Why TV companies won’t cede control to Apple
There are plenty of rumours flying around about an Apple television. My hope is that Apple won’t enter the TV space directly—I think doing so is unnecessary and risky, and I can’t see much value that Apple could bring. Instead, I’d like to see the existing Apple TV move from being a hobby to a unit every iOS device owner must own, simply because it’s so fab.
Right now, it’s not there, but it has potential. On its own, it’s a reasonable piece of kit for movie rentals. If your Apple TV’s wired into an amp, it’s a great means of getting music from your iOS devices to your home music system. Using AirPlay, it’s also possible to stream a bunch of content, including files incompatible with iTunes, should you invest in AirVideo or streamtome. (And by ‘invest’, I mean ‘spend a couple of bucks’—it’s not like apps are expensive.) Should Apple power-up the Apple TV and reduce lag, it’s also going to become a great gaming device.
The main sticking point for me with the Apple TV remains television programming. In the UK, TV series are far too expensive (anything up to double what you’d pay for a DVD box-set) and many popular series are absent. The US gets things better, merely being lumbered with overpriced content. One of the very few Apple rumours I’m happy to believe is that TV companies are reluctant to cave to Apple’s demands, in making their shows cheaper or more readily available, because, well, um… THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!
Apple totally destroyed the music industry, didn’t it? Steve Jobs totally wrecked things for those guys, and made Apple far too powerful in that space. Particularly terrible things Apple has done include:
- encouraging more people to buy digital music, rather than just downloading it from the naughtyweb;
- convincing labels to drop DRM, leading to people being able to do what they want with digital music purchases, thereby leading to more sales;
- effectively monetising pirated music, through iTunes Match.
You can see why TV companies won’t cede any measure of ‘control’ to Apple. They might encourage more people to buy digital content, rather than downloading for free! Maybe Apple could somehow figure out how to monetise downloaded content with the video equivalent of iTunes Match, thereby making studios more money! And, um… … …
No, it turns out I don’t get it either. Maybe those guys just really like shiny discs?
(Note: I know the real sticking point that gets TV companies’ knickers in a twist is Apple’s cut, but NEWSFLASH: a large chunk of something is a bigger figure than all of nothing.)
The difference is that right now everyone is comfy with the current options – they aren’t losing money hand over fist, they’ve got Netflix and the amazon option for rentals (which are built in to my Samsung TV) , they’ve got Apple itching to get stuck in, they’ve got DVD and Blu Ray, they’ve got Sky and Virgin, the main channels all have excellent streaming services, there’s the Xbox and Ps3, they’ve got Sony and Samsungs smart TV’s and they’ve got terrestial broadcasters that’ll pony up for an entire season at a go.
So why would they conceed control to Apple?
By cede control, I mean pretty much any control. It’s insane how the studios are actively fighting against better accessibility and pricing for consumers, and at the same time moaning about piracy. You don’t get it both ways.
Personally, I love the basic model Apple offers (which isn’t unique): hold everything digitally in the cloud, buy whatever you want, when you want. But when you’re being charged over 40 quid for a single season of TV, that’s just bonkers. Even taking into account Apple’s cut, these companies make less from me when I just hang on a bit and buy the DVD (which I sometimes give away, thereby costing the IP owner a potential second sale), but there you go.
I don’t have an issue with the notion of buying just the series you want however at £2 an episode it’s expensive stuff , I do have a problem with the idea they should somehow just hand it all over – you can get Netflix etc. on so many boxes that Apple aren’t needed , the mechanisums there, it doesn’t really need Apple just the studios to allow their TV to be purchased on any platform on a per episode basis (which would be a nightmare for them from a funding point of view).
Out of interest, where does this leave the license fee – I personally am happy with it and while there’s loads of express readers out there working themselves to a lather over the thought of saving £100 a year by it’s abolition I have to say that the vast majority of the country wants to keep it and there’s multiple surveys to support that.
“it doesn’t really need Apple just the studios to allow their TV to be purchased on any platform on a per episode basis”
Which they sometimes do now, but not always, and for far too much money, while fans of shows merrily download for nothing. Netflix and LoveFilm are fine, to some extent, but have massive gaps and suffer from studios holding back content for far too long.
“where does this leave the license fee”
I don’t think it really does anything to the licence fee, nor even subscriptions to companies like Sky. It merely provides an alternative to the latter, and the former can justify its cost in all kinds of ways (website, radio, creating content that no other companies would). It’s also worth noting that the BBC has been quite a big supporter of per-episode sales. It was pretty much the only big org that enabled Apple TV rentals in the US beyond those Jobs had a hand in and Fox, and many BBC shows are still available to buy on the service, in the UK and USA.
Then you don’t NEED Apple for this – if the studios want to sell their episodes individually then there’s plenty of current options, multiple options are good for the customer – I don’t have an issue with this all being available from Apple , just requiring Apple gear to play it back. Everything on the Apple site should be on other other sites as I have a 360, WD live, Samsung TV and frankly I don’t want to buy a new set, new player etc.
As for pricing, well that’s up to the rights holder to set, if Apple wants to loss lead and show that they’ve sell X amount more then they should do that but as I’ve said , financing a series is easier of you have or can sell it as a whole, selling individual episodes may cause issues…
Indeed it is up to the rights holder, but part of my point here is the absurdity in companies banging on about piracy when they massively overprice digital content and don’t make it available worldwide in a timely manner. And as I’ve already said, I don’t want content to only be available on an Apple platform, but that’s not happened anyway elsewhere. In fact, due to their hissy fit with Apple, DRM-free music (bar from EMI) went everywhere else before it eventually ended up on iTunes, just so the industry could flex its muscles. (Of course, long-term, Apple ronched the lion’s share of the market, although I suspect Amazon’s now making inroads there.)
On the lack of media in the UK. I was using Sky+ to record the first series of “The Walking Dead” when it originally came out over here, and for one reason or another, it failed to record episode 5. “No problem” I think; I but jump on iTunes, and it’s not in the UK store. I ended up having to eBay a US iTunes Gift Card code, create a fake US account and buy it from the US store *just* so I could give the content creators some money for a great show. It would have been frankly far easier to just torrent the damn thing.
Also, I’m not too bothered by the per-episode pricing. £2-3 to catch up with an episode I’ve missed or whatever seems pretty reasonable. (I’d rather have a one-time rental for £1-ish, but I doubt that will ever happen). I’m willing to pay a premium for being able to pick stuff a-la-carte.
But if I want to watch an entire series, there should be a more significant price break (say absolutely no more than the DVD/Bluray box-set price) and those prices should (generally) drop over time, in the same way that you can buy an older box-set from HMV cheaper than the latest hot-new-release.
@Warren: Hmm. I think I *might* agree with you there. I wouldn’t be so fussed about expensive individual episodes if full series were cheaper. But when I last looked at House, the DVD I bought was half the price of the SD version on iTunes, which is just mental. I suspect most studios are trying to cling on to shiny discs, purely because they saw such a sales uptick during this period. Thing is, they were capturing new sales and also resales (people rebuying their old content and replacing tapes/records/videos), and that spike won’t happen again.
As for your Waking Dead purchase, that’s just crazy, but it again highlights the way in which these companies cherry-pick outlets and mess up timings. (See also: The Muppets. Already done in the US, but not here until next month. I’ll bet Disney at some point whinges about piracy and a disappointing UK box office, despite it being released at a stupid time and two months ‘late’.)