Apple Pressuring TV Networks to Halve iTunes Episode Pricing?

[JAT]

This also means it is obliged to provide niche services such as closed captions, regional programming and specialist interest as part of it's charter. Some of the very things the current US based model of commercial broadcasting will not address, or provide if there is no profit motive.

Um, we have public TV here, too. I've got something like 7 channels, since analog broadcasting went away and bandwidth was freed up.

Comparing your donation-based networks to our pay networks hardly seems worthwhile.

And I'm trying to figure out why so many outside of the USA are so worried about receiving USA TV. Other than some British shows on a channel I pay for and they pipe in from the UK, I don't know anything about TV outside of my country. I guess that's a bummer if you don't have the same access to our TV online, but I imagine I don't have access to yours, either. Maybe Apple's media store isn't really the solution to the problems between the multiple, fractured governments attempting to rule humans on this planet.

 

[SpaceKitty]

you end up paying for television one way or another. i like the itunes model because it eliminates commercials and i can choose what i want to pay for instead of subsidizing a bunch of crap i don't like. it ends up being a lot cheaper than a cable bill and i don't come home and throw on the television watching hours upon hours of content. the signal-to-noise ratio of my television watching is very high; no game shows, no reality shows, no bad shows sandwiched in between two good shows.

i'd actually like to see all television go this way, instead of the ineffectual nielsen rating system, a system based on purchased episodes would probably lead to fewer good shows being cancelled.

I do the same. I work nights and although I have a DVR with my DirecTV, I prefer to buy all my shows on iTunes and watch them on my computer. There are no commercials like there would be streaming.

Someone also mentioned the cost of backing all these shows up. I have entirely too much to worry about backing up, 2.5TB worth of TV shows and movies purchased in iTunes. I have about half of them that I watch over and over again every so many months. Some of the TV show seasons I got bored with and never watched all the way through such as Supernatural. I bought four seasons of that and barely made it through season one before I got bored with it. If I delete some of these that I'll never watch, I'll probably have only 1TB full. I think I might start deleting some of these today!

I'll still buy shows that interest me on iTunes, even if the price stays the same.

 

[donbadman]

Um, we have public TV here, too. I've got something like 7 channels, since analog broadcasting went away and bandwidth was freed up.

Comparing your donation-based networks to our pay networks hardly seems worthwhile.

And I'm trying to figure out why so many outside of the USA are so worried about receiving USA TV. Other than some British shows on a channel I pay for and they pipe in from the UK, I don't know anything about TV outside of my country. I guess that's a bummer if you don't have the same access to our TV online, but I imagine I don't have access to yours, either. Maybe Apple's media store isn't really the solution to the problems between the multiple, fractured governments attempting to rule humans on this planet.

You should get out more, the world is a big interesting place.

 

[Peace]

Well Hulu is now reported to be looking into charging for "popular" shows, so...

I expect the penetration rate for people buying an episode to watch once and delete would be very low unless it really was just pennies.

So I expect Apple is trying to make the per episode pricing more competitive with DVD box sets for people buying episodes for archival purposes, saving users the inconvenience of having to rip and convert their DVDs to MV4's to watch on their tv's.

Hulu is owned by NBC Universal. We all know about them.

It'll need a digital TV tuner built in then. I'll bet it hasn't got one.

Clearwire is one of the companies that will be getting the iPhone. They are partially owned by Comcast,NBC Universal,Intel and Google.

Clear has been using Portland as it's testbed for WiFi.They cover the whole city.

Intel and Apple have a big R&D facility here.

Comcast has been telling their Portland customers that starting Jan 27th to re-set all their settings on their HD boxes due to "enhancements" to the onscreen guide that will occur around 2AM.

Now visualize. Think different!!

I'm holding a tablet in my hand ( figuratively speaking ) while sitting on the couch.

The TV is on and I want to check out the guide to see what else is on.
Instead of using the remote that comes with the HD box I'll use the "device" because I can look at the guide on it and it will show me a little preview of the show ON the device. How ?. Simple. The guide pops up on the device,Clearwire sends a small clip of the show I've selected on the device and I watch it. I decide I like it so I "touch" it.
The signal is sent to the HD Cable box and it changes to the show I was previewing.

The Device will more than likely have a RF in it.

 

[jtablet]

wouldn't ipad work better than iphone for tv related apps?

Doesn't iPhone do this already?

Edit to add: This is why the iPhone was such a success: it meant you needed less expensive gadgets to do the same things as before.

