Apple's TV Revolution Suffers Serious Setback

Anyone who’s been following Apple ’s long-running on/off flirtation with the world of TV will know that the brand is strongly rumoured to be trying to launch a subscription TV platform. Certainly there’s plenty of evidence out there to suggest that Apple has been speaking to key TV content providers, and now that the brand has finally started to get serious about its Apple TV box the one thing that feels like it’s missing from Apple’s entertainment offering (except for an Apple television set!) is some sort of packaged TV platform.

However, it now seems that Apple has been forced to put its TV service plans on hold due, ironically, to good old-fashioned corporate greed.

While Apple is itself hardly one for willingly undercharging consumers for its products, the greed in question here actually lies at the door of the networks Apple has apparently been talking to. It seems some of them are reportedly refusing to lower the price they charge for their content to the sort of level Apple wants them to.

According to the ibtimes, the evidence for all this comes from two separate sources. First, CBS Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves revealed during a December 8th speech at the Business Insider Ignition conference that Apple’s TV package plans had been put “on hold”.

Second, an anonymous source told Bloomberg that Apple’s plans had been hit because content owners weren’t willing to lower their prices to enable Apple to achieve a target monthly subscription price of $30-$40 for around 14 ‘channels’.

The price must be right...

The $30-$40 price point Apple is reportedly targeting is less than half what many consumers now stump up for a fairly typical cable TV package, and it’s easy to see why content providers wouldn’t be keen to kick off a potential downward pricing spiral by flogging their content at a discount to Apple - however big a deal an Apple TV subscription package has the potential to be.

It’s possible that the current impasse between Apple and some of the content providers will never get solved, leading Apple to turn its back on any sort of traditional TV package model to focus instead on delivering an entertainment experience built on separate apps on its Apple TV box.

...But it probably will happen

Leslie Moonves, though, doesn’t think it will pan out this way. “This [the Apple TV subscription package] will happen,” he said during his recent conference speech. “It has four major networks and 10 cable networks, let’s say, and the price point will be in the $30s, $30-35, $40 maybe.”

He also succinctly summed up the potential appeal of the Apple subscription TV service if - or rather when - it launches: “People will not be spending money on channels they don’t want to watch.”

Taking these comments in conjunction with my recent story about a new Apple TV box potentially coming out in 2016, it’s tempting to see this new box as providing the platform for a new Apple television subscription package. Though to be honest, I seem to remember thinking the same thing about the current Apple TV box before that launched…