Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, in September (CNet):

How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode? [This would] jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free.

Warner, also in September (LA times):

“We just don’t think the value proposition is a good one for us,” [Chairman Barry] Meyer told analyst Jessica Reif  in an interview at the conference. He said in his view he’d rather license whole seasons of shows rather than “open up a rental business in television at a low price.”

I’ve now been running an Apple TV since the start of 2011, and here’s what I’ve learned from the experience:

  • 99 cents for a 40-minute show isn’t fantastic value, but it is good enough as an impulse purchase, and stops me from bothering to find shows via ‘alternate’ means. It’s also a cheap and usable enough system to ‘convert’ me from using ‘alternate’ means to the semi-legal one (for me) of Apple TV (see below for more on that).
  • 99 cents is too much for old shows that aren’t great and also for shows that are 20 minutes in length. For those, I tend to grab DVDs on sale from the likes of Amazon; studio execs say they don’t want to harm DVD sales through digital, but the stuff I buy tends to be significantly cheaper than an Apple rental would be, because I wait for the sales.
  • The single-episode rental nature of Apple TV could be a boon for studios, since it enables you to ‘test’ shows you’ve not watched before. Our household’s $1.98 test of two episodes of Lie To Me (sadly now cancelled by idiots at Fox) resulted in all 48 episodes being rented. So the studio got a total of $47.52, minus Apple’s cut. We’d have never bought the DVDs.
  • There aren’t enough shows for rental on the Apple TV, meaning interest will soon dwindle.
  • I don’t want to buy most shows to rewatch them (most of our DVDs have been watched once only), and there’s no way in hell I’m paying £2.49 ($3.99) for a single TV episode in HD, nor even £1.89 ($3.02) for SD. £36.99 is terrible value for a season of a show that will soon end up on DVD for half of that.

Of course, execs would also argue that, despite me paying for TV content, I’m still breaking the law, because I’m in the UK and using a US iTunes account to rent TV shows. Frankly, I’m not going to cry myself to sleep over that—TV being locked to regions is an anachronism that makes no sense whatsoever today (and the same goes for movies), and the studios are getting money they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

I think it’s a great pity that Apple TV seems to be on a road to nowhere. Although new movies regularly appear, the top TV rentals have barely changed in six months, bar new content from the BBC showing up on a regular basis (which makes no odds to me, being British, but I’m sure Americans are happy about this, so: well done, BBC). And it’s bizarre that studio execs witter on about Apple TV ‘devaluing’ content when that same content is available in the US in unlimited form for under $10 per month from Netflix.

Give me the last season of House on Apple TV for rent. I’ll watch the lot and you’ll get money. Chuck, too. And probably a whole bunch of other shows. Alternatively, sit there stamping your little feet, covering your ears, shutting your eyes and pretending it’s still 1999. That’s all fine. Bitch and moan about how Apple somehow ‘destroyed’ the music industry (by convincing a bunch of people to pay for digital) and how you don’t want the same to happen to the world of TV. I’ll keep pretending it’s 1999, too, by waiting until the shows I want to watch are in the bargain bin (which happens increasingly quickly these days), and you’ll get less money—and it’s your own damn fault, you idiots.