Apple Frustrated by Inability to Reach Deals With TV Programmers for Television Service

[Robin4]

Thank you for the explanation. It is not how I imagined it.

So, the con game starts at the content provider level. Add to that the shoddy service and unreliable monthly bill (if you live in NC, you know what I mean. My bill used to go up every other month, I called the bill would go down, in two months it would go up again much more than the original price).

No wonder Apple can't negotiate a fair deal.

As it stands, I suppose Netflix, Hulu, Sling and MLB package coupled with a robust internet package will have to do. For me it is not entirely the money. I'll pay for a reliable service if and when someone decides to deal fairly.

 

[freddiecable]

Why don't they buy Netflix?

 

[jameskatt]

The cable providers are notoriously greedy and out of touch with what people want. They insist on garbage bundling. One good channel with 10 other crap ones. Apple is going to need to use some of that famous cash reserve and invent us something entirely new. Go straight to the content creators.

First of all, Cable providers have to provide bundling because it is the content creators who create the bundles in the first place. And the content creators are the ones who make more money by bundling their content.

Second, what people want is EVERY CHANNEL. That is what the vast majority of people want. Few people want a poor man's thin channel lineup. They want EVERYTHING. And EVERYTHING costs money. And people are willing to pay for cable.

After all, the cost of an iPhone is $1600 a year alone for the hardware, data, phone, and text messaging expenses.

In contrast, Comcast gives you nearly all channels, high-speed internet, and home alarm system for $2400 a year. That is a bargain for what you get.

The problem for Apple is that the content creators, not the cable providers, don't want to reduce their profits to bottom of the barrel to simply provider Apple with unbundled product. ESPN for example has several channels. It is also part of the ABC-Disney group - which wants also the ABC channels and Disney channels bundled. The same with the other content creators.

Apple is NOT going to lower its own profits by buying content. Apple always makes a profit on its products and services. No way in hell Apple will lose profits. So this is where the impasse is. Both sides want to make profit and not lower their own profit.

Apple is smart to simply be the conduit by selling apps.
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Why don't they buy Netflix?

Netflix hardly makes any profit compared to Apple.
Wasting money on Netflix will dilute the value of Apple's stock. It is money down the drain.
This is true particularly since Apple can have Netflix broadcasts its content via an app on AppleTV. This way, Apple gets Netflix's content without having to pay for any of it.

 

[TouchMint.com]

I'm sure this is how it goes:

Apple: we want everything cheaper because we are apple

Content: no

Apple: but if we don't get everything cheaper we can't make huge margins on markups. No point in providing the service if we don't make huge margins let's blame it on the content providers.

 

[JamesPDX]

Well, if this doesn't work out, Apple could always go back to designing professional computers for the entertainment industry. Watches and Cars? Really?

 

[ipedro]

Tim Cook's strategy appears to be to call the cable monopoly's bluff and democratize the platform to allow independent content producers to be on a level playing field with traditional broadcasters.

Apps on tvOS will allow any entrepreneurial developer to have their content viewed by millions. With the right idea and the right content, they can take on old school broadcasters the same way Netflix has turned the tv model on its head, the same way Uber has blown up taxi's hold on transportation, how AirBnB has the hospitality industry shaking in their boots.

A developer could make a tvOS app to bring together independent journalists that report locally and earn a portion of the advertising revenue generated by their story. Something like this has the potential to first obsolete local news stations and eventually take on juggernauts like CNN.

I think that Apple knows very well what they're doing. They gave the established cable channels an opportunity to join in on the future of tv. Now they've opened the floodgates to allow new era content providers as big as Netflix or as small as bedroom developers to eat the traditional tv monopoly's lunch.

 

[Tech198]

Apple's doing too much here... What's wrong with what they already do ?

If Apple offer packages, users are only gonna want separate apps anyway... and that's what Apple already does...

Hulu, Netflix .... I pay multiple subscriptions, but at least customer is happy... I wouldn't be happy with any sort of package, because they'll always be stuff in there i do not want...