I really do not see what the tablet format does differently that can possibly make it as exciting as the iPhone. Unless it means I can replace my wacom tablet and use it for content creation, but from what I can make out about the tablet so far is that it is just a bigger iPhone but with no phone element and aimed squarely at content consumption.

Yes, and that's exactly the point. There is a remote control app for the iPhone, but it can work better with a bigger screen, no? Wouldn't the iPad would bring thousands of better apps to the TV (presumably Apple TV, but hopefully Tivo, others)? Preview podcasts or padcasts while tv is playing another, run apps that let you buy stuff that you see during a show, etc. Wouldn't all those types of things work better on a tablet than on a phone - screensize, multi-tasking, etc.?

 

[dashiel]

I don't really mind the price, but I do have these issues:
-Better quality (at least DVD quality for SD & BluRay quality for HD)

blu-ray quality is impossible at the moment. the united states broadband infrastructure has fallen so far behind the rest of the industrialized world even the better connected households couldn't support blu-ray quality. example: i get about 30Mbps down, roughly 5 times faster than most basic dsl packages, i average about 1.5MBps when downloading large files. if you take recent high quality release like "a bugs life" it has a an average bit rate of of 24MBps; it's 22GB in total size, so at 1.5MBps it would take a little over 4 hours to download, and that's for a relatively short movie, if you had something longer like transformers my download time would be nearly 8.5 hours. someone on a $30 a month dsl connection would have to wait 16.5 hours for a bug's life and 33 hours for transformers

-Entire episode; I find that some episodes & movies having missing scenes/parts of scenes

i've actually noticed the opposite, the daily show for example usually includes extended interview sections (though the stopped this recently)

-If buying a whole season, include the special features included on the DVDs

tough to do for first run shows as they come out 24 hours after they air so the special features aren't available yet. it would also impact sales of dvds/blu-rays.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

TV episodes have to become cheaper.

They cost nothing on broadcast. I'd download episodes for a buck instead of watching live.

Not against lower price at all, but your comment is not true. The do cost something on broadcast, paid for via a slice of your cable/satt fee and/or all the commercials that break up the program.

 

[donbadman]

Hulu is owned by NBC Universal. We all know about them.



Clearwire is one of the companies that will be getting the iPhone. They are partially owned by Comcast,NBC Universal,Intel and Google.

Clear has been using Portland as it's testbed for WiFi.They cover the whole city.

Intel and Apple have a big R&D facility here.

Comcast has been telling their Portland customers that starting Jan 27th to re-set all their settings on their HD boxes due to "enhancements" to the onscreen guide that will occur around 2AM.

Now visualize. Think different!!

I'm holding a tablet in my hand ( figuratively speaking ) while sitting on the couch.

The TV is on and I want to check out the guide to see what else is on.
Instead of using the remote that comes with the HD box I'll use the "device" because I can look at the guide on it and it will show me a little preview of the show ON the device. How ?. Simple. The guide pops up on the device,Clearwire sends a small clip of the show I've selected on the device and I watch it. I decide I like it so I "touch" it.
The signal is sent to the HD Cable box and it changes to the show I was previewing.

The Device will more than likely have a RF in it.

Amazing, this will change broadcasting forever... a very expensive remote control.

 

[jtablet]

Exactly!

Hulu is owned by NBC Universal. We all know about them.



Clearwire is one of the companies that will be getting the iPhone. They are partially owned by Comcast,NBC Universal,Intel and Google.

Clear has been using Portland as it's testbed for WiFi.They cover the whole city.

Intel and Apple have a big R&D facility here.

Comcast has been telling their Portland customers that starting Jan 27th to re-set all their settings on their HD boxes due to "enhancements" to the onscreen guide that will occur around 2AM.

Now visualize. Think different!!

I'm holding a tablet in my hand ( figuratively speaking ) while sitting on the couch.

The TV is on and I want to check out the guide to see what else is on.
Instead of using the remote that comes with the HD box I'll use the "device" because I can look at the guide on it and it will show me a little preview of the show ON the device. How ?. Simple. The guide pops up on the device,Clearwire sends a small clip of the show I've selected on the device and I watch it. I decide I like it so I "touch" it.
The signal is sent to the HD Cable box and it changes to the show I was previewing.

The Device will more than likely have a RF in it.

Well put. Now that would be a game changer... And they could help re-vive Apple TV and avenge Newton and Apple TV at once...

