Slashdot Mirror
Cable Channels Panic Over iPad Streaming App
jfruhlinger writes "Time Warner Cable this month released an iPad app that would allow its subscribers to stream (some of) the channels they already pay for to their iPad, so long as they're connected to home Internet service provided by Time Warner Cable. The app probably seems like a baby step to most Slashdotters, and was extremely popular among subscribers — but it's thrown the owners of those channels into a panic, and they're threatening lawsuits. Time Warner says the contracts they've signed with the channels allow broadcast to any device in the home — 'I don't know what a TV is anymore,' says one company exec — but the channel owners fear that this will disrupt current and future revenue streams and that they need to stop it now. 'If we allow this without litigation, everyone will do it tomorrow,' says an anonymous source. 'If we litigate, we have a chance to win.'"
The right solution here is for somebody to make a TV/Internet service that allows 100% a la carte channel/content offerings. I have to pay $80 for TV to get all the stuff I want to see, but I have interest in fewer than 1% of what's available. I don't want your Music Choice, or your porn (I have my own of both). I don't want Martha Stewart. I don't even want football games other than the ones my team plays in. Seriously, the best model for stuff like this is iTunes right now. For the last season of Stargate Atlantis, I didn't have a cable subscription, so I paid $20 for a 4-month season pass for SG:A, effectively paying $5 a month for the one show I cared about rather than $100 a month for a zillion shows that I couldn't care less for. I got all the episodes, in HD, when I wanted to watch them, and without commercial interruption. My only gripes are that the people who watched on TV got to see it a few days earlier, and that the video purchase ratings don't count as heavily when determining whether to renew a show. Maybe that's the solution - let's take a recently cancelled show (pick any of the ones SyFy recently axed). Set a production budget for a season of the show, and then post online, "We need X dollars, which is X/20 subscriptions at $20 each. If we can get at least X/20 pre-order subscriptions, we'll have a season." I bet they'd make a pretty nice profit, and have nobody to share it with (except maybe Apple/Amazon/Netflix).