Sine it's taken this long for Apple to strike deals. this has got to be the most difficult to try don't wanna through to..

They really don't wanna let go. Now I think Apple is understanding why we all pirate for a living This *** prevent us from getting the stuff we want at a fair-dink 'em price. $20 for a single movie is over-priced, so that only leaves us the one option.. And by golly, we'll take it.

 

[APlotdevice]

Cable will die one day, but in the mean time it will fight tooth and nail for its survival.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I agree. As far as I am concerned, Hulu has pretty much "cracked" TV. And now that there is the commercial-free tier, it's a real pleasure to watch. Perhaps they'll even offer more choices under their umbrella in the future (like they do with Showtime today).

Hulu won't last "as is". Those 4 networks are seeing CBS make a run at $6/month on it's own. It is reasonably succeeding. How long until ABC, NBC, FOX and CW want the same? Hulu "as is" works now because there's probably contract obligations for some additional period of time and there's not enough money (or financial pain) in the "as is" to really get the "big 4" going. But CBS is showing them how to make $6/month instead of 4 of them sharing a portion of about $12. If you are NBC, ABC, FOX or CW, how long do you put up with that?

 

[mantan]

Who said anything about lower prices for me? The point is lower prices for Apple, so that they can move to a more a la carte system instead of massive bundles, which in turn benefits me. Apple would make a boatload of money but that's fine if I can choose my content for a reasonable price instead of paying $125 a month, 95% of which I never use.

Suppose you're a business owner. You have a set distribution model that works well, is profitable and gets your product to a broad market place.

Another distributor comes in that wants to deliver your product in a much more isolated hodgepodge way. And they would like you to lower your price, so that they could make more money to deliver it in that fashion.

How fast would you laugh them out of your office?

That's the problem Apple faces right now. An a la carte system only works if it brings in the same subscription and ad revenue as the current model. Otherwise you are asking companies to take less money and give you the same product.

There is absolutely room to improve the delivery model. And we are seeing that. For example, most have grown their 'on demand' library significantly. DISH has offered up cheaper bundles and some limited bundles that do not include any sports programming (a huge chunk of the basic cable bill.)

You say you are OK with Apple making a boatload of money and you choosing the content for a 'reasonable price less than $125' a month. What would you consider a 'reasonable price'? And how does the math of that work for the content providers and Apple.

I get that we all want more for less. But we also need to be realistic about what things cost in the real world. The upside the current model is wide variety of high quality programming. A push toward a la carte does not insure that will continue. Everybody assumes the programming THEY like is what will continue to get made when the viewers pay the freight for specific content.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

"Fund" was the wrong word. I should have said "if it wasn't for those 57 bad channels... nobody could get the one good channel"

Here's the deal: cable companies want your money... and you want to watch TV. So you pay your cable bill.

The cable company needs channels for you to watch. So they pay the content providers for channels.

But the content providers won't just sell them the good channels... they "bundle" a bunch of channels together so they can charge more.

And if the cable companies don't agree to pay... they won't have any channels. And thus can't take subscribers' money and the cable company doesn't have a reason to exist.

Discovery Networks won't sell the Discovery Channel to cable companies without making them also pay for TLC, the Oprah Network, Animal Planet, etc.

Viacom won't sell them Comedy Central without also selling them CMT, MTV, Nickelodean, Spike, Logo, etc.

There are a dozen of these giant media companies that control most of what you want to watch.

And that's why the average cable subscriber gets 189 channels even though they only watch an average of 17.

So when people say "I don't want to pay for channels I don't watch"... it's not really up to them. It's the cable companies who are forced to pay for all those extra channels in order to get ANY channels.

And the deal is for every cable subscriber to get every channel. You're paying for channels you don't watch because the cable company already paid for those channels. There's no way to NOT give you those channels to let you pay less... nor is there a way to offer them "a la carte" so people can select certain channels.

So everybody gets 200 channels whether you want them or not. They're all part of your cable bill because that's how cable companies work.

Viacom expects a certain amount of money from the cable companies. A few pennies times 16 channels in their portfolio times 100 million subscribers.

