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AT&T’s $15 streaming service is now live, but is it worth it?

Published Jun 29th, 2018 3:46PM EDT
AT&T Watch vs Sling

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Earlier this month, AT&T finally took the wraps off its long-teased skinny streaming bundle, called AT&T Watch. The service isn’t pretending to be a replacelment for cable: instead, it’s a collection of channels (mostly now owned by AT&T) for nearly the same price as your monthly Netflix subscription. Starting today, it’s available to some AT&T customers for free, or to the rest of us mortals for $15 a month.

The service is free for anyone who subscribes to one of AT&T’s brand-new unlimited data plans, which are confusingly called Unlimited &More and Unlimited &More Premium. Pricing for those is nearly the same as AT&T’s current unlimited plans: the cheaper Unlimited &More plan costs $70 per month for a single line, or $160 for four lines, while Unlimited &More Premium is $80 for one line, or $190 for four. Those plans are also now live, although the big catch is that the more expensive plan doesn’t come with free HBO any more.

Assuming you don’t subscribe to one of AT&T’s new unlimited plans, AT&T Watch will cost you $15 a month. For that, you get the following 30 channels:

  • A&E
  • AMC
  • ANIMAL PLANET
  • AUDIENCE
  • BBC WORLD NEWS
  • BBC AMERICA
  • BOOMERANG
  • CARTOON NETWORK
  • CNN
  • DISCOVERY
  • FOOD NETWORK
  • FYI
  • HALLMARK
  • HALLMARK MOVIES & MYSTERIES
  • HGTV
  • HISTORY
  • HLN
  • IFC
  • ID
  • LIFETIME
  • LIFETIME MOVIES
  • OWN
  • SUNDANCE TV
  • TBS
  • TCM
  • TLC
  • TNT
  • TRUTV
  • VELOCITY
  • VICELAND
  • WE TV

Coming soon after launch:

  • BET
  • COMEDY CENTRAL
  • MTV 2
  • NICK TOONS
  • TEEN NICK
  • VH1
The price is about a third of the cable-replacement streaming services like AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Hulu Live TV, or YouTube TV. Those services all come with the traditional bundle of sports and news channels, however, which surveys have shown are the things that people most want from a live TV service.
The best comparison to AT&T Watch is probably Sling Orange, which just had a price hike to $25 per month (it was previously $20). For the price, you get nearly all the same channels as with AT&T Watch, but with the addition of the main ESPN channels, which could be a big difference for sports fans:
  • A&E,
  • ACC Network Extra,
  • AMC,
  • AXS TV,
  • BBC America,
  • Bloomberg Television,
  • Cartoon Network,
  • Cheddar,
  • CNN,
  • Comedy Central,
  • Disney Channel,
  • Epix Drive-In,
  • ESPN,
  • ESPN2,
  • ESPN3,
  • Flama,
  • Food Network,
  • Freeform,
  • Fuse,
  • Galavision,
  • HGTV,
  • History,
  • IFC,
  • Lifetime,
  • Local Now,
  • Newsy,
  • TBS,
  • TNT,
  • Travel Channel,
  • Tribeca Shortlist,
  • Viceland

If you want to try out AT&T Watch, the service is offering a seven-day free trial.

Chris Mills
Chris Mills News Editor

Chris Mills has been a news editor and writer for over 15 years, starting at Future Publishing, Gawker Media, and then BGR. He studied at McGill University in Quebec, Canada.