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If Apple could it would simply license all the content Sure, but that won't work: the content is paid for by the cable companies. It's, what, $30 billion per

If Apple could it would simply license all the content Sure, but that won't work: the content is paid for by the cable companies. It's, what, $30 billion per year going to content creators straight from the cable companies, up front? The content creators absolutely need the cable companies today, there's no other way for them to operate. They don't self-fund, period. So Apple would need to pony up. If they came to the content creators and said look, we want to do this thing, here's $100 billion for the first three year, up front—it'd happen. Money talks in Hollywood. It might be the only thing that does. Sadly, there's no way in hell Tim Cook could (or would) make that happen. He's way too conservative. Hell, he couldn't even handle Scott Forstall. Apple certainly has the money and doesn't know what to do with it other than buy their own stock. Well, that's what they could do with it. $100 billion and you own cable television.

parasubvert 13y ago
It looks more like Apple will likely partner with a couple of satellite or cable companies and offer to recreate their TV/settop experience for them. Basically, replace Cisco and TiVO, and change the whole customer experience model to be on the set top box, no more calling in to add channels, deal with PPV issues, etc. I would also bet they're going to try to find a way to make 4K video distribution work to have a reason to switch, perhaps building a dedicated high-speed VPN from the iTunes Store through the cable company's network where they get a cut of the price - since there's no way you could stream 4K over a wide area without dedicated QoS,. The question is who will bite. Clearly the wireless carriers have benefitted a lot from Apple's presence - more data usage == more dollars. If Apple can do this with cable companies, they'll have a massive and eager channel to sell shiny 4K TVs and boxes through (and more iTunes content), and Cable companies will have incentive to experiment with a new a-la-carte vs. subscription content pricing model for 4K.
Tloewald 13y ago
I'm curious about the $30B figure. How did you arrive at that?
- erichocean 13y ago
  I didn't arrive at it, it's a well-known industry figure, I'm not sure where I heard it first. (I live in Los Angeles and lived in Hollywood for years, working mostly on the film side, but I know a lot of people in TV, too.) Here's an article for consumers on unbundling[1] I found after one Google search that says that ESPN alone receives $7.2 billion per year from US cable companies, which sounds about right to me. (They also earn money for ads, I don't know if any of that is kicked back to the cable companies. I doubt it...) It shouldn't be surprising even if you crunch the numbers yourself. There's ~100 million cable subscribers, and the average combined bill (Internet/Cable/Phone) was $128/month in 2011.[2] So that's $153.6 billion per year. It's not hard to imagine that ~20% of that goes to the people making the content that's playing on cable. If anything, it'd be surprising if it were lower than that. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/02/technology/cable-a-la-carte/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/02/technology/cable-a-la-carte/... [2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203479104577124494272500550.html?mod=e2tw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020347910457712...

parasubvert 13y ago

It looks more like Apple will likely partner with a couple of satellite or cable companies and offer to recreate their TV/settop experience for them. Basically, replace Cisco and TiVO, and change the whole customer experience model to be on the set top box, no more calling in to add channels, deal with PPV issues, etc. I would also bet they're going to try to find a way to make 4K video distribution work to have a reason to switch, perhaps building a dedicated high-speed VPN from the iTunes Store through the cable company's network where they get a cut of the price - since there's no way you could stream 4K over a wide area without dedicated QoS,. The question is who will bite. Clearly the wireless carriers have benefitted a lot from Apple's presence - more data usage == more dollars. If Apple can do this with cable companies, they'll have a massive and eager channel to sell shiny 4K TVs and boxes through (and more iTunes content), and Cable companies will have incentive to experiment with a new a-la-carte vs. subscription content pricing model for 4K.

Tloewald 13y ago

I'm curious about the $30B figure. How did you arrive at that?

erichocean 13y ago
I didn't arrive at it, it's a well-known industry figure, I'm not sure where I heard it first. (I live in Los Angeles and lived in Hollywood for years, working mostly on the film side, but I know a lot of people in TV, too.) Here's an article for consumers on unbundling[1] I found after one Google search that says that ESPN alone receives $7.2 billion per year from US cable companies, which sounds about right to me. (They also earn money for ads, I don't know if any of that is kicked back to the cable companies. I doubt it...) It shouldn't be surprising even if you crunch the numbers yourself. There's ~100 million cable subscribers, and the average combined bill (Internet/Cable/Phone) was $128/month in 2011.[2] So that's $153.6 billion per year. It's not hard to imagine that ~20% of that goes to the people making the content that's playing on cable. If anything, it'd be surprising if it were lower than that. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/02/technology/cable-a-la-carte/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/02/technology/cable-a-la-carte/... [2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203479104577124494272500550.html?mod=e2tw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020347910457712...