Well what if you just wanted Comedy Central? I'm not sure a cable company is even allowed to sell just one channel. If they did... it would be priced so high that no one would want it anyway.

Instead... you'll get Comedy Central... but you'll also have to get BET and VH1 with it.

This was a good post, but you didn't mention the more important part: advertising sales on those 189 channels "I never watch". The lessor channels don't exist for "pennies per month" from subscribers. They exist for advertising sales. Any pennies explicitly allocated to them is just gravy. Bundles of channels are as big as they are because their owners can sell ads on them. They can sell ads because they have enough people watching channels that "I never watch" to be sellable to companies wanting to advertise to that kind of audience. If a Disney could sell ads on 10 more Disney channels right now, there would be 10 more Disney channels in the Disney bundle. If consumers would be willing to watch television that is ONLY ads & infomercials, there would be thousands of channels offered for as little as free.

It's not really about getting a few cents for junk channels via customer subscriptions. It's about having another big pile of advertising slots to sell for each channel they can add that can get a sufficient number of eyeballs watching. Most of the subscriber revenue that actually pays for television content likely goes to a handful of channels with the most desirable (to the masses) content such as first-run hit shows and live (more expensive) sports.

I suspect there's probably a 100-150+ channel "bundle" that could be had for free made up of channels where the advertising is the whole or vast majority of the revenues (just like the "big 5" can be had for free local over-the-air). In other words, if we could move the masses to refuse to pay for cable/satt anymore at all, channels like ESPN, TNT, TBS, etc would probably all die but probably a 100+ channels would keep on coming because they don't actually cost us consumers anything (and they exist for us to see ads instead of for the pennies they might get in a total subscription fee price).

 

[mantan]

A la cart is that way to go and I suspect it will, I the long run, bring cable bills up. I suspect we will see pay per view options in all sorts of channels this way.

I agree that at some point things will shift to a more 'on demand' model. I also agree that in the long run the costs will be similar to what they are today assuming ads remain. If it's ad free, it'll cost even more.
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Cable is just painfully inefficient. I learned this when trying to watch the recent democratic debate and had no idea what channel it was on. Flipping around I eventually just googled it to find s YouTube official link to a live stream. Clicked it and was watching s live stream in seconds

I don't say this because I feel what I did was remarkable in the slightest. What is remarkable is that content providers haven't moved on to their own a la cart offerings. Nor have cable providers moved on to offer fully streamed channels. And I really don't understand why. Fear of adoption rates?

The networks get paid huge reliable income from basic cable/satellite sub fees/advertising. That money goes straight to the content creators.

What would be their incentive to try to create a direct distribution model that would earn less guaranteed revenue?

Suppose you made a product and it was guaranteed to be sold in every Target, Wamart and grocery store in the US and be part of the 'standard customer bundle' they had to buy. Would you decide to give that up and start direct shipping stuff to only the customers who wanted to buy it?

Simple business, you don't give up or threaten a large steady revenue stream for a smaller one.

 

[oneMadRssn]

To this, I think you're missing the point of bundled channels. It is not about having great content for us masses to want to watch on every single channel. It's having enough eyeballs watching something on those channels to profitably sell commercials on those channels. Commercials are free (HUGE) revenue (not from us consumer's wallets) that flows to the Studios to help them cover the costs of some of the most popular new and original programming that is on their more popular channels in some bundle.

Kill the lessor channels per this thinking that they generally don't have much in the way of original programming and you kill all that commercial-driven revenue. Where does that get made up? Apparently not from us who are expecting to be able to buy just the good channels... or just the good bundle of shows ONLY for a big fat discount off of what we pay now. So who takes the financial hit there? Is there enough money leftover in this new "future" to maintain the quality of the channels or shows that make Apple's cut?

And it IS possible to get a bundle of shows (or media properties) that can appeal to enough to satisfy a critical mass. But who gets to pick that bundle? And which critical mass is going to get their satisfaction.

