“The traditional television market is heading into a period of colossal restructuring just as Apple Inc. prepares to enter the fold,” Jennifer Booton reports for MarketWatch.
“On Tuesday, Pacific Crest Securities analyst Andy Hargreaves predicted Apple would launch a premium digital TV service that would ‘shift the landscape of pay TV,'” Booton reports. “He said he expects Apple to launch a virtual multichannel video programming service that would be priced and marketed as a “high-quality service,” costing around $40 to $50 a month.”
“Apple would offer better personalization and mobility than today’s pay-TV offerings, and would likely offer the linear feed of most major broadcast and cable networks as well as a “rich on-demand offering” and the potential to watch live sports, he said,’ Booton reports. “The vast majority of media consumption now occurs on a mobile device, with more Americans abandoning expensive traditional cable packages.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Can’t happen soon enough!
I am willing to pay for the content I actually watch and MIGHT be willing to pay for it by suffering through commercials if these commercials are well targeted to my needs and wants. I am not willing to pay to have the possibility of watching a whole bunch of garbage shows and non-targeted commercials too.
I agree, except for the part about commercials. If I’m paying I don’t want ’em. I don’t need to be targeted by anyone, except my government. Anyone remember what the promise was when cable TV was just starting out?
Certainly an option to watch without ads would be ideal. I’d pay extra for that, as many do now for the likes of HBO. Just don’t stick some artificial hurdle in the way, like the moronic and price gouging bundling system. No More Bundles.
Why would it be okay to be targeted by your government?
Consider this your introduction to dry humor.
Was it as good for you as it was for me?
It’s the same promise (lie) over and over: pay for the service and you won’t have to have commercials. Cable TV, Internet services (remember AOL), satellite radio… Greed always overpowers the promise.
40 – 50 dollars, too much. That’s what cable tv cost now. Actually, in a bundle, it’s cheaper. No, the price of 15 – 20 is the correct price point. You also have to figure in the price of internet service from the cable/internet provider. You better believe that price is going up. They will try to make up the difference by rising prices, the cable companies. Apple needs to get into providing high speed internet service, wire and wireless.Re-occurring dollars, month in month out. That’s why they are doing the TV service in the first place.
I’d be happy with $50 for fast internet and $50 for whatever services are available per month. $100 to stream only the stuff I want, plus live sports (I’ll pay per stream, if needed)? Cool with me.
What bugs me is that the cable providers also add in charges for “renting” their Set top boxes and this launches the price up if you have more than one STB in the house. Using a service like Apple’s would eliminate that and let you use it flawlessly on the go as well. I’m in. Can’t wait for it to launch!
NO
DAMN
BUNDLES!
It’s à la carte or I call it just more of the SOS old school. The customer rules. Bend over media providers and deal with it. No more of your BS.
You’d probably still end up spending a lot of money when choosing single channels. How cheap could they possibly make each channel a month? $5? Get ten channels and that’s $50 a month. It would be a miracle to only pay something like $2 a month per channel. I’m only saying the content providers have to take their pound of flesh and aren’t going to give it away.
I keep being hit back with that argument. I entirely disagree! I’m extremely picky about what I bother to watch. My days often overflow with too much to do and I have to force myself to sit, relax and watch something. If I got stuck with some stupid bundle, I would NOT spend enough time watching all the crap to justify it.
IOW: I totally reject that argument. Sorry! But I cannot find a way to agree.
Of course the Parasites-That-Be will attempt to PUNISH customers for demanding and obtaining the best sane solution by GOUGING them with price hikes for going à la carte. If they do, I’ll tell them to shove it, as per usual, and NOT buy in. Price it right or shove off.
Maybe if you educated yourself on how video is delivered you might better understand why channels are bundled.
Hah, just kidding….I know you’d rather bitch!
You’re such an ass.
Dude, go back and read your post.
It is childish.
Bundling is mostly done at the behest of broadcasters.
Channels are then bonded through muxing by ISPs to save bandwidth.
Simply create a favorites list and assign it to a users button (usually labeled ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’….) and ignore the bundling.
Or keep complaining. It’s like going to a store and demanding only a few beans out of a can cause you aren’t that hungry.