 

[Cameront9]

…then it's the networks' fault for not including it in the files they submit to Apple for sale, right?

Right, I did not mean to imply otherwise. However, Apple should take the prerogative and pressure the networks to include closed captioning.

 

[donbadman]

I predict a massive FAIL just like apple TV. The eReader thing could be interesting but I find it very difficult to get excited about a remote control.

 

[jtablet]

Missing the point

Hulu is owned by NBC Universal. We all know about them.



Clearwire is one of the companies that will be getting the iPhone. They are partially owned by Comcast,NBC Universal,Intel and Google.

Clear has been using Portland as it's testbed for WiFi.They cover the whole city.

Intel and Apple have a big R&D facility here.

Comcast has been telling their Portland customers that starting Jan 27th to re-set all their settings on their HD boxes due to "enhancements" to the onscreen guide that will occur around 2AM.

Now visualize. Think different!!

I'm holding a tablet in my hand ( figuratively speaking ) while sitting on the couch.

The TV is on and I want to check out the guide to see what else is on.
Instead of using the remote that comes with the HD box I'll use the "device" because I can look at the guide on it and it will show me a little preview of the show ON the device. How ?. Simple. The guide pops up on the device,Clearwire sends a small clip of the show I've selected on the device and I watch it. I decide I like it so I "touch" it.
The signal is sent to the HD Cable box and it changes to the show I was previewing.

The Device will more than likely have a RF in it.

I predict a massive FAIL just like apple TV. The eReader thing could be interesting but I find it very difficult to get excited about a remote control.

The ability to control and play all your media ('remote control') has to be central to this thing.

But you are missing the point, that's really just one app - but it can be a killer if it truly integrated the web/tv experience.

The device will still be a sweet e-reader and probably have a neat implementation of video conferencing...

 

[Scarpad]

I'd buy TV episodes all the time if they were $0.99 (in HD). Love that idea. Right now I just buy the Blu-Ray's or DVD's, but would totally switch if it was cheaper.

It will probably be .99 SD 1.99 HD, still a Buck cheaper than what all the others are doing.

 

[Peace]

Amazing, this will change broadcasting forever... a very expensive remote control.

The TV part is but one app out of 25,000.

 

[Scarpad]

Better pricing would help but the DRM's still the biggest turn off for me.

True I would rather Encode so I can watch it on all devices the Touch and my Archos 5 ITA

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Why don't they just have all the TV shows available for free paid for by advertising?

Like the way commercial television has been funded for the last 40 odd years?

Who's going to pay for shows when you can just do a google video search and watch them for free?

There would be a lot more cash to make from advertising like this than revenue from people purchasing the shows, surely?

Because the commercial industry has moved on to a model where there is money in both advertising AND subscriptions. Now we (foolishly) pay a subscription to receive ad-loaded television pumped into our TVs. The number of ads continues to rise, and now some of the ads even appear on top of the program (rather than in between segments).

Companies like their money. They don't like cutting their revenues to make their viewers happy. Only if the viewers show- as a group- that the cost is too high (by quitting this game... cutting the cable), do we get significant discounts as a group for the same product.

If this rumor is real, Apple could win some price concessions. Though, I think Apple is probably working against the reputation they set with the music industry, pretty much scaring off all of the other industries from selling their stuff to Apple at a rate that makes Apple a real competitor for other sales & distribution channels.

Besides the cable guys who also own the broadband pipe will not stand by and lose their lucrative cable TV distribution business to Apple. Should Apple be able to win pricing low enough to meaningfully cut into their cable revenues, broadband prices will simply go UP to make up the difference. For practically everyone, there is little to no competition for broadband to make any (price competitive) difference. And notice which industry ended up owning the broadband pipes among all of the possibilities: the very one who could feel significant pain if the Internet actually became a solid replacement for the traditional cable/satt distribution models. Now if you also wonder why broadband is priced relatively high, and never seems to come down- even when the broadband provider is not spending that much building out new infrastructure... I bet you can connect the dots.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Why would I pay for TV shows when I can watch all the TV I want online free and legally?

If that works for you, great. But an awful lot of people like to watch television programs on their television. And not many of them understand- or want to go to the trouble of- hooking their computers to their TV.

 

[donbadman]

The ability to control and play all your media ('remote control') has to be central to this thing.

But you are missing the point, that's really just one app - but it can be a killer if it truly integrated the web/tv experience.