I have a few uncles that absolutely love the fishing channel (24/7 fishing). I like to fish a little but that would definitely not make my list of channels or shows or media properties. So do I get the media properties I want or do my Uncles get the media properties they want. If we vote, they outnumber me, so Fishing channel/shows it is! (if we represented the collective wants of the critical mass).

"As is" there is tremendous diversity of programming for all kinds of wants. I could never leave that channel on even for a fraction of the time they do. But they LOVE it. So "as is" they and those like them get what they want, you and those like you get what you want, me and those like me get what we want, etc.

This alternative is a Corporation picking some mix of channels or shows or "media properties" for us and in one way or another, very likely killing off the diversity that serves up something for about everyone with a narrower selection judged most popular for a large segment. If any one of us is lucky enough to be in the large segment, GREAT. But if we're not, "too bad, Apple has chosen... like it or go back to your antiquated cable/satt" and "$200 billion in the bank can't be wrong," etc.

On-demand streaming has ads too, and in many ways those are more valuable (per viewer) because more is known about the viewer. Fishing channel doesn't know what rods your uncle was checking out online earlier, thus the ads are blunt and generalized. When watching that same show on streaming, they can put a perfetly targeted ad directed to one of the rods your uncle is considering. On a per viewer level, this is way bigger than traditional tv ads.

I think you're stuck in the live broadcast mindset, when the number of simultanious broadasts was limited, an thus the idea of a channel was needed. Todays technology can support a nearly unlimited number of simulatnious broadcasts. Literally every person can have their own channel perfectly tailored exactly to what they want. This isn't a channel anymore really, it's on-demand. When i select an episode on hulu, i am in a way creating my own channel, because after that episode it will play something else it thinks i'll like. My neighbor that starts a different show 10 minutes later creates his own channel, and so on and so forth.

Streaming is a demoratization of tv. The shows that attract viewers will get paid, you vote with your eyeballs. With cable, there is a disconnet because ratings aren't accurate and often don't reflect the actual popularity of a show. I think this opens up the possibility of having even more shows, targetted at smaller niche groups, because the feedbak would be instant. Its already happening in a way - look at all the niche shows on youtube and vimeo. They don't need cable or a channel to be successful.

Channels have no place in the streaming future.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Who said anything about lower prices for me? The point is lower prices for Apple, so that they can move to a more a la carte system instead of massive bundles, which in turn benefits me. Apple would make a boatload of money but that's fine if I can choose my content for a reasonable price instead of paying $125 a month, 95% of which I never use.

Apple ALREADY offers channel-less, channel-bundless shows al-a-carte. They've had it for years now. It's even commercial-free. It's priced to make it work for the content creators and Apple. So why doesn't that dominate the way we consume TV now? Because we don't want to pay for it. The most dominating element of this "dream" is this "big discount" vs. what we pay now. We seem to believe that there is a "big discount" to be had, while cutting Apple in as another middleman and they get their 30%.

If the various players are accustomed to extracting $125/month from all of us (actually it's about $73/month on average), any replacement model will be priced to cut Apple in (30%) AND it will need to offer "more money" for the players to motivate them to embrace the change and Yikes(!) potentially get themselves under Apple's thumb just like their Music industry cousins.

In other words, 200 channels for $125 or 20 channels for (I'm guessing) $175. That's how al-a-carte will work if it is to ever replace the existing model. If there is not "more money" in it for everyone, why do they embrace the change AND cut Apple in? Apple is not going to spend the cash hoard to subsidize this. Cable doesn't have to take the hit since they own the pipe on which Apple's replacement entirely depends. Content creators don't want to (and could not) cut their costs 90% to pass through a 90% discount for us consumers. Who is left to foot the bill?

This is one big group delusion. The main obstacle to this particular "the future" is us consumer's mindset heavily locked upon the idea that there is a "huge discount" in this for us. There's not. And if we ever get past that concept, THAT is when this dream could potentially come into tangible play. Else, if the masses buy the delusion so hard that we all refuse to keep paying, expect the quality of the programming we do want to fall to about YouTube level, where near-zero production budgets work for "shows" that cost nothing AND expect the breadth & depth & professionalism of what we do want to watch to be significantly cut (in other words, more Kardashian-type programming, more reality shows, etc (all cheap productions) vs. professionally written, professionally acted, professionally directed stuff.

