AT&T kills DirecTV Now brand name as TV subscribers leave in droves

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

AT&T is eliminating the DirecTV Now brand name it uses for its struggling Internet-based TV service. DirecTV Now will become "AT&T TV Now" later this summer, AT&T announced today. DirecTV Now (the future "AT&T TV Now") offers a bundle of linear TV channels, similar to traditional cable or satellite services, and AT&T said its core offering won't be changed.

AT&T's 2015 purchase of DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite TV network, doesn't seem to be paying off as AT&T hoped. AT&T launched DirecTV Now-a stripped-down, online-only version of DirecTV-in 2016, and it was immediately plagued by multiple outages, unexpected blackouts of live local sports games, and missing channels.

While the technical problems got sorted out, AT&T's subscriber gains were short-lived. As we wrote last week, AT&T lost 946,000 TV subscribers in Q2 2019 after announcing a series of price increases.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments