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Apple Pushing Ahead with Plans for Subscription TV Service by Christmas?

I wonder what exactly Steve Jobs meant when he said "I finally cracked it!"
 
blinkin182 said:
I agree. I think the industry need to move away from having "channels" and move towards selling "shows", one by one. I've stopped watching tv in the traditional way for a long time. I don't especially care for "talk shows and variety shows" and would rather watch some high quality shows, whenever I want and would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for them.

Talk shows/variety shows could also be function under this model. But i do feel their is an excessive amount of resistance from the "tv industry", as many consumers are starting to prefer watching TV differently, it is a scary time for them.

I mean, the current model is mainly based on generating revenue from subscriptions, and advertising. The advertisers pay more for ads appearing at "prime time" television right?
But today, with services not based on a subscription model, there are "à la carte" programs, whenever you want and ad free, i guess the tv industry really need to get their act together with certainly a diminishing revenue from advertisers and with consumers having a greater choice of how to watch their favorite shows. I think the industry is just confused by this new digital revolution and really don't know which way to go!
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It would disrupt the industry for sure. But how would we get there?

Right now... you can pay for cable and you have 200 channels X 24 hours of programming.

If we just talk about Prime Time network shows... that's 3 hours a night X 4 major networks... for 12 hours a night or 60 hours a week.

You can turn on your TV and watch all of those network shows... plus many more shows on cable channels... for a monthly fee.

Alternatively... Apple will sell you one season of Modern Family for $50. If you only wanted to watch that particular show... you can pay $50 once and be done with it.

Modern Family gets 11 million viewers every week. I'm sure the producers of Modern Family would love to get $50 from each of their 11 million viewers. That's HALF A BILLION DOLLARS a season!

The problem is... not many people would be interested in paying for one particular show like Modern Family... let alone many shows. The entire television industry is based on making many shows available all day long (some good, some bad) and financing them with advertising.

If it wasn't for the commercials... television, as we know it, would disappear.

Jeopardy gets 10 million viewers every night... it's actually the #4 syndicated show. But would anyone PAY to watch Jeopardy? Hell no! People only watch it because it's on.

You are a cord-cutter... and you're certainly not alone... but it will be a huge undertaking to change the way the television industry has worked for 90 years.
 
pmz said:
At the end of the day, its still just a lot of work to deliver you the load of crap thats on TV.
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That's exactly what I DON'T want...A different approach is required. Here in the UK you pay £40.00 or thereabouts to watch Football (In which I have no interest at all) Endless repeats of "Classic" TV shows etc.

Okay, one or two of the cable channels like Nation Geo. The sic-fi channel have some good stuff, but to pay that every month for a couple of channels? No thanks.

An App, which (For example) contained the Babylon Five series in 1080p...Now that would get my attention.

Maybe it's too much of a niche market though.
 
noahrobd said:
Maybe harder for Apple to negotiate without Steve Jobs. What a shame. The providers either don't understand the brokenness of their system, or don't want to innovate (or both), because their current way makes them money. And they likely care more about their profits than the user experience. Jobs and Apple was (is) obsessed with providing the best possible user-experience above all else.
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Plus they're a government-supported monopoly. Pretty screwed up when the guys controlling the bandwidth are also selling us the content. There is a reason Hollywood isn't allowed to operate the movie theaters. Same thing should apply to the cable companies.
 
Better negotiate with the network providers, too

Subscription TV from Apple and others may be a good alternative to cable or satellite; but with either slow data speeds (DSL) or hard limits (Comcast at 250GB/mo), someone who tries to depend on, for example, Apple TV subscription for all their TV viewing of HD content will run out of bits by months end. A 1080P movie at BluRay quality is at least 25GB; so that's 10 movies a month.

And since such internet based TV subscription services compete DIRECTLY with cables companies like Comcast, they have a powerful incentive to make sure you can't substitute Apple for Comcast.
 
Inakto said:
TV is broken.
500 channels and nothing to watch
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and there's also no way to personalize, share, or discover new content. If you want to find the "best" thing to watch you have to manually scroll through a guide with a hundred-something channels and quickly read the text description on each which is such an archaic way of doing things.
 
I can see how movies would work, but what about normal channels as well as local and emergency channels.

Should be interesting to see what Apple is able to do in with these ideas about TV.

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redfirebird08 said:
Plus they're a government-supported monopoly. Pretty screwed up when the guys controlling the bandwidth are also selling us the content. There is a reason Hollywood isn't allowed to operate the movie theaters. Same thing should apply to the cable companies.
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Always got my goat that this kind of monopoly has never been destroyed. I always ponder how they have been able to keep it going for so long.:rolleyes:
 
Macman45 said:
Here in the UK you pay £40.00 or thereabouts to watch Football (In which I have no interest at all) Endless repeats of "Classic" TV shows etc..
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50% of people in the UK don't pay a single penny for their TV content (TV license excepted) and many of those who do subscribe are paying a lot less than your £40 per month.

Sky has the monopoly for sport and all the big viewing numbers come from the terrestrial channels. A solution for the USA TV market won't automatically transfer into other markets.
 
SeaFox said:
Agreeing to a multi-year exclusivity agreement with AT&T and making them millions of dollars. Yeah, Apple really showed them!
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I do not recall having seen the AT&T logo on the startup screen of my 2007 iPhone nor do I recall seeing any AT&T specific icons or logos anywhere on my current iPhone4. Who is calling the shots again?

Let John Gruber explain:

Negotiations with the carriers:

• Android handset makers: Here are our phones. How would you like us to change them so that you will sell them?

• Microsoft: Here’s $200 million. Please sell our phones.