 

[jlc1978]

But CBS is showing them how to make $6/month instead of 4 of them sharing a portion of about $12. If you are NBC, ABC, FOX or CW, how long do you put up with that?

That is the big problem with a la carte. Instead of paying $12 for a bundle your wind up paying more for what you want since companies will want what their channel is worth individually, not what they get from a bundle. Bundling, while giving each provider less per subscriber makes up for that by delivering a large subscriber base. Unbundling also means a lot of those channels with tiny viewership go away since instead of getting pennies per subscriber but getting it from every subscriber they'll need to survive on their real subscriber base who probably won't pay what is needed to stay in business. Cable will change but fully unbundled offerings are unlikely, IMHO, simply because the economics don't work unless you are a CBS, HBO, or one of the other big guys..

 

[macnewbie91]

Tim Cook is the worst negotiator ever. Eddy Cue should be working at McDonald's and not as a big-wig at Apple.

First with Apple Pay-- Canada and Australia aren't fully on board yet, because of mere pennies.

Now with the TV service. I'm sure Apple wants 1 cent more per channel view than they're getting so everyone misses out on technology advancements.

Tim Cook and Eddy Cue are dumb and dumber. Don't even give me the "Apple is making more money than ever argument," that was going to happen anyways.

 

[Lemon Mac]

About time the archaic methods for TV consumption in the US were overhauled.
Thank god in the UK we have the TV licence, quality content and high quality broadcast (and now narrowcast) from mainly the BBC, but on occasion ITV and Channel 4.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

On-demand streaming has ads too, and in many ways those are more valuable (per viewer) because more is known about the viewer. Fishing channel doesn't know what rods your uncle was checking out online earlier, thus the ads are blunt and generalized. When watching that same show on streaming, they can put a perfetly targeted ad directed to one of the rods your uncle is considering. On a per viewer level, this is way bigger than traditional tv ads.

I think you're stuck in the live broadcast mindset, when the number of simultanious broadasts was limited, an thus the idea of a channel was needed. Todays technology can support a nearly unlimited number of simulatnious broadcasts. Literally every person can have their own channel perfectly tailored exactly to what they want. This isn't a channel anymore really, it's on-demand. When i select an episode on hulu, i am in a way creating my own channel, because after that episode it will play something else it thinks i'll like. My neighbor that starts a different show 10 minutes later creates his own channel, and so on and so forth.

Streaming is a demoratization of tv. The shows that attract viewers will get paid, you vote with your eyeballs. With cable, there is a disconnet because ratings aren't accurate and often don't reflect the actual popularity of a show. I think this opens up the possibility of having even more shows, targetted at smaller niche groups, because the feedbak would be instant. Its already happening in a way - look at all the niche shows on youtube and vimeo. They don't need cable or a channel to be successful.

Channels have no place in the streaming future.

Come on. On-demand ads are not sold for 50 times channel ad pricing to make up for the volume of ads running on each channel and all of the bundled channels too. That's how the math would have to work to make a few streaming ads make up for ALL of the revenue made from commercials "as is" right now.

To the math: I've done the math and last time I did, total U.S. TV advertising revenue for the "as is" is about $54 per U.S. household PER MONTH. So unless you have your streaming bundle of channels costing $54 per month before you actually have ANY channels/programming costs factored in, you are short-changing the revenue production of the "as is". If everyone followed you, SOMEBODY has to take the hit. Cut Apple in for 30% and SOMEBODY has to take that hit too. Who takes that hit in this "new model"?

And I'm NOT stuck in a channels-or-bust mindset. I like the idea of on-demand, commercial-free, watch-only-what-I-want-to-watch, when-I-want-to-watch-it as much as anyone here. The problem is the math doesn't work if we look at it beyond ourselves. Why does the Studios want to give us that? Why does Cable who also has the absolutely essential broadband pipe want to give us that? Where does our "big discount" come from (meaning who takes that hit)?

