Big Changes Are Coming to Pluto TV

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Welcome to Core Cutting Today weekend edition. It was a busy week in the world of core cutting. Of course, Roku launched its new home screen, but we've already done multiple videos on that, so we're not going to touch that today. You can check out the other ones, but Pluto TV is making some big changes there.

[00:00:16]Also, YouTube TV is adding a new channel to its sports package along with the end of Hulu. Here in the weekend, we break down some of the biggest stories, and I see all those questions that pop up.

[00:00:27]Well, I can't respond to all of them. I am going to address a lot of your questions and try to clear up some confusion around some of these news stories out there with this. So, check out the show notes if you want to read them for yourself or in the first pin comment. I'll put a link to each story I'm about to talk about there. If you like what we do here and you're new, welcome. We try to help you break free from the high cost of TV and still watch the shows you enjoy. Hit that subscribe button, hit that thumbs up. We post videos every day with news, tips, tricks, reviews, and more.

[00:00:56]All right, Pluto TV in our first story of the day is getting more aggressive about wanting you to create a free account. Now, they're not alone. Tuby, the Roku channel, Pluto TV, all of them have been launching efforts to get you to sign up and create a free account. No credit card needed. You get all kinds of great benefits like being able to save a channel to your favorites across multiple devices. start showing one um you know TV, take it to your bedroom, take it to your tablet, phone, wherever, pick up exactly where you left off. Now, for Pluto TV and others, their big thing is, hey, we get to now have better targeted ads to you. So, with that, the more they know about you, having a profile gives them more information, they build a profile, they deliver better targeted ads, they get more money. During Paramount's most recent earnings call, they talked a lot about this about how they really wanted to get more people to get into TV and create a free account and the growth of the number of people watching with an account versus in the past. Now, they've made some changes. Now, they've always had this thing about, hey, um, unlock full content. They put a little bit of content behind a wall where if you didn't have an account, you couldn't watch it. Now though, when you launch the app and you say it gives you an an option to enter or to use with limited options, if you click enter, thinking you're just going to go into Pluto TV, now it takes you to a page where you either have to log in or create an account. They're kind of making a little bit more confusing, making it look like you have to have an account. You do not.

[00:02:24]I got a lot of questions about that.

[00:02:25]Does this mean these changes that they're doing mean you have to have an account? No. It's still op optional or possible, I should say, to use Pluto TV without an app. Instead of hitting enter, there's a button right underneath it that says use with limited features.

[00:02:40]If you click that, you can go in there and now watch on Pluto TV without an account. Why are they doing it? Well, it's all about money. Pluto TV relies on ads. Ads are more profitable when they're targeted. And to target ads better, they needed a profile of you.

[00:02:57]And that's where the account really helps Paramount. We'll watch this closely. Paramount's been very clear though that it's still possible to watch it without free without an account.

[00:03:06]They're just making it a little bit more hard to do so. So, let me know. Are you a Pluto TV fan? Do you create an account or not? Let me know. All right. YouTube TV added a new channel to its sports package. With the start of the WNBA, YouTube TV has added ION, which has a ton of WNBA games on their lineup. Now, ION is a free over-the-air TV channel that the WNBA has partnered with to air some of their games. And now, it's been added to the Sportson package. So, if you're a fan of the WNBA, YouTube TV sports package has even more content along with a lot of these games on ESPN and other services. YouTube TV has a pretty good lineup of it. So, keep an eye on that.

