Excuse me? Where did I say saintly? I believe all of my posts in this thread revolve around the idea that the enormously powerful cableTV empire will get theirs no matter how this could go because they also are the broadband providers for most of us.
And yes, I do shoot a few pokes at Apple for being their own worst enemy in helping this dream along because of how things went down with the music industry. If I was in the video side, there's no way I would just hand it over to any ONE company and let them tell me how my products will be priced, etc.
There are no saints here. Cable has a thorough hold on continuing to be the middlemen regardless of whether Apple finds a way to slip in or not. Apple is doing a Wall Street banks thing here by just trying to get themselves in as either replacement middlemen or another middleman. Some consumers are of the mindset of "if they don't give me what I want for cheap, I'll just steal it". Etc.
Pulling off the dream comes down to these simple truths:
- The artists on the content creation end of the chain will want any replacement to make them more money than the current model gives them now
- Apple wants to take a nice big bite of this action right off the top
- The CableTV players own the pipes through which any replacement served via Internet must flow. They too will- one way or the other- make more- not less- in any new model.
- Consumers live in a great illusion that somehow al-a-carte and commercial free is available to them in such a way that they can end up paying a fraction of what they pay now and still get everything they like to watch at the quality it is now... AND have the diversity of new pilots continue to flow so that we have new great shows to watch in the future. What really happens in al-a-carte world is not $100 per month divided by 200 channels = $.50 cents per channel times the 10 channels I actually want = $5/month. Instead, those 10 channels end up being priced for the new model to preserve the revenue stream. Can you say about $10+ per channel? So 10 channels we watch + 190 channels we don't watch cost $100 or 10 channels we watch at about $100/month.
- The commercials that we never see running on those hundreds of channels we never watch provide a huge subsidy paid for by those who hope we might see their commercial, which is crucial revenue for those who make those shows we want to see. Kill the commercials and that $5 or $10 al-a-carte, commercial-free subscription we dream about has to jump to at least $59 to $64/month per household just to make up for those lost subsidies paid for in OPM... even if we could get the rest of the chain to sell us the channels at just 50 cents each.
- The broadband bill at about $50 will almost certainly go up for "higher bandwidth users like video streamers" in this al-a-carte world. If the cable guys take the hit in their cableTV subscription revenues, they'll just make it up with higher broadband rates. Effectively, they have a monopoly on the last mile. Apple can't innovate a way around that (to link us directly with iCloud) by building a Television or new set-top box. This would take some entirely new form of very wide bandwidth, GLOBAL reach communication innovation (LTE doesn't have the capacity either).
So how does the dream end up? If we get al-a-carte and commercial free and Apple is injected as an additional middleman, I would predict our 10-15 channels will probably cost about $150 per month with broadband remaining around where it is OR we'll get a new, "cheaper" TV package (of just 10 or 15 "channels") at about $50 per month and our broadband will rise to about $150 per month. Net result: all the players still make at least what they make now and we end up with far less diversity of choice and/or quality and the loss of the big subsidy support that doesn't even come out of our pockets.
One might respond: then, I just want the few shows that I watch. We have that already in the iTunes store. But we don't want to pay for that. Instead, we want this magical, everything-I-could-want plan at a huge cost reduction vs. what 'I' pay now and yet we still expect it all to "just work" in spite of Apple plugging in as additional middleman. Somebody takes the hit in this dream. If it's just Studios + Apple + Us in the end, who is it that takes that hit? If not us and not Apple, then quality and diversity of programming must fall. We already have much cheaper "channels" and programming made on low or no-budgets; it's called YouTube.
If one dreams of al-a-carte, my suggestion is play the system "as is" flipping back & forth between providers who offer new subscriber discounts (for instance, bounce back & forth between DISH and DirecTV every 2 years). Use the "FAV" channel functionality to cut the 200 channels down to the 10 or 15 you actually watch so that you are only seeing the channels you care about. The other 190 will still be running invisibly in the background, generating that subsidy revenue with commercials you'll never see. Use the DVR function to record the shows on the 10 or 15 channels you want to watch and then skip the commercials when you play them back. That ends up being a close approximation of the dream... except the 85% to 95% savings from the "as is" bill that will NEVER show up no matter who injects themselves into the chain.