Philosophically, I get everything you are saying. But everything you're saying is heavily biased to our (consumer) perspective. Let me do that now with another kind of product we buy...

I don't want to pay "greedy" Apple $1000 for the next iPhone. I don't want to pay "greedy" Apple thousands of dollars for my next Mac. Instead, I want those for 90% less than Apple charges now. I don't care if it's profitable or not for them; this is about me and what I want to pay for such stuff. The "greedy" Apple has plenty of money in the bank already. I want what they make for next to nothing.

THIS topic is not so different than what I just wrote. Substitute names of the company and the products. But obviously, that makes no sense. And it makes no sense in THIS topic either.

I love the idea of THIS. But the key is showing the OTHER players how THEY are going to make more money. Else it gets nowhere. Apple has been at this same basic thing for >5 years now. If it's so good for those beyond Apple, why is it taking so long? Because they don't want to give away their iPhones/Macs/etc for 80% or 90% off mostly to further enrich Apple.

And Apple doesn't want us to get our deep discount either: Apple and "deep discount" has never been a partnership in reality.
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Why don't they buy Netflix?

Because Apple doesn't want to pay for the content either. They got away with getting a big slice of music products revenues without having to buy EMI or similar. They want to do that again with video.

• Apple COULD buy Netflix
• Apple COULD have bought NBC/Universal but they didn't even try, so Comcast got that. They could have easily outbid Comcast for that deal.
• Apple COULD buy NFL Sunday Night Football as rumored recently.
• Apple COULD have bid for NFL Sunday Ticket instead of letting DirecTV win that contract again. And they could have easily outbid DirecTV for that deal too.
• Apple COULD buy DISH network or could have outbid AT&T for DirecTV.
• Apple COULD buy the massive Warner library of content that is for sale right now.

But Apple is going at this just like we consumers. They want everything for very little. Where they differ from us is they want the content owners to basically PAY them (their 30%) to host & package this content for us consumers. In that way, they are valuing the content even less than us delusional dreamers. Where we think we should still pay something (apparently about $5 to maybe $30/month or so) for everything we want to watch, Apple wants the content owners to pay Apple 30% just to serve it up to us.

Apple certainly has the money on hand to buy and/or make original content on a MASSIVE scale. But they like the money more than they value that idea. Instead, they just want video property like they got music property. But the video property owners saw how that worked out for the music property owners.

 

[TheRealTVGuy]

Yup. Something needs to be done about this extremely tight grip cable companies have on consumers. just look at TWC! They have SO many people, including me, stuck with their internet service. Besides DSL or Dial up, there literally are not any other options in my area. People aren't ever going to easily switch away from having one huge enormous set of TV channels and such.

I think people are stuck with the local news, simple, live, watch whatever show is on sort of thing, flipping channels and stuff. Maybe it could eventually be made into one large stream over the Internet, but internet speeds vs rates just aren't there yet because we have a monopoly. TWC/Comcast, to name the major one. People don't feel like seeking out several different companies, several different apps, several different experiences, some live, some exclusives, some late to the game streaming options... It's all a big headache. Average people don't like toying with stuff like that. We need to move forward but it will be incredibly difficult.

We pay like $65 a month for Internet and get 15 down and 1 up. $10 more? It's only 20 down and 2 up. Another $10 more, 30 down, 3 up, etc. It's terrible. It costs $15 a month for 2 down, 1 up, but take into the like $8 modem fee, probably $5-$10 county tax, and the fact that TWC pretty much doubles the rate after a year or two... You get the jist. Terrible.

I have issues simply playing an online game if somebody in the house is just watching Netflix. Take a bunch of photos and videos over vacation? Screw it. iCPL is frozen for days, Internet is trashed. Get a new PS4 game? *rarely* have less than a 30 minute wait to download stuff for it. Had to wait 6 hours to download Fallout 4. Sure, I can tough out a little waiting. But the fact that it TRASHES your internet on every other device for the entire duration of the download is horrible... Stuck with ~400 ping and .25mbps down.

