Warner Bros. Opted Out of iTunes TV Show Rentals Over Pricing, Impact on Full-Season Sales

[MacRumors]

A brief report from the Associated Press cites comments from Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer revealing that the company's refusal to join Apple's new 99-cent TV show rental program is based on pricing concerns and fears that individual show rentals will hurt sales of full-season packages.

Chief Executive Barry Meyer says Warner Bros. didn't participate in Apple Inc.'s plan to offer TV show rentals for 99 cents because the price was too low and would have hurt sales of full seasons.

Meyer made the comments Thursday at an investor conference hosted by Merrill Lynch in Newport Beach, Calif.

According to Meyer, Apple's pricing proposition was not seen as a good value for the content provider given its existing purchase-based offerings in the iTunes Store priced at $2.99.

Apple introduced the TV show rental program alongside the revamped Apple TV earlier this month, touting ABC and Fox as initial launch partners. At the time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that he expected that other content providers would quickly see the light and join the program. Rumors about the TV show rental program had circulated prior to Apple's announcement, with clear signs of divided opinions among the content providers.

Article Link: Warner Bros. Opted Out of iTunes TV Show Rentals Over Pricing, Impact on Full-Season Sales

 

[roland.g]

Sorry Barry, but those that want to own will still buy season passes or dvd sets, and those who want to rent will now rent. There is no real cannibalization factor.

 

[peteullo]

Sorry Barry, but those that want to own will still buy season passes or dvd sets, and those who want to rent will now rent. There is no real cannibalization factor.

I couldn't have said it any better. You definitely hit the nail right on the head with that. I'm sure Warner Bros. will hopefully realize this.

 

[maflynn]

Apple keeps missing on its attempt to enter the living room. The latest attempt with its only streaming apple-tv misses the mark again. With only ABC (which disney owns which Jobs in on the board) and Fox will not be enough to entice consumers into spending 99 bucks, when they can Tivo shows now for free

 

[SaaGua]

Let me guess, WB wanted the rental price to be $2.95...

 

[nathanw]

Apple keeps missing on its attempt to enter the living room. The latest attempt with its only streaming apple-tv misses the mark again. With only ABC (which disney owns which Jobs in on the board) and Fox will not be enough to entice consumers into spending 99 bucks, when they can Tivo shows now for free

Tivo is hardly free. It's $12.95 a month or yearly at $129. Plus 300 bucks for the basic box. So depending on how much tv someone watches, a $99 apple tv with 99 cent rentals might be a more cost effective option. Considering it will have the shows they want...

 

[bwillwall]

I would never pay to rent anything thats on tv. Maybe apple will change this, im not sure i want to pay just so I can watch something one time. I mean i could already record it on my dvr. I dont think apple has found what ppl want. I want to pay to keep something forever. Maybe rent movies too but i can do that for way cheaper with netflix and movie stores. I dont like the no storage thing. Yes you can stream, but that sounds as annoying as syncing or more. the internet isnt stable enough for all this info to only be stored by it.

 

[thatisme]

I don't see apple missing the boat here... No. I see that the production companies and publishers just "don't get it", and are just too greedy and too archaic in their view of how to price media.

This is not just tv producers, but music labels and book publishers. think of this... Apple has opened up a new channel of distribution for these companies, but yet, the companies only want more profits but will forsake a new revenue stream in the attempt to get what they want.

I pay for cable and can DVR all day long. I can convert files to play on Amy device if I so choose. OR I could pay money to rent ghat same show out of convenience. If I DVR, the producer gets nothing. If I rent, they get .99.
Seems like a no brained for them to embrace this model, but hey, when have hese companies actually thought rationally???

 

[Lesser Evets]

They'll come back...

Cold feet from the dinosaurs.

 

[DTphonehome]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Apple keeps missing on its attempt to enter the living room. The latest attempt with its only streaming apple-tv misses the mark again. With only ABC (which disney owns which Jobs in on the board) and Fox will not be enough to entice consumers into spending 99 bucks, when they can Tivo shows now for free

Tivos are free now? I want aware.

 

[BayouMan]

Ha!

TiVo is about as free as Vonage and Skype.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Warner Bros can do whatever they want. The other alternative is to record it using Tivo.

 

[shiftyroach]

I would never pay to rent anything thats on tv. Maybe apple will change this, im not sure i want to pay just so I can watch something one time. I mean i could already record it on my dvr. I dont think apple has found what ppl want.

You're absolutely right, however you're not the target market or the intention behind appleTV and rentals. Rentals are perfect for someone like me who doesn't have cable or a DVR and has to hunt out stuff on torrents, convert it and sync it to my appleTV.

At the moment I have time and interest to watch maybe 2-3 shows a week. At 99 cents each, that's $12 a month, which is (to me) an order of magnitude less than I would be paying my cable provider. If I love a show enough (Terminator SCC, Lost, Smallville), I'll buy the DVD's/Blurays later on. Wasn't the world itching for a la carte TV instead of a subscription based model for years now?

I say bring on the rentals. Let the networks finally know what people are actually watching and willing to pay to watch instead of extrapolating the numbers on a few thousand people and cancelling great shows.

 

[maflynn]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)



Tivos are free now? I want aware.

Tivo is hardly free. It's $12.95 a month or yearly at $129. Plus 300 bucks for the basic box. So depending on how much tv someone watches, a $99 apple tv with 99 cent rentals might be a more cost effective option. Considering it will have the shows they want...

Ok let me rephrase that. My DVR is nearly free (dollar a month more then a non-dvr reciever) and offers more utility then spending a buck a show and not being able to keep it.

Again, why spend a hundred dollars for a device and then 99 cents for a tv-show that I already get. The omission of of all the networks except ABC/FOX only amplifies apple's failure to turn the apple-tv into a winning device.

