Here's why AT&T doesn't want DirecTV Now to kill cable completely

AT&T's long awaited streaming TV service, DirecTV Now, finally arrives on Wednesday. If you can put aside the potentially harmful effects of it being favored on AT&T's network, it looks like a competitive cable replacement for 20 million or so Americans who do not subscribe to cable or satellite TV today.

However, that's the only group DirecTV Now is really targeting here. This chart from Statista hows why: Between DirecTV and its U-Verse platform, AT&T already has the largest pay-TV subscriber base in the US, with a little over 25 million in total.

This means AT&T has to walk a tightrope: It wants a big slice of the cord cutter pie, but it also doesn't want to turn all of its existing subscribers into cord cutters right away. This seems to be why DirecTV Now isn't priced as low as AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson initially promised; after a promotional period where you can get a 100+ channel bundle for $35 month, its standard rates aren't dramatically lower than rivals like Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, or even DirecTV itself.