Please explain why bundling is needed in this day and age when streaming over the internet is possible and each customer can choose the content they want? I see no justification for bundling when the content is all digital these days.
You’re right…there is no reason, other than the same reason bundling is done now, which is to subsidize lesser viewed channels by spreading ad revenue across all of them.
In a sense bundling is already done. HBO normally has several channels to offer different movie styles across different times of the day. They can combine all these into one app, but you are still paying for access to all those shows, just through one portal.
The transition to IP is going to leave some channels dead, but in time powerhouses like ESPN will probably find ways to keep many in the fold.
What will be harder to transition are ‘conglomerates’ like Viacom who can make money off their big shows but will struggle to find a way to push the channels that DON’T mix with others like LOGO, Nick, Jr. and BET. Time will tell.
Ran out of Neo-Con-Job talking points today? So you couldn’t think of anything better to do but troll one of the thoughtful (versus regurgitating) people around here? Do you have a key where they wind you up every day?
Calling yourself ‘one of the more thoughtful people around here’ (right after you regurgitate your still backwards understanding of Conservatism) is the funniest thing you have said in years,
How thoughtful of you.
If you were to explain to me something about your area of expertise (let’s say if it were network and computer security, and I kept insisting Macs could get viruses….) and I continued to ignore why it was so, you would probably get a little tired or hearing the same BS said after you had repeatedly explained it.
But then again, I have done the same in explaining political moves of the right, and you were unable to grasp those either, so I shouldn’t be surprised that business models of media are out of your grasp of comprehension, too.
Did Gaagle mess with your TV dongle so you have time to lie your way through MDN?
Agreed. Charge by the channel, or if you really want to shake up TV (read as make the crap go away), pay by the show! It can’t be the outrageous pay per view rates currently being charged, but would you pay $1 for one episode of a series? $5 for a season? What is the “sweet spot” price?
There are hours of lousy cable TV that people currently watch that they wouldn’t if they had to “pay” for those hours, and the world would be a better place without those shows! Perhaps, finally, television could become the performance art it aspired to be but never quite achieved.
I agree. Pay by the show. A season pass for most shows on iTunes is about $30-$40. Some are more, some are less. Watch ten shows regularly is cheaper than a cable subscription. Personally, I watch less than that. There are better things to do with my time than watching TV.
Forget bundles, forget channels, they are the old model.
Verizon bought AOL today. The reason why they made this purchase is because AOL has developed a programmatic advertising platform, which provides advertising for content such as video. Verizon is also launching a video service in a few months which will compete with cable and satellite. The new service will likely be bundled with mobile, and will probably track the Internet activity of each user and serve user-specific/targeted video advertising.
Questions to consider:
1. Will Apple partner with Verizon? If so, will there be a tier that won’t track Internet activity and won’t serve ads?
2. If Apple does not partner with Verizon then how will Apple compete with the less expensive alternatives from AT&T and Verizon? Will it be like smartphone wars version 2?
3. If Apple partners with AT&T and/or Verizon will Apple also partner with carriers in other countries?
I can do fine with HBO, Showtime, Turner Classic Movies, BBC World News, Bloomberg and pay per view for a couple of College Football games. I can get PBS already and have no use for the rest of it.
I am tired of subsidizing bullshit I do not watch. Comcast sent me an email today saying my service costs $164.17. Considering how little TV I watch that is criminal.
A new era without commercials/ads… leave this to the bad guys like FB and google. thanks
Do you really think the Cable companies will be losing money over this? Sorry, but no. Comcast has foreseen this by instituting bandwidth caps. A few friends tried cutting the cable and use the internet and they got clobbered in bandwidth overages.
This is going nowhere unless Apple offers the internet connection as well.
Ever wonder why Apply has been building these huge server farms?
I would not be the least bit surprised if cable companies start charging for internet connection by the minute rather than a flat fee, just so they can rake in more money. There is no end to the screwing they are prepared to give us.
And I agree that Apple needs to offer internet access service if it wants to succeed as the content provider of first choice.
People seem to forget that the cable companies are also the biggest internet providers. If they lose on one end they will tag it on the other end. Be prepared for internet cost to skyrocket if this catches on.