Showtime's Standalone Streaming Service Set to Premiere on Apple TV [Updated]

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I agree that, at least in the short term, cord-cutting will not yield savings compared to cable bundles. But what it will do is allow consumers to pick and choose exactly what they want to watch and block out everything else, which will provide them with a better viewing experience in general with a superior user interface.

We can already do this in the "as is". Just use the FAVS (channel) feature to show only the channels we want and hide the rest. This will show exactly what we want to watch and block out everything else... without killing the golden goose of the OPM subsidy money made by commercials running on all of those hidden channels.

Longer term, as sleazy revenue streams dry up from the likes of channels such as QVC and 700 Club, content creators and distributors (new and old) may refocus some of their investments into producing quality programming that people will willingly pay for. We are already seeing this with high quality programming from Netflix (House of Cards) and Amazon (Alpha House.)

Maybe but channels like QVC actually pay cable to be in our mix of 200 channels. We're not paying for them, they are basically paying for us to be able to see them in our bundle. And while I can feel similarly about stuff like QVC and 700 club, others LOVE QVC and 700 club. I can detest Kardashian programming but other people LOVE it. I can argue that much of reality programming in general is absolute crap but millions of people watch it and LOVE it. Much of what is on... much of what you or I could judge as junk programming is watched by other people. Commercials don't sell very well without eyeball numbers.

So what would be the definition of "producing quality programming"? Where you and I might agree on that, others will feel very differently. Would revenues be redirected into your & my favorite programming or their favorite programming? Millions of people watch stuff like Kardashians or 700 Club... often greater numbers than those watching some of my own favorites. If it was eyeballs that drove where such budget dollars flowed, some of my favorite shows would likely get canceled and some of the most detested shows (IMO) would get more money.

 

[derek4484]

Now, if only Showtime had anything worth watching on their channels....

 

[mantan]

This. So many times we hear ESPN mentioned as if it's as essential as HBO. News flash: It isn't.

Likewise, mainstream news outlets are garbage. For real investigative journalism go to PBS's Frontline or HBO's Vice and for daily news coverage, PBS's News Hour.

According to Variety, ESPN was the leading channel in cable ratings last year. And since live sports is much more DVR-proof than regular ad based, programming - it makes it even more valuable.

If someone isn't a sports fan, I'm sure it's easy to dismiss. But yeah, it's just as essential as HBO.

 

[freediverx]

wow - what kind of crowd do you hang out with?

Oh, get off that high horse. "Piracy" is a propaganda term pushed by the likes of RIAA and MPAA. People downloading a TV show are not raping and pillaging villages. We're really talking about "unauthorized copyright infringement" based on the violation of increasingly draconian copyright legislation (such as the DMCA) written by the music and movie industries and enacted by corrupt politicians.

If it weren't for these demonstrations of civil disobedience, you would still be forced to purchase music albums for $15-20+, containing maybe one or two good songs, without the opportunity to even sample the album prior to purchasing it. You would also have to pay $80-100+ to purchase a single movie. If it weren't for the impact of "piracy", you would still have to watch your favorite TV shows on a specific date and time and you would be unable to binge watch five seasons of Game of Thrones on your Apple TV or iPad, legally or otherwise.

 

[kds1]

This. So many times we hear ESPN mentioned as if it's as essential as HBO. News flash: It isn't.

Likewise, mainstream news outlets are garbage. For real investigative journalism go to PBS's Frontline or HBO's Vice and for daily news coverage, PBS's News Hour.

Exactly. And since when did did HBO become essential? That's a fallacy right there as well.

 

[mantan]

Oh, get off that high horse. "Piracy" is a propaganda term pushed by the likes of RIAA and MPAA. People downloading a TV show are not raping and pillaging villages. We're really talking about "unauthorized copyright infringement" based on the violation of increasingly draconian copyright legislation (such as the DMCA) written by the music and movie industries and enacted by corrupt politicians.

If it weren't for these demonstrations of civil disobedience, you would still be forced to purchase music albums for $15-20+, containing maybe one or two good songs, without the opportunity to even sample the album prior to purchasing it. You would also have to pay $80-100+ to purchase a single movie. If it weren't for the impact of "piracy", you would still have to watch your favorite TV shows on a specific date and time and you would be unable to binge watch five seasons of Game of Thrones on your Apple TV or iPad, legally or otherwise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I was in college when Napster because big and the idea of downloading all of the music I wanted for free sounded great. I was all over it.

Then I grew up and realized that taking stuff without paying for it is wrong. And just like I want to be compensated for my work product - others deserve to do it to. Yeah the music industry changed - and I like buying music by the track instead of $15 a single...but I have no qualms paying for it.

Call it a high horse....I actually call it having some ethics.

 

[kds1]

Blah blah, when will Charter Communication allow customers to access HBO Go and Showtime Anytime on Apple TV or when Amazon Prime and CW be on Apple TV tired of all this apps where I can not access to stream.

Amazon Prime is probably never going to be a channel on AppleTV. This gets discussed over and over again. Just use your iPhone or iPad or even your Mac, and AirPlay the content to your AppleTV. It's works perfectly. I just watched a movie from Amazon Instant Video that way the other night using my iPad (and several times before).

