Steve Jobs Discussed Potential Television Deal with CBS CEO Les Moonves

[axual]

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Frankly, I could mostly not care less about CBS, ABC or NBC (except a few sports related broadcasts).

Apple ... get me Discovery Networks (all channels) and I will pay you or them $12 a month (far more than they get now through Comcast per subscriber) for a very long time.

We need to get away from the current TV business model and start paying for channels that are worth having. If a channel is worth having, then people will pay for it ala carte.

I do not want to pay for what I don't watch, have never watched, and never will watch.

 

[SBlue1]

let me just copy and paste his quote and check back in a few years.

 

[kugino]

let me just copy and paste his quote and check back in a few years.

or what john gruber calls "claim chowder"...

and i'm willing to bet that jobs WAS smarter than moonves about the tv networks, too. just sayin'...

 

[JAT]

You do realize that that "scummy model" is what pays for a great deal of the content we like?

snip

Seriously, dude. Why don't you respond to individuals instead of repeating your entire diatribe for [insert your name for people you consider dumber than you here]? Pretty much everything you said after this was not an actual response to anything I posted. AND, you've posted it all 3-6 times already just today.

And yes, I realize it. I'm discussing possibilities for the industry.

There's so much wrong with the statement above that I wouldn't even know here to begin...

But please keep in mind that not everyone in the US - let alone world - is serviced by cable or the internet. Thanks.

Sorry Sam, I know it's your living. But I dislike the industry, hence my words. Also, this industry is 100% national. Claiming "rest of world" is pointless, because every country is different, regardless. And yes, some of us know these things.

And to both of you. Do you have another answer? Do you think the industry will keep sputtering along in regards to its online presence for 10 more years? I don't. Something's gotta give. Try thinking like SJ about the future, not like cable CEOs about what cash they made last night. Here's some appropriate subtopics:

• What if content makers start splitting off, like individuals in the music industry? What will CBS, etc do? What will DirecTV, etc do? (Pixar almost became this, til Jobs decided having money would be fun)
• What if the current trend towards full cable coverage comes to 100%?
• What if the current (albeit small) trend towards people DROPping cable/sat continues? Again: What will CBS do? What will DirecTV do?
• How will the current ads vs subscription vs download mess continue? (and I mean legit, so let's skip that useless diatribe, again) It's inherently a complete contradiction for them trying to maintain all 3. Which dies? Do the ads go on the net as Hulu has begun, and the cable/sat providers diminish? Etc.

 

[Andronicus]

And?

I take it yours is fact. Oh wait, no it isn't.

I work in the tv industry so I have some experience in what I'm talking about. How about you?

Yah I work in the tv industry too, so I guess we both have the same credibility.

 

[Santabean2000]

When the megabucks end, so goes the content production. A model that flows 30%+ to Apple and cuts our current cable/satt bills by 80% or more (in some magical cheap subscription offering from Apple) means tons of shows, movies, etc could not be produced anymore. Sure, there's profits in the entertainment business- even fat profits- but it's the lure of those potential fat profits that motivate the show & movie entrepreneurs to risk money on all those failures (all the shows/movies that flop) to deliver a few that turn into big hits.

Kill the "megabucks" and you kill that risk model. And don't think for a minute that that would mean that only the "good" shows will be made. If there was any way to tell the good shows from the bad shows, we would have long since only been getting good shows. A future of low margin/no margin video-oriented entertainment is YouTube content. We already have that future.

In a nutshell, somebody has to pay and it won't be Apple. That means either the Studios take a massive hit to their revenues (which will kill off interest in producing most shows/movies) OR we consumers have to pay up. We already have that latter model too in the iTunes store "as is". But we don't want that either because the pricing is "too high".

What we apparently want is to pay <20% of what we currently pay now for cable/satt, get all of our programming commercial free, let Apple take 30%+ of what we pay and have those who actually make all that content take the massive hit. We also expect our broadband internet provider- which is probably our cable provider- to just roll over and let their cable subscription business be swallowed up by Apple while Apple's replacement solution is dependent on the cable provider's broadband pipes. And we ignore the flaws in the thinking because we want Apple to rule the world and we think we'll somehow end up paying for a fraction of our existing cable/satt bills while getting all of our desired programming.

No, actually what we want is greater control over what we get for our money.

How many crap shows are you obliged to purchase when selecting a cable package? Don't know about you, but for me I'd say about 95%+ of the shows are absolute sh*#.

Good ideas, original content and well produced shows should still make money. The current model supports and props up rubbish. It's a shotgun approach; money by numbers through manipulating people to pay for it.

My annoyance at big tv and film is the obscene amounts of cash they make. Getting a million bucks and episode, $20 million to make a movie?!

Technology made them wealthy beyond all good measure, and now technology is stripping it away. And fair enough too.

Get real.

 

[faroZ06]

I love CBS. They're the ones who showed (and still show on their site) Star Trek.

 

[FlyingJoe]

TV? What's a TV?

The stations better do something fast, because I do not know a single under-thirty person who watches TV any longer. I'm serious. My son and his friends use the net and their laptops for all of their viewing. They won't even use the TV when they visit here.

It seems that Mr. Moonves does not know the TV business any longer...

From my own perspective, I'm sure Steve would have argued with them that if they lowered the cost of their shows on iTunes, the sales would skyrocket. That certainly would be the case for me - everything is about twice as expensive as I am willing to pay. After a cut, then I would be happy to buy my episodes and movies and drop cable.

 

[Bill Killer]

The stations better do something fast, because I do not know a single under-thirty person who watches TV any longer. I'm serious. My son and his friends use the net and their laptops for all of their viewing. They won't even use the TV when they visit here.

You don't know a single person under 30 that doesn't even watch a sporting even on a TV?

 

[sensel]

Giant mistake

The way the deal ended reminds me of how Kodak did not see the switch to digital because it was so focused on the cash coming in from film. Now look at Kodak.
I think this will be CBS’s greatest mistake. It was a HUGE opportunity for them to catch up and pass the other networks in streaming. CBS has nothing happening in that right now. Clearly, Moonves is the impediment on innovation at CBS.

 

[Santabean2000]

The stations better do something fast, because I do not know a single under-thirty person who watches TV any longer. I'm serious. My son and his friends use the net and their laptops for all of their viewing. They won't even use the TV when they visit here.

It seems that Mr. Moonves does not know the TV business any longer...

Exactly. Just like how a lot of kids (and adults) never listen to commercial radio now either. TV as we've known it for so long is on the way out. And good job too. We need a better model than some network deciding what we can watch and when.

The way the deal ended reminds me of how Kodak did not see the switch to digital because it was so focused on the cash coming in from film. Now look at Kodak.
I think this will be CBS’s greatest mistake. It was a HUGE opportunity for them to catch up and pass the other networks in streaming. CBS has nothing happening in that right now. Clearly, Moonves is the impediment on innovation at CBS.

Too true. I think the first networks to embrace change, and not resist it, will be in a much better position in the years to come. They need to work out new revenue streams before their tap gets turned off.

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Therein lies the problem with the TV broadcasting industry.
They are adamant about protecting their current revenue stream to the point of not being able to the forest from the trees.

We do not have cable in the house, we watch no live TV. We only watch what we wish via downloading. If I could get the shows I'd like to watch piecemeal on demand then I would sign up for such a service. Apple can bring this to the table, I'm sure of it.

Apple will eventually sign up one of these guys, do extremely well and the others will follow once they see it can be done profitably. All it takes is one of them to be the first to take the risk. Nobody wants to be the guinea pig of course!

I'm done with cable TV packages with tons of channels I'm not interested in.

Amen brother!