“The mere prospect that Apple and Comcast could be joining forces for a new joint TV service, as the Wall Street Journal first reported Sunday, has revived a fresh round of hyperventilation–particularly in the stock market where shares of Netflix and Apple reacted sharply the morning after,” Andrew Wallenstein writes for Variety.
“But grab brown bags and start breathing into them, folks. Because while this deal isn’t impossible, it is improbable,” Wallenstein writes. “The issue here isn’t the veracity of the WSJ report; there’s no reason to question whether Apple and Comcast are actually talking. Apple has been in talks with media companies constantly since its breakthrough deal in 2005 that first put Disney movies and TV shows on iTunes. But what has happened since then? Lots of talk, little action.”
“The 2014 edition of Apple’s TV dream has a very au courant vibe to it: The new twist is that Comcast will reserve a special ‘managed services’ lane of the so-called ‘last mile’ of its broadband network to ensure that the video stream comes into U.S. homes without interruption. Coming just weeks after Comcast struck a somewhat similar deal to protect Netflix’s own content, give Apple points for putting a fresh spin on yet another TV proposition that feels very of-the-moment,” Wallenstein writes. “But haven’t we been down this road too many times before not to suspect a dead end again?”
Read more in the full article here.
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