 

[kds1]

I guess Steve Jobs did not "crack" anything.

By the item this all shakes out one would pay $ 100 or so including premium channels.

Looks like Netflix and the like are on a better path than Apple.

WWDC may set that straight (hopefully)

And what exactly were you expecting? Most of what would make TV better, old men in suits and companies with dinosaur business models kick and scream and throw tantrums to stop from happening.

 

[freediverx]

It's a direct quote from someone else.

My bad, I replied to the wrong person.

 

[Dayv]

What Showtime shows are worth watching?

Penny Dreadful is great, Masters of Sex is decent. Uhm, that might be all I'm watching from them lately.

 

[bpeeps]

That's only today. Most people I know steal their content. So letting customers buy what they want at a fair price will actually put money in their pockets. When the older generation that buys cable dies out, they need a new business model. Eventually, most channels will be $1.00/ea. and premium channels can survive for about $4.99/ea. (per month). If Apple let me pick 10 channels for $19.99, I'd jump on that. I don't even watch shows which span 10 channels. Just give me a couple live news channels, and let me choose the rest. Then for maybe $4.99 additional for premium channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. that would be a good start.

But moving away from one bundle to go to Apple's bundle isn't my idea of choice. Channels/networks aren't even needed as far as I'm concerned. Just let me pick a few shows from a few channels, that's all I would need.

Networks are needed to fund the show in the first place.

 

[bpeeps]

God this new layout confuses me. Edit for double post.

 

[AustinIllini]

Well I'm excited for The Affair to come back!

 

[pokerplayer73]

Obviously, I'd like the price to be about $5 a month for the premium channels. However, what's sort of nice (and something to remember), take HBO Now.. $15 a month. Well, I want HBO for Game of Thrones. But it's only on air with new episodes for about 2 months. So, it's going to cost me $30 to watch Game of Thrones and other HBO content for that 2 months. Then I'll nuke my subscription for the other 10 months out of the year.

My point is, being able to jump in and jump out of the subscriptions very easily makes it very cost effective even at the current rates. All depends on your habits.

Again... I'd like lower too... but that will come with time.

Oh... lastly... everyone should keep in mind, it's not just "Apple's fault" on the pricing. The publishers are driving the prices and Apple is just trying to get them on-board. Right now, they are all just trying to figure it out.

I suspect(hope, actually) that they will offer annual or semi-annual plans. eg - $99/year for HBO NOW to lock in users for a whole year. That could be the reason for their monthly pricing being a little higher than expected. I would prefer that since I watch HBO shows around the year.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Networks are needed to fund the show in the first place.

Exactly, shows like Seinfeld & Cheers were pretty low rated throughout their entire first seasons. They made it because there is enough surplus money in the model to back middling shows long enough to find their audiences. We armchair industry experts think there are huge profits made by "greedy" players that can all be squeezed out by something new from Apple so that we can get a big discount, Apple can get a big cut and everything we like will continue to come "as is"... and new shows will just keep on being piloted too.

 

[nazaar]

It would be nice if MR would mention that is for US only. Canadians will not have this option (or anyone else for that matter....yet).

 

[mattopotamus]

if it streams like the cable through the appleTV it will be juddery garbage.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Oh, get off that high horse. "Piracy" is a propaganda term pushed by the likes of RIAA and MPAA. People downloading a TV show are not raping and pillaging villages. We're really talking about "unauthorized copyright infringement" based on the violation of increasingly draconian copyright legislation (such as the DMCA) written by the music and movie industries and enacted by corrupt politicians.

The DMCA is crappy on a number of levels but the unauthorized, mass distribution of IP has been a violation of copyright law since, well, the beginning of copyright law.

If it weren't for these demonstrations of civil disobedience, you would still be forced to purchase music albums for $15-20+, containing maybe one or two good songs, without the opportunity to even sample the album prior to purchasing it. You would also have to pay $80-100+ to purchase a single movie.

"Forced to purchase"? Nobody forced anyone to buy music or a movie. Boycotting would've been a significantly more effective course of action, but then people wouldn't have been able to have things without paying for them.

 

[mattopotamus]

I have been arguing this point with cord cutters forever. They are delusional in thinking a la carte would be $2 per channel. Like studios and networks would want to make less money than they do right now.

it's nice for the people like me though who only need HBO and netflix. Cable, HBO, and netflix and I pay $75 a month. I was paying the same thing with cable and it cost me $120 and I only watched the other channels 2% of the time. Why the prices do not work for everyone, if you only watch a few channels it is still cheaper.

 

[Wild-Bill]

Their Showtime GO app on ATV sucks. You constantly have to re-authorize it. Junk.

And, as far as streaming to ATV as crappily as cable, I suspect providers (such as Comcast) purposely throttle streaming they identify is going to something other than their crappy set top boxes.

 

[mattopotamus]

Their Showtime GO app on ATV sucks. You constantly have to re-authorize it. Junk.