[00:03:51]And we actually reported this just a couple days ago. Um, we broke, we didn't break it, but we covered the breaking news that Business Insider in obtained a copy of a Disney internal memo to its employees about the future of Hulu. Now, late last year, Disney's previous CEO, Bob Iger, said that Hulu would be merging into Disney Plus. At the time, it was reported as Hulu's app would shut down once it was fully integrated into Disney Plus. Over the last few months, they've been putting more and more features there. And now, for example, if you log into Disney Plus and you have a Hulu account, instead of having two accounts, you can merge them into your Disney Plus account. You can't merge Disney Plus into Hulu, just Hulu into Disney Plus. Also, earlier this year, we broke this news. Um, Hulu's app on the uh Nintendo Switch shut down and and Nintendo across the board and Hulu also stopped offering Disney Plus as an add-on. No longer could you go to your Hulu account and bundle in for a discounted rate Disney Plus. Instead, they wanted customers who had that to switch their accounts to be primarily Disney Plus and then they could go and add Hulu to Disney Plus. According to the report from Business Insider, by the end of this year, they intend they intend to have all the features they want to move to um Disney Plus from Hulu done. And at that time, they would discontinue the Hulu app, aka shut it down. Now, a lot of people would ask about Hulu Plus Live, and this is still a very big question mark. Disney's um PR team has told us in the past that they did not have any plans to move Hulu Plus Live from Hulu to the Disney Plus app.

[00:05:35]There's been wild speculation of what's going to happen to it. Some people think that Disney will add it. Disney is adding a live TV channel guide, but right now it's limited to like ESPN content, their free 247 channels and things like that. There's been no um Hulu Plus Live integration there.

[00:05:54]Remember, Disney's in a joint venture with Fubo where they created a third party entity. Fubo owns TWW 30% of it.

[00:06:01]Disney owns 70, but Fubo executives run it. A lot of people think that Disney doesn't want to give Fubo any control or any say over at the Disney Plus app.

[00:06:09]Then we may see the Hulu Plus Live switch over to be integrated into the Fubo app. Your guess is as good as mine.

[00:06:17]I'm getting all kinds of questions about that. I don't know what to tell you.

[00:06:21]Now, the Business Insider report says it does appear that there may be options to keep Hulu as a standalone only option, but that Disney seems to really want to make Hulu more of an add-on. That mo they want to push you to have Disney Plus and then add Hulu to it rather than have you just have Hulu. So, that's what we know. Exact date for when it will shut down, unknown. Could be as soon as this year, could be next year. But, this lines up with what we first reported.

[00:06:50]Now in the recent month Disney actually even reached out to us to say hey at we had reported a story about their intention to shut down the Disney Plus app and we said reported you know rumors had been that shut down this year. They reached out and said there is no timeline for when Hulu will shut down.

[00:07:07]They went even further with the Verge and told the Verge that they haven't made a decision to shut it down. Well, that counterdradicts and not surprising what had been earlier reported and they had it corrected and this new memo leak.

[00:07:20]It's very common for PR people to say one thing and do another. Unfortunately though, we're going to have to wait and see a little bit. This memo does not lay out great details on things like the future of Hulu Plus Live. So, we'll watch that closely. But if you are a Hulu only customer at some point, and if you haven't started doing it, the Disney Plus app would be your only way to access that on demand content. As we learn more, we'll cover it here at corecarsnews.com and YouTube here.

[00:07:47]All right, let's keep moving along. I got a lot of questions on this story. We did a breakdown about Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network merging under the ownership of Paramount. Now, Paramount's buying Warner Brothers Discovery. They think they can close it as soon as July, so a little over a month from now. Um that they could maybe merge and the two companies complete their purchase and will own both Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. Now, the two networks have seen their ratings drive up an average of about 85% over the last 10 years um when you look at the two um channels there. Now, that's a lot of decline. I had a few questions I want to address real quick. Why didn't I talk about Adult Swim in this? Well, Adult Swim is technically considered a separate network. They share the same channel, but their dem their um ratings and their teams and everything are completely separate with this. There is speculation, I got a lot of questions on this. Could it be spun off that the Department of Justice may say that's too much ownership in the kids television world and Paramount needs to sell one of those two networks? If there's any network they may be forced to spin off Cartoon Network may be the most likely with it. Warner Brothers Discovery has heavily gutted it where even employees there have posted concerns over about what the future of the network is. I'll be very interested to see how profitable they are. Cartoon Network, which targets youth, actually has an average viewing age of 18 or older, and they've been leaning into that quietly by putting a lot of classic 90s and early 2000 shows, pulling people's who are in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s, their childhood shows back on, putting them on in the like post 5:00 p.m. era to have you flip by and say, "Man, I used to watch that when, you know, I was a kid." And maybe get you captured to watch it. This comes as increasingly kids watch Nickelodeon in some Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, Netflix, YouTube, Disney Plus and others.