The device will still be a sweet e-reader and probably have a neat implementation of video conferencing...

To integrate the TV/Web experience it will need the following:
Flash
Xvid
Divx
WiFi
Digital broadcast receiver
h264
Work with: XBox, PS3, Popcorn, AppleTV, Sky +, Cable Boxes, Tivio, Media Centre PC's, Flat screen LCD and Plasma Televisions, older analogue TV's and the massive amounts of third party digital TV appliances.

 

[Scarpad]

Right...a weekly show that runs 18 times a year is going to cost you $36. That's more than magazine subscriptions. Even $18 isn't worth it for me. Now, I also don't know if the shows come with commercials or limitations on how many times I can watch it or what computer(s) I can copy/move it to watch it, etc.

Besides, so many of us have DVRs so why not just record a bunch of stuff and test it out.

I don't see what the networks are worried about...they release their "seasons" on dvd years after the season is over. And except for the monster success shows like Seinfeld or Simpsons, who buys these collections for $29/season?! Yeah, maybe nice to own...but they are not like music cds where you will watch the show/season over and over and over and over. Music is much different than video (tv or movies). I love Terminator but I'm not going to watch it more than once every 5-10 years. Seriously. It's similar to people who love books...they *may* read a fantastic book again far into the future...but not every year or month.

-Eric

True with Movies but not so much with TV stuff which is far more rewatchable, plus having TV Dvd sets I get to program my own viewing channel efectively eliminating alot f the junk on TV.

 

[BoyRacer]

TV Show Pricing is currently too expensive

Apple's pricing for TV shows does not encourage someone currently downloading the episodes illegally to go legit.

$65 typical 22-episode season in High Definition (Canada iTunes)
$40 typical 22-episode season in standard Definition (Canada iTunes)

I'm still buying DVDs because the market hasn't offered a digital solution that is both affordable and works:
- My AppleTV (160 GB model) cannot hold all the shows I want to buy
- Purchasing via iTunes on my MacBook Pro and sharing my iTunes Library to the AppleTV is the only solution to the storage problem but its far less than ideal: making sure the MBP is turned on with iTunes running before I sit in front of my TV is the most obvious thing wrong with the current solution.

Perhaps the situation would improve if TV Shows and Movies purchased on the iTunes Store operated like Apps bought at the iTunes Store - if i delete an App I can reinstall it rather than having to keep a copy on other media as a backup. Maybe a subscription model would help with the storage problem.

Apple has been at the forefront of the movement from old media to digital media for more than five years; I'm guessing any workable solution is going to come from Apple. Their alleged efforts to cut the price of TV episodes in half is a good sign. If they are successful, I hope they change the hardware and service side of the equation to catch up with the copyright side of things.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I don't know if anybody else picked up on this, so I apologise if I missed your comments, but theres a huge flaw with the idea of presuming the music industries fate would be the same as television.

With music, of course they were going to lose album sales if they started selling individual songs, because most people are only familiar with a few individual songs, but with TV shows people don't just buy a couple of episodes that they have seen before, they would be more inclined towards buying the rest of the show that they havn't seen. I wouldn't just buy an single disc of Battlestar on it's own. I'd buy a boxset.

I'm pretty sure that the execs realise this, they're not 'that' stupid. I think these articles tend to draw too many comparisons, and theres plenty of reasons for why the executives wouldn't want to decrease the prices. Not that I agree of course, I'd love for shows to be cheaper, I'd start buying them more then.

Your logic is generally sound, but I don't think the fear of another music industry scenario is as you are seeing it. The bigger issue with the music industry is that they would like to price their content as they see fit. The #1 reason the Beatles say they are not on iTunes yet is this same reason: "that Apple says all songs are worth 99 cents or 1.29, and we don't agree".

If I was in the business of video industry production, I would want to be able to price my products the way I would like it too. If I have a more popular program, I'd like to make a little more money while it is popular. And if I had old catalog stuff, I'd like to price it more aggressively to still make some money on that.

Instead, Apple says: all TV shows- regardless of quality shall cost the same. Now Apple is saying: all TV shows- regardless of quality shall still cost the same... but we want that same price to be lower than it is now.

Is the best show on television worth the exact same price as the worst show on television? From the content producers point-of-view: definitely not. The model they know sells commercial spots. And more popular shows command higher commercial revenues than less popular shows. Yet here's Apple dictating fixed pricing for all shows. If you put yourself in their (content owners) shoes, it's easy to see a general distrust for- and resistance toward- playing ball with Apple.

