Google's YouTube TV service has been through a rough time over the past few months, between dealing with carriage disputes and fighting Roku. It's likely that at least a few people have given up on YouTube TV over the never-ending problems, especially as prices fluctuate ahead of anticipated channel lineup changes, which might be why Google has now set up a referral program to help attract new subscribers.

Referral programs are fairly common with products and services sold online, which usually involve someone sending a special signup link to someone else, which then gives the owner of the link a small cut or one-time bonus if the other person makes a purchase. In this case, YouTube TV subscribers can generate referral links from their profile page (via 9to5Google), or by navigating to tv.youtube.com/referafriend.

If someone signs up to YouTube TV with your referral link, you get a $20 discount on your next bill, and the person signing up will get a $10 discount on their first payment. However, the discount is only applied if the other person has never signed up to YouTube TV before or used a trial program. Google frequently promotes extended trials for YouTube TV, so that last catch might be a problem if you're hoping to get a few signups. Also, the referral link only works if someone signs up for the base YouTube plan, not the individual network subscriptions without paying for the base plan. Finally, one account can only refer someone else 10 times.

YouTube TV also added 4K streaming and offline downloads last year, but only as part of a more expensive ‘4K Plus’ package that costs an extra $19.99 each month. Meanwhile, other streaming services are also becoming more expensive — Netflix recently announced a price increase. More recently, a "most watched" sorting option for the main guide was added to all the YouTube TV applications.