[00:09:42]Paramount would love to keep this.

[00:09:44]Putting Cartoon Network stuff into Paramount Plus right alongside Nickelodeon would be huge for them.

[00:09:50]Well, yes, most kids don't watch cable television. A good amount still do.

[00:09:54]We'll watch it closely. For now, we'll wait and see what happens with it. We and we'll keep a close eye on it. All right. Next up, Direct TV is raising its price. They started to notify customers this week and we've confirmed it. When I recorded the video earlier, I said Direct TV had not replied back to us.

[00:10:13]Right after I hit record or stop recording, they did and they did confirm the price hike. Some plans could go up as high as eight over $10 a month, like $18 a month or something like that. Now, a few things here. The My News package is jumping $5 from $39.99 to $44.99. my sports from um64.99 to74.99.

[00:10:36]Remember when I said these plans came out and they're so close sometimes if you're like a sports fan to just get the full YouTube TV plan for example. Um I think that's going to increasingly move people away from the sports only. Saving $8 a month versus the full price of YouTube TV over at Direct TV's My Sports Only package, I think, will just convince a lot of people to pay the extra eight bucks and get a ton more content for their money. We'll watch it closely. A lot of people said they haven't got the notification yet. You'll get the notification 30 days before your next billing date. Um, the price hike begins June 25th, 2026. So, if your bill is on June 24th or earlier, you won't see the next price hike until your July bill, and that's when you'll be notified. I believe it's an actual FCC requirement, or it's FTC, I can't remember which one, that these companies must disclose price hikes at least 30 days in advance to customers before they take effect, giving you an option to cancel before the next price hike with it. So, keep that in mind. But Direct TV price hike is coming both on satellite and streaming packages. Hey, if you're a Comcast customer and you have internet only, they can sell you now YouTube TV.

[00:11:49]Comcast has added YouTube TV to his plan. Now, there is a monthly discount for the first year, I think it is, if you sign up. Somebody said they were offered that discount. I didn't find it.

[00:11:59]If you see that, awesome. Take it. Now, a few people are like, don't they offer streaming packages for a while? I saw a lot of comments like that. Yes, they do.

[00:12:07]But traditionally, they have not allowed live TV services to be offered on their Zoom or Play device or be sold through them cuz they wanted you to get Comcast television. For example, when Sling TV came to their um uh streaming players, it was only the international packages originally and then later um they changed that. That's because Comcast didn't offer comparable international packages with it. So, keep that in mind.

[00:12:35]Big change there. Remember, Comcast has lost over 10 million TV customers since their peak to today. Can you imagine being a CEO of a company and knowing you just lost 10 million of your customers?

[00:12:48]That's a scary place to be. And lastly, I still get a lot of questions about this a lot. It's one of my most popular questions. When is ESPN unlimited coming into what package? YouTube TV has confirmed repeatedly this fall ESPN Unlimited will be added into the YouTube TV app for any plan that includes ESPN, including their discounted sports packages will get ESPN unlimited. Well, yes, most of ESPN unlimited is already included in YouTube TV with the live channels. There is some exclusive ESPN Unlimited only events streamed online and that's available here. Once we know more, we'll break it all down. But there you go, some of the biggest stories from the past week, answering some of your biggest questions I get about them today in the weekend edition of Cork Cutting Today. I'll be back again tomorrow. You can find a link to every story I just talked about in the show notes and in the first pinned comment. And until next time, take care, be safe. I'll talk to you all again real soon.