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Report: Apple To Suspend Effort To Develop Live TV Service (bloomberg.com)
schwit1 sends word that Apple has reportedly suspended plans to offer a live internet-based television service and will focus on being a platform for media companies to sell directly to customers through its App Store instead. Bloomberg reports: "Apple Inc. has suspended plans to offer a live Internet-based television service and is instead focusing on being a platform for media companies to sell directly to customers through its App Store, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. While Apple isn't giving up entirely on releasing a live-TV service, its plan to sell a package of 14 or so channels for $30 to $40 a month has run into resistance from media companies that want more money for their programming, said the person, who asked not to be named discussing a prospective product."
TV networks have no idea what to make of streaming technology. Some of them get the idea that they can use the Internet to extend their TV audience to people on the Internet, but are so divided on how to go about it no delivery model has emerged that is consistent enough to be usable by a make-it-simple company like Apple.
Even the simplest case, over-the-air network recent episodes, is a rickety hash. Sometimes you can stream the latest several episodes of a given show. Sometimes you have to wait a week, and sometimes your favorite show is just not available for streaming at all. Sometimes you have to "verify your cable provider" for an over-the-air show! Streaming could have been the OTA networks' natural way of extending their working commercial-sponsored business model to the huge audience of people who are semi-regular TV watchers who occasionally miss an episode.
Cable networks could capture the cord-cutter market by offering their content to existing subscription services. Some do, each with its own idiosyncratic interface, while most operate with the comforting assumption taht most people will pay a separate subscription fee for each cable channel they stream. And what about streaming by those who still subscribe to cable? You have to hope that the skimpy pulldown in the "Verify Your Provider" list will eventually include your own cable company.
Small wonder that today's busy young people just shrug and get into the habit of torrenting everything. And once you have gotten used to that model and its more consistent interface, they won't be back.