I know this is a huge 1st world problem and there are worse situations, heck, I don't even have a data limit each month (that would piss me off) but this feels like a crime nonetheless. Extremely annoying.

Jeez, that REALLY sucks! Reminds me of the dialup days. I understand that the cable companies invested the resources into building out their networks, but it just really stinks that that's created basically a monopoly of true (DSL doesn't count) high speed internet.
[doublepost=1453297732][/doublepost]

Some of us could give to $hits about any sports, live or otherwise.

Then you folks should be this first in line to cut the cord and save some $$ !

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Cable will die one day, but in the mean time it will fight tooth and nail for its survival.

As long as any replacement relies on Cable's (broadband internet) pipes, Cable can never die. Cable is going to get theirs no matter what happens to cable television subscription revenue. We are fooling ourselves to believe otherwise.

For Cable to actually die, an Apple must find a way to bypass that particular middleman, meaning a way to link us consumers directly to iCloud servers without having to go through a toll gate(s) owned by a Comcast or similar. Until THAT innovation is brought to market, there is no way to kill Cable. In fact, it's just the opposite. The controller of the pipe can kill all this streaming, cord cutting by pricing their broadband packages accordingly and/or embracing tiers. With what is often a choice of 1 or maybe 2 broadband providers for most of us (and where it is 2, aren't both in the cableTV business too), what are we going to do?

And don't spin Google Fiber. If you look up where Google already is, you'll see that Google is in the CableTV business too... and pricing is as high as it seems to be for Cable broadband + cable packages even where Google is not.

 

[babaroga73]

Guess what ? There are tens and tens of users that are not US based , and will never likely see any of this, and wouldn't care less if they strike a deal or not. I know cable is evil (it is evil even in my country, yes) , but the cable digital (50 or so channels) + 10mbps internet withoud a cap is about 25$/Mo. Me , myself , wants just to can do as much of the things (games, apps) I can do on my iPad, to can do on my Apple TV 4. Also "your provider is not listed" is a bummer, just for NG, CC, Fox, Discovery and History only.

 

[s2mikey]

I'm sure this is how it goes:

Apple: we want everything cheaper because we are apple

Content: no

Apple: but if we don't get everything cheaper we can't make huge margins on markups. No point in providing the service if we don't make huge margins let's blame it on the content providers.

This is probably it too. Good for the content providers in this case. Dont get "appled". If you do YOUR margins and profits go down while Apples go UP. Screw that.

 

[Lemon Mac]

[QUOTE="
And don't spin Google Fiber. If you look up where Google already is, you'll see that Google is in the CableTV business too... and pricing is as high as it seems to be for Cable broadband + cable packages even where Google is not.[/QUOTE]

Aaah the free market economy working at its best.

Thank god in the UK there are such things as industry watch dogs and a government / authorities that have the power to curtail excessive rip off of the populace.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

We have Watchdogs and GOV too and some of us even believe that the latter would step in and FORCE Cable to keep broadband pricing "as is" in an effort to at least spin the possibility that Apple could take all the cable revenue from Cable and Cable could just do nothing about it. Yet, the very same GOV is the one that lets many of the very same companies pinch "unlimited" wireless broadband into "unlimited*"... with throttling beyond a certain point AND tiers for "heavier bandwidth users like video streamers."

"But this is wired broadband so this will be different"

 

[nt5672]

In order to change the Cable TV industry there needs to be many more wire cutters. Just go back to over-the-air TV for a while. Yes, you miss your beloved HBO programming and some others, but really its just TV. Want to impact an industry, some sacrifice is required.

We spent $150 for HDHomeRun and EyeTV and have not looked back. Oh, it does cost us $20/year for TVGuide subscription which allows auto program recording. For the $150/month we were spending on Cable we can buy a few BlueRays. Usually we get the BlueRays before the show is on cable so we go to our friends (with cable) and have a Movie Watch party. We don't really miss much.