Plus their buddies in the music industry have already fallen on their own swords, and are still trying to find a way to regain some of the most basic powers of being the source of any kind of product: the ability to price it as you see fit.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

It'll need a digital TV tuner built in then. I'll bet it hasn't got one.

But that would be extremely cheap to build in. And Apple did build an FM tuner- of all things- into the last generation iPod after all.

I probably would bet with you (that it won't have one built in), but it certainly wouldn't add a lot of cost to a super mobile device, and it would also be a fairly strong feature (FREE network HD TV) for helping justify Apple's price.

If this Tablet is trying to compete with lots of niche markets, there is still a pretty decent market for portable TVs. And if it is already going to have a good graphics card baked in for everything else, a digital tuner is really a minor bonus.

 

[donbadman]

Because the commercial industry has moved on to a model where there is money in both advertising AND subscriptions. Now we (foolishly) pay a subscription to had ad-loaded television pumped into our TVs. The number of ads continues to rise, and now some of the ads even appear on top of the program (rather than in between segments).

Companies like their money. They don't like cutting their revenues to make their viewers happy. Only if the viewers show- as a group- that the cost is too high, do we get significant discounts as a group for the same product.

If this rumor is real, Apple could win some price concessions. Though, I think Apple is probably working against the reputation they set with the music industry, pretty much scaring off all of the other industries from selling their stuff to Apple at a rate that makes Apple a real competitor for other sales & distribution channels.

Besides the cable guys who also own the broadband pipe will not stand by and lose their lucrative cable TV distribution business to Apple. Should Apple be able to win pricing low enough to meaningfully cut into their cable revenues, broadband prices will simply go UP to make up the difference. For practically everyone, there is little to no competition for broadband to make any (price competitive) difference. And notice which industry ended up owning the broadband pipes among all of the possibilities: the very one who could feel significant pain if the Internet actually became a solid replacement for the traditional cable/satt distribution models. Now if you also wonder why broadband is priced relatively high, and never seems to come down- even when the broadband provider is not spending that much building out new infrastructure... I bet you can connect the dots.

This argument is only valid for the US, I've had 24mb/s broadband for about five years for about £30 per month, unlimited bandwidth allowance and streaming HD content from Vimeo looks great.

I can watch any BBC produced content on demand via iPlayer or stream Channel 4 (one of our better commercial channels) on demand through 4od which has non skip able advertising embedded in the video stream.

And we in the UK are about 10 years behind Japan and Korea in broadband infrastructure, this is one argument that playing to the lowest common denominator (the USA) is not what is the best model for comparison or best practice.

Sure I don't watch all of the content available on BBC but at least there is content available that does interest me on it and it is one of the things that we in the UK value as a national asset.

A bit like the National Health Service!

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

it's time for media companies to realize that they sell not a premium product. media content is a commodity now. so they should accept that prices get lower and profits are made on the side of the production costs. e.g. lower distribution costs, lower salaries across the board, become more efficient.

apple pressuring them to lower prices is a right step toward that direction.

Are you sure you want that? Are you ready for them to employ cheaper writers? Cheaper actors? Cheaper special effects? Perhaps the whole industry should go to China or India and employ dirt cheap labor so that we could fill the air time with the same amount of programming, made for less so that it could be priced a lot less.

When art is seen as a commodity by the crowd, the quality slides.

That said, I'm all for lower prices too, but I wouldn't want prices to get so low that the quality of the product drops as well... like buying a cheap(est) tomato vs. a good one.

 

[donbadman]

Are you sure you want that? Are you ready for them to employ cheaper writers? Cheaper actors? Cheaper special effects? Perhaps the whole industry should go to China or India and employ dirt cheap labor so that we could fill the air time with the same amount of programming, made for less so that it could be priced a lot less.

When art is seen as a commodity by the crowd, the quality slides.

That said, I'm all for lower prices too, but I wouldn't want prices to get so low that the quality of the product drops as well... like buying a cheap(est) tomato vs. a good one.

I totally agree with you on this, quality is key.

A bigger global audience means bigger revenues from advertising or paid downloads this should mean in effect that there is more money to invest in quality programming and providing consumers with easy access to what they want to watch.

I'd hate for the broadcasters to get more revenue and profit and see no increase in the quality and range of programming.

I'm not sure that a private network (like iTunes) is the best way to ensure better quality for consumers.