Philo has entered the streaming TV market with much fanfare and the halo of a former Facebook founder at the helm. It offers a “skinny bundle” of 43 cable channels for the industry-low price of $16 per month. Sounds exactly like what cord-cutters have been asking for, right? Look beneath the surface, though, and you’ll be left wondering who Philo’s customers really are.
A Quick Introduction to Philo
Philo launched with the framework for a complete streaming solution. Its channel lineup consists of B-list cable channels and a few, like AMC, that break into the ratings top ten lists from time to time. Philo’s feature set covers all the bases with simultaneous streaming, flexible live TV, and on-demand options. You can watch on your computer, iOS and Android, and on the Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku.
Channels and Plans
| 64 Channels 7-day free trial $25.00/ month | 60+ channels Starz and Epix add-ons 3 simultaneous streams Unlimited DVR | Try Free |
Media companies A+E, AMC, Discovery, Scripps, and Viacom cut a deal with Philo to package their cable channels into a single service. For the baseline $16-per-month subscription, you get live and on-demand streaming from 43 channels, including:
A&E, AMC, Animal Planet, AXS TV, BBC America, BBC World News, BET, Cheddar, CMT, Comedy Central, Discovery, diy, Food Network, fyi, GSN, History, IFC, ID, Lifetime, MTV, MTV2, Nick, Nick Jr., OWN, Sci, Spike, Sundance, Teen Nick, TLC, Travel, TV Land, Velocity, VH1, Viceland, and WE, among others.
For an extra $4 per month, you can expand the Philo lineup to include AHC, ET-Her, Cooking Channel, Destination America, Discovery Family, Discovery Life, Logo, MTV Live, and Nicktoons, and a few other channels, bringing you to 56 in total.
Unlike every other streaming service provider, Philo does not require a credit card to register for its free trial. All it asks for is your mobile phone number. You’ll have to hand over your credit card details after a couple of days, though, to get the full week of free serivce.
Devices and Features
Philo subscribers can watch up to three simultaneous streams through a Windows or Mac browser, iOS or Android mobile devices. Frustratingly, though, Android users don’t get a native app. You’ll have to stream through your web browser, which isn’t exactly the best experience. And while it used to be that the only way to connect Philo to a television was through a Roku streaming device, Philo now supports both Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV.
DVR features let users pause, rewind, fast forward and save live TV. There is no limit on the number of shows that users can save, but recordings will disappear after thirty days. A Look Back feature keeps programs available to stream for 72 hours after broadcast.
The Business Strategies VC’s Want
Much of the media coverage surrounding Philo’s launch focused on its no-sports strategy. There’s a solid business logic that makes the approach sound good when briefing investors. Skipping sports makes the service profitable.
The sports networks charge cable companies and streaming services high fees for the privilege of carrying their content. Viacom CEO Robert Bakish told Ad Week earlier this year that $40-per-month skinny bundles that include broadcast and sports networks “are not economic on a sustainable basis today.” Going with a no-broadcast, no-sports channel lineup could let a service like Philo make a profit even with a $16 monthly rate.
None of the Channels You Want
The trouble is, Philo’s channels are not the ones people want to watch. Deadline reported that the most popular networks during the 2016-2017 TV season were ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and The CW, and this trend will likely continue in the coming years.
Those networks’ popularity extends beyond sports. Entertainment, national news and local news are just as important as ever to today’s TV-watchers.
People subscribe to cable TV, and increasingly to streaming services like YouTube TV and DirecTV Now, to get these networks and the dozen or so cable channels with shows they like. Their frustrations with high cable prices stem from all of the channels they pay for but never watch. The channels in Philo’s lineup are just as likely to make people’s “who-cares “list as the cable sports networks.
Worth Keeping an Eye On, Is It Worth Watching?
Once you see the limited scope of Philo’s service, you have to wonder who its customers are. You can’t get local TV programming – or even on-demand content – from the most popular networks. You can’t watch Philo’s service on a television set unless you’re among the 5%-10% of American households that have a Roku device.
So who could it be for? The small subset of Millennials who only watch video on their phones, don’t care about sports, don’t care about broadcast content, but do care enough to pay for second-tier cable channels?
It will be interesting to watch Philo, not so much for its content, but for what it might signal about the future of TV. Philo’s limited lineup may be profitable no matter how few customers it gets.
Chris Casper is a former tech industry product manager who escaped from California for New Mexico. Now he writes about science and tech while searching for the perfect green chile sauce.
This new service has the channels my family likes without having to pay for all the sports networks that we don’t care about. Combined with an OTA to cover local news and channels, Philo is a great option for families like mine.
I signed up. It has HGTV History and the Travel channel. Only three I watch. It does not have Fox News BUT go to youtube people stream fox news live. Every two weeks the streams disappear but reappear one minute later. $17.33 per month with tax is Perfect. I have no streaming problems with my iphone or mac book pro.
We have Rokus on every TV, so the comment about only being able to watch on a Roku is short-sighted. Rokus are cheap and can be bought with the money you will save easily. Almost everyone I know has a Roku, not 5-10%. I probably watch 95% of everything I watch on a TV through Roku.
Second, with the price, you can supplement with CBS All Access and Hulu and get ALL of the network shows. You don’t have to get one streaming services to get everything when there are other options out there. Plus, both of them have commercial free options for just a few dollars more a month.
Looks great to me we are a family of girls so ID and lifetime are great only thing missing is Reelz channel
Hoops – yes, a shortsighted article.
Roku is cheap, $40 device pays for itself in 2 months, with this bundle. Not everybody needs +50 sports channels.
Btw, you can run it on PC with HDMI cable to TV, there is no need for Millenials to “only watch video on their phones”. The author says he is a former tech product manager? Amazing…