WOW!, the Midwest cable and internet provider, is shutting down its TV service. All of its customers are being moved to YouTube TV. If you are a WOW! customer, here is exactly what is happening and when.
WOW!, formally WideOpenWest, announced back in May 2023 that it would phase out its in-house television products and migrate everyone to YouTube TV.
That process has been running in stages ever since. We are now at the final stretch.
What Is Happening To WOW!?
There are two groups of WOW! TV customers, and the timeline is slightly different for each.
If you are on WOW! TV+, the company’s streaming service that was built to compete with Fubo and Sling TV, your transition to YouTube TV is already underway.
WOW! expects that migration to be fully completed by June 30, 2026, at which point WOW! TV+ shuts down entirely.
If you are a legacy WOW! cable TV customer, meaning you still have a set-top box, a physical cable connection, and a DVR like the Ultra TV all-home DVR, your transition is happening in stages.
Some customers in certain markets started losing their traditional cable service in April 2026.
WOW! has declined to give a specific end date for the full legacy shutdown and says the timing depends on your area.
What is clear is that the service is going away. The equipment will stop working. The set-top boxes and DVRs will go dark.
All new residential customers who sign up for TV service through WOW! right now are automatically provisioned with YouTube TV. WOW! no longer sells its own TV product at all.
What Is WOW!?
WOW! is the eighth largest cable operator in the United States. The company was founded in Denver in 1996 and has spent decades building out a network that primarily covers the Midwest.
It serves Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana as its core markets, with additional service areas in Alabama, South Carolina, and parts of the Florida panhandle. Its network passes 1.9 million homes and businesses.
On December 31, 2025, DigitalBridge and Crestview completed a take-private acquisition of WOW!, taking the company off the public market.
The shift away from cable TV and toward a broadband-first model had been in motion well before that deal closed.
WOW!’s CEO Teresa Elder described it in 2023 as furthering the company’s “broadband-first strategy” and said she was “thrilled” to give customers access to what she called a “best-in-class pay TV service.”
What that means in plain terms, WOW! decided the cable TV business is not worth running anymore.
They would rather be an internet company that resells YouTube TV than a cable company that operates its own TV infrastructure.
What You Get With YouTube TV
YouTube TV is Google’s live TV streaming service. It starts at $73 per month for the base plan, which includes more than 100 channels covering local networks, news, sports, and entertainment.
WOW! customers transitioning through a bundle may get a discounted rate, the company has been offering YouTube TV for $10 a month for the first year through its bundle packages.
YouTube TV includes unlimited cloud DVR storage, which means you can record as many shows as you want without a hard cap.
It supports streaming on multiple devices simultaneously. It includes Spanish-language packages and sports add-ons including NFL Sunday Ticket.
It does not require a set-top box, you watch it through a smart TV, a Roku, an Amazon Fire Stick, an Apple TV, or a phone or tablet.
The transition from a physical cable box to a streaming device is the biggest adjustment for long-term cable customers.
The channels are largely the same. The interface is different, and the hardware you have used for years will no longer work.
Why This Is Happening
WOW! is not the first cable company to do this and will not be the last.
Frontier stopped offering traditional cable TV and moved to YouTube TV several years ago. Charter began adding streaming services directly into its TV bundles last summer.
Sparklight Cable, also known as Cable One, shut down its traditional service and moved customers to a streaming-only platform.
Smaller regional providers across the country have made similar moves, some partnering with YouTube TV, others with DirecTV Stream or Sling TV.
The economics stopped working.
Running a cable TV infrastructure is expensive.
Broadband is where the money is. Internet service has high margins and near-universal demand. Cable TV has shrinking margins and a customer base that has been leaving for a decade.
The cord-cutting numbers tell the story. Millions of households have dropped traditional cable packages over the past ten years.
The trend has not slowed. Over-the-air broadcast, Netflix, Hulu, and live TV streamers have collectively absorbed a customer base that used to have nowhere else to go.
Now that there are alternatives, the cable companies that built their business on having no competition are discovering what competition feels like.
YouTube TV, which Google launched in 2017, has become the consolidation point for a growing number of these exits.
It has the channel count, the cloud DVR, the multi-device support, and the brand recognition that regional cable operators cannot match on their own.
It is easier and cheaper for WOW! to resell YouTube TV than to keep the lights on for a service fewer customers want every year.
If you are a WOW! customer and you have not heard from the company yet, you will. Check your email and your account portal for migration details specific to your area.