And, as far as streaming to ATV as crappily as cable, I suspect providers (such as Comcast) purposely throttle streaming they identify is going to something other than their crappy set top boxes.

I hope that is the case. I seriously cannot get through a single show on my actual TV using the ATV and showtime. I'd rather watch it on my iPad.

 

[jettredmont]

I suggest you take advantage of your FAVs feature in your on-screen guide to hide all those channels you don't want to watch. That will leave you with the channels you actually do want to watch while allowing all that OPM generated by commercials running on all of those other, now-hidden channels to keep subsidizing the cost of the channels you do want. It's the best way to approximate the al-a-carte dream without having to pay more than the cost of cable or satt now. It also means retaining the ability to see the latest new episodes in real-time, getting generally higher quality video & sound vs. streamed (compression), being able to watch live sports on channels other than OTR networks and so on (without it counting against a broadband cap). All considered, I think it's the best way for many of us to realize something comparable to the dream without having to pay more and/or make sacrifices.

I think once you've been out of the cable mindset for a few months you stop thinking of "a la carte" in terms of "channels" and more in terms of "shows". But, that is a reasonable 1990s-era approach to avoiding the 500 channels of crap wasteland of the cable company onscreen guide.

However, realize that generally speaking, I see higher quality video on streaming sources than I do from the local cable company where I live, and speaking with other people around the country this isn't unique to my cable company. There is too much financial pressure to split the bandwidth up a little bit more so they can sell one more useless niche channel or PPV event channel. In rough order of compression quality, I see by far the largest number of compression artifacts on cable, then less on streaming in general, then less still on downloadable content (iTunes, although that varies from show to show), then less still on physical media and OTA broadcasts.

In the end, it is all about what you find important. If you need a steady stream of audio-visual distraction, cable has no competition. If you want a lot of sports content, you don't have much choice either. Otherwise, though, add up the costs of the shows you actually watch, note the time you will save by skipping commercials (even on Hulu where the commercials are there, they are much shorter in duration per hour than the ~20 minutes per hour on broadcast TV), take into account month-to-month fluidity (it is very easy to drop/add shows or channels everywhere but cable/satellite), etc, then do the math yourself. There is no one size fits all answer, but I think that a lot more people are surprised at how much better a post-cable world is than who are surprised that they really are better off with cable.

 

[uwdude]

I appreciate the sentiment of your whole post... but who controls the pipe through which the dike crackers stream this content? And isn't any broadband competitor to them- if you happen to have more than one choice- also in the cableTV business too?

None of those dike-cracking solutions work at all without a broadband connection. Conceptually, Apple could take it's cash hoard and buy all of the best content available and give it away for free to TV "subscribers" but Apple can't deliver that free cable killer to us without the connection between iCloud and our TVs. And who is the toll master(s) in the middle of that?

Cable companies have positioned themselves to do very well no matter what. This is why I think they are in the broadband business. If an Apple can entirely consume their Cable TV revenues in some "new model", they'll just get theirs on higher broadband rates and/or tiers. Thus, we consumers will pay more. What would you do if you were them?

Those "monopolies" are only at risk if there is a big breakthrough that would allow consumers to bypass their pipes and connect directly to iCloud and similar sources of content. That's the missing innovation that would add a lot of potential to the al-a-carte, cable (company) killer dream. And that's entirely missing from the scene.

Even the "then I'll just pirate it" crowd can be squeezed out by cable if it wanted to do so, since piracy also depends on a broadband pipe.

That's true, if Apple were to somehow provide something like a satellite that were to directly provide access from your house to their server farms, that could in theory completely bypass the cable companies. If I were Apple that's what I would threaten. That's what Disney World did when other factions in Orlando wanted to put in a monorail from the airport to other attractions, leaving Disney out. Disney then replied, well then within 5 years we will have our own airport up and running on Disney property (they are allowed to do this per the original purchase agreement with the state of Florida), and all 15 million a year or so Disney visitors will then bypass Orlando and go directly in and out of Disney World. Orlando backed down, lol.

 

[Darrin Bell]

I came to say the exact same thing. Not sure why some thought a la carte would be so great.

Because it saves me over $1000/year (even with the two season passes I had to buy to watch shows that weren't on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon), I still see every show I really want to see, and the time I used to spend channel-surfing, I now spend outdoors. When I feel like catching up on Game of Thrones, I'll subscribe for a month, watch them all, and cancel.

 

[ericcarl]

HBO can get away with $15 a month. Showtime cannot. Not every premium channel is going to make it through the transition to digital offerings, especially if they start thinking that they have shows as good as Game of Thrones.

Well if you were more careful with your research, you would have found that Showtime also has critically acclaimed series such as "Homeland", "The Affair", "Dexter" and "Twin Peaks" (coming soon). Of course HBO is better, but give Showtime some credit.

 

[LethalWolfe]

That's true, if Apple were to somehow provide something like a satellite that were to directly provide access from your house to their server farms, that could in theory completely bypass the cable companies.

Getting into the satellite TV business doesn't sound like a very 'Apple' type solution and satellite broadband is slow and expensive. Though I'm sure many people would like to have an Apple shaped dish on their roof.