• Apple: Here is our new phone. It comes in black or white. We will let you sell it.

http://isource.com/2012/01/12/recom...ple-microsoft-negotiations-with-the-carriers/
 
Subscription?

Subscription(s)???

No thanks.

Just give me a wider selection of individual episodes that I can buy, pay for, obtain legally, w/o any waiting up to a year BS..

Offer sports content/events (especially NASCAR) in their entirety 24 hrs after air.. I'm more than happy to pay a fair price..

Offer any/all of those programs as a season pass at a decent discount (12 for the price of 8, etc) and if it's a show I really really like, I'll consider it...
 
OllyW said:
50% of people in the UK don't pay a single penny for their TV content (TV license excepted) and many of those who do subscribe are paying a lot less than your £40 per month.

Sky has the monopoly for sport and all the big viewing numbers come from the terrestrial channels. A solution for the USA TV market won't automatically transfer into other markets.
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It's becoming far more mainstream here now. Sky as you mention, and VM have the packages, boxes etc. I have a free view HDD High def. recorder, my smart TV has a cam slot which I have never used. When I switched my BB to VM, the sales staff simply didn't have a category for someone who just wanted broadband. It took several calls to get a manager who finally sorted it out. If the packages were more flexible I might bite, but as it stands? No.
 
Panacea

Apple, buy Lifetime: Television for Women and make it an Apple TV exclusive. This gets you all women, who will nag their men into getting an Apple TV for the home. You will get everyone this way.
 
linux2mac said:
I do not recall having seen the AT&T logo on the startup screen of my 2007 iPhone nor do I recall seeing any AT&T specific icons or logos anywhere on my current iPhone4. Who is calling the shots again?
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What does the absence of a logo/start-up screen have to do with the big picture? Apple placed a couple aesthetic requirements in their agreement and got them. Try replying to my actual post, if you can.

The fact you had to go with AT&T to get an iPhone, when Apple knew very well there were people on other carriers who wanted it and would not go to AT&T to get it makes it obvious who was in control -- the carriers. Because they, you know, own the cell phone networks and don't have to let Apple's iPhone on them to begin with. They could have just told Apple to buzz off and continued to sell the phones they had as they always have.

Apple shopped around to different carriers and they all told Apple the same thing "it has to be an exclusive agreement with us". Because there are so few major carrier to start with in the U.S., they can do this, because they can be confidant the other major carrier will do exactly the same thing. It's probably collusion, but can you prove it in a court of law? AT&T was the biggest GSM carrier, and Apple wanted to be GSM because this was going to be a world product and they didn't want have to make two versions if they could avoid it for now since it's brand new. Their choice is pretty obvious.

Even once the iPhone became rabidly popular after the first couple years and Apple really got an earful from people on Verizon who wanted it they couldn't, because of that agreement. Why would Apple make an agreement like that in the first place if they were in control? They wouldn't, and they weren't.
 
Macman45 said:
It's becoming far more mainstream here now. Sky as you mention, and VM have the packages, boxes etc. I have a free view HDD High def. recorder, my smart TV has a cam slot which I have never used. When I switched my BB to VM, the sales staff simply didn't have a category for someone who just wanted broadband. It took several calls to get a manager who finally sorted it out. If the packages were more flexible I might bite, but as it stands? No.
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I'm only paying £7 for VM cable TV, plus £3 for Tivo and £6 for Netflix. If Apple can provide everything I've got now for less than £16 per month, then sign me up. :D
 
HiRez said:
Each channel its own app? Ugh, that sounds horrible. I sure hope they have something better than that, more integrated. I don't want to have to quit and launch apps to "switch channels". This is already a PITA on the Apple TV, navigating between Netflix, MLB, NBA, etc. apps.
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Why couldn't your traditional channel +/- buttons cycle through the apps? You build your own channel lineup.

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rei101 said:
We manage 3 cable channels and let me tell you... Apple wants the impossible.

We have been in the market for 5 years, and takes one or more years of negotiation to put the signal of one of our channels in certain area and each cable operator works differently.

Not to mention that negotiations are soooooo complicated adn aggressive and soooo many different interest with each cable operator and they are so disorganized and there are so many interest involved.

Apple is dealing with the most dysfunctional market ever. Too many people making decisions per cable operator, too greedy and selfish.

I really would like to see Apple coming up with something. Specially because the Apple TV is not as the iTunes.

iTunes store was a solution for the music piracy and it worked. But Apple TV is not a solution for cable operators, is a solution for Apple only, a totally different approach.
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Actually that's their best shot. Clean up the messed up cable operators. Instead of dealing with 100s of regional providers they can work with one national/worldwide provider.

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Rogifan said:
People are dreaming if they think Apple will bring us al a carte TV programming/pricing system. If it was a good business model wouldn't someone like directv already be doing it.
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Sometimes it is good to dream. ;)

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Michael Scrip said:
Jeopardy gets 10 million viewers every night... it's actually the #4 syndicated show. But would anyone PAY to watch Jeopardy? Hell no! People only watch it because it's on..
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Exactly - imagine what TV would be like if people actually paid only for the shows they really enjoyed. I only want to watch two or three channels or maybe five or six shows. Why should I subsidize the other 250 channels?

Imagine having twenty out of twenty five good shows instead of twenty out of 650. Send the money to the good actors/writers/directors. ;)
 
I'd LOVE the idea of subscribing to only the channels you want.

I do not want to pay for channels I never watch. I don't want to pay for 10 channels.

I do not want to pay TV license when the only reason I own a TV is to watch DVDs and play video games.

I'd be happy to pay for BBC1 and BBC2 and Channel 4 individually (for example)
 
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