 

[mattwolfmatt]

Sorry Barry, but those that want to own will still buy season passes or dvd sets, and those who want to rent will now rent. There is no real cannibalization factor.

I couldn't have said it any better. You definitely hit the nail right on the head with that. I'm sure Warner Bros. will hopefully realize this.

Maybe I'm missing something . . . if "those who want to rent will now rent", how will they be renting WB shows? Sounds to me like those who want to rent will be forced to either buy or do nothing.

 

[logandzwon]

Barry is correct.
I will not be buying any cable, DVD, or iTunes seasons passes from WB.

As a content producer you have two ways of getting me interested in your programs. Put it on Netflix, or let me rent it on AppleTV.

 

[leenoble]

Gaah!

Makes you want to shake him violently.

How is renting an episode to watch once any different to watching it on TV?

I just don't wish to pay Sky a heap of money every month to get a load of crap I have no interest in AND ADVERTS, just to get the couple of series I do want to watch.

I'd happily pay 99p each week for 2 or 3 episodes, it's easily sustainable and it saves me having to store all those shows on my hard drive. I know most of the time I'm only going to watch something once, but I still feel compelled to keep those damned digital files around since I had to pay £2.49 to get them. Renting would be perfect.

 

[jsbaugh]

Ok let me rephrase that. My DVR is nearly free (dollar a month more then a non-dvr reciever) and offers more utility then spending a buck a show and not being able to keep it.

Again, why spend a hundred dollars for a device and then 99 cents for a tv-show that I already get. The omission of of all the networks except ABC/FOX only amplifies apple's failure to turn the apple-tv into a winning device.

No your DVR is not free, its part of the $59 you pay a month for cable.

You dont understand that this is not Apple causing the problem but the networks. Apple is offering 99c rentals which to those that dont have cable or a DVR is a good value and is cheap as the studios would go.

 

[Consultant]

Greedy dinosaurs, just like the music industry

Apple keeps missing on its attempt to enter the living room. The latest attempt with its only streaming apple-tv misses the mark again. With only ABC (which disney owns which Jobs in on the board) and Fox will not be enough to entice consumers into spending 99 bucks, when they can Tivo shows now for free

Ever heard of netflix and youtube? Apple TV does them.

 

[PlayRadioPlay]

Apple keeps missing on its attempt to enter the living room. The latest attempt with its only streaming apple-tv misses the mark again. With only ABC (which disney owns which Jobs in on the board) and Fox will not be enough to entice consumers into spending 99 bucks, when they can Tivo shows now for free

Those won't be the only options for watching media on the Apple TV. You'll be able to stream any of your own media, apps from your iPhone (YouTube, MLB, Hulu), Netflix apple TV app, etc.

And if any of those things I mentioned above are disabled, the jailbreak community will make things right.

 

[speck2001]

$99 is a great deal for the new AppleTV. TV rentals aside, having a tiny little black box in my living room is ideal for streaming music, photos, videos, etc. Netflix capability on top of that- excellent. You can argue about TV rental pricing all you want, but this box is awesome- all it needs is a major GUI overhaul and a better remote (and no, I'm not going to use my iPhone to control it).

Oh, and AirPlay will also make this easy to use. Clearly Apple is ramping up the feature set of this "hobby" more than ever before, and I think we can finally see momentum building for more frequent updates.

 

[skeep5]

GET BACK IN LINE WARNER BROS. SHOW US YOUR PAPERS!

 

[maflynn]

No your DVR is not free, its part of the $59 you pay a month for cable.

You dont understand that this is not Apple causing the problem but the networks. Apple is offering 99c rentals which to those that dont have cable or a DVR is a good value and is cheap as the studios would go.

Read my post again. The upgrade to DVR is only 99cents. Yes, I'm paying around 50 bucks a month for cable, but I'd be paying for that anyways even if I had apple-tv. So really I'm getting all the functionality of apple-tv for a 12 dollars a year and I can record/save as many tv shows as I want without an added expense.

 

[d21mike]

I like the rental idea as a replacement for Cable. The problem is that you can't replace Cable if all you can get is 2 networks. Some people will use OTA which is certainly an option but you don't get a lot of shows that only come on Cable (like CNBC - ME, QVC - WIFE). I think they need to offer for FREE what you can get for FREE OTA (or at least a reasonable subscription), this would eliminate the OTA consideration. Then offer the other stuff as add-on's. I currently have 2 DVR's at about $15 per month each. Plus the cost of Cable which my HOA pays for the basic part (looks like this will be dropped and I will have to pay). I think most pay around $50 for basic Cable. If you have to continue to pay for Cable then why would you also rent? I also just got a new TV (samsung) that has Netflix, Vudu etc built in. I just subscribed to Netflix at $8.95 per month for the live streaming movies (do not want DVD Rental). This works very nice with my FIOS 25/25 Internet Connection. I will be getting the new AppleTV. The more I can get over the Internet on all my devices is my preference (iPhone, iPad etc). Anyway, if you can get the content (in mass) then this will not work.

 

[ipedro]

Ok let me rephrase that. My DVR is nearly free (dollar a month more then a non-dvr reciever) and offers more utility then spending a buck a show and not being able to keep it.

Again, why spend a hundred dollars for a device and then 99 cents for a tv-show that I already get. The omission of of all the networks except ABC/FOX only amplifies apple's failure to turn the apple-tv into a winning device.

Ok, so your TiVo is "free" -- $1 a month more than your regular box. So how much is your regular box? Free? Your cable/satellite is Free? Add it up and cross reference it with the number of shows you watch and report back to us on how much you spend per show.

I watch about 3 to 5 shows per week. That's under $5 per week. With cable and a DVR box, I was spending $100 per month. Simple math makes the choice clear.