end of 2020, when the service was at about 656,000 subscribers, or about half that of Fubo, or no bigger than 13 percent of YouTube TV's base.)

In any event, you're looking to cut the cable cord, DirecTV Stream is on more service to consider among others such as Hulu With Live TV, Sling TV, and the aforementioned YouTube TV.

Read more
The Roku Channel is now available as a Google TV app
The Roku Channel app on Google TV.

The Roku Channel — one of the major services in the FAST category — is now available as an app on Google TV and Android TV. That's a good thing because The Roku Channel says it already reaches an estimated 100 million people in U.S. households with its wealth of free movies and series.

But it's also still a step removed from competing services like the Paramount-owned Pluto TV, which has direct integration with the Google TV live listings and doesn't require a separate download. Still, it's more free content on a low-cost piece of hardware, and who doesn't like that? The Roku Channel sports more than 350 free live linear channels (as in everyone is watching the same thing at the same time), as well as movies and series, live news, and more.

Read more
YouTube TV now available as a bundle with Frontier internet
YouTube TV on Apple TV.

Customers of internet service provider Frontier can now get YouTube TV through their plan, and at a slight discount for the first year. Frontier's fiber internet customers can get $10 off YouTube TV for the first 12 months, making the country's leading streaming TV service $63, plus tax. And those who have the current Frontier TV service will get $15 off for the first 12 months. It'll be bundled with Frontier's Fiber 1 Gig service, which costs $70 a month.

The idea is that instead of paying one company for cable TV and internet, you can now pay one company for streaming TV and internet. And it's not the first time the two companies have teamed up — they had a $10 discount deal in 2021, too.

Read more