There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Apple intends to replace the whole cable TV industry with Internet-delivered subscription television. But the best predictor is the fact that replacing broken content consumption is just what Apple does.
Apple will kill cable TV. Here’s how.
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23 responses to “How Apple will Kill Cable TV”
Unless Apple can get HBO and Cinemax in its subscription service for the same price or less than what Cable Providers charge, it won’t have any effect on the television landscape. They would need to offer HBO’s and Cinemax’s complete lineups without censorship in order to woo the 85 million customers these two networks have. For $25.00 or less per month.
Currently they are available as apps for iDevices but require you to have a current cable or satellite subscription to view the content. Neither of these are available on Netflix, Blockbuster or Hulu+. They are why Netflix, Blockbuster and Hulu+ have not really impacted the cable or satellite industries.
The only way Apple will get it to work is if HBO and Cinemax make the same if not more per subscription and customers see a better value than with their Cable or Satellite providers. Personally, I’d cut DirecTV out of my budget but unless I can bring True Blood and Game of Thrones into my house the day they broadcast, it isn’t going to happen.
And this applies to the rest of the world how? Remember, the rest of the world has different free-to-air and pay TV models than the US. Would apple pay up the typical $750m to secure the Premier League rights in the UK (after they become available in about 3 to 4 years time), or the equivalent for the other major sports series across Europe? How about in Aus/NZ? would they take on Fox there for the NRL and AFL rights?
Sports rights are the ares where pay TV is strongest across the globe. Unless Apple were to suddenly decide that they were to change their whole business to compete against the likes of ESPN and Fox (Sky), there’s no way they could hope to break the satellite/cable model in its’ most lucrative market: Sports…
…that is if the cable companies don’t raise the internet connection cost, it will work fine. However, I see the cable companies loosing money because of Apple, then raising the internet connection fee to make up the difference, then charging exorbitant fees for overages like the wireless carriers do now. The consumer losses either way.
The other elephant in the room is how much consumers are willing to be charged by broadband and mobile phone providers in order to download all this content, and whether those network providers can actually cope with that volume of traffic.
My reaction to the article is, ‘Nah.’
The premise that cable TV is broken isn’t true. It actually works fine ‘most’ of the time.
The only thing that people hate about it is the price. Cable + a DVR is about as good as it gets.
precisely how apple intends to get the content that “last mile” is the question cable still owns that pipe and if we get rid of them for apple they will charge us 100 a month for internet
i for one hate sports programing ( i only watch it in bars ) and would love to pay for what i actually want to watch and not chip in for support of all those curling enthusiasts.
Apple is big, but its not THAT big… lets not get too excited unrealistically.
This blog post is the perfect example of ‘broken content consumption’. Readers are forced to visit another site to read an article that is spread over multiple pages.
Four years ago I would have agreed with you, but look at what they’ve done with music, and with mobile phone content.
You could have said the same thing about mobile phone content in 2007.
Apple kills cable, all the cool cable shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Trones die. Those are simply too expensive to make. Cable stations use them to promote their whole channells and get people to subcribe. They’re more or less subsidizing them. People cite music as example of Apple’s power, but music industry works differently. People said iPad will do the same to printed press, but so far it’s been a huge failure on this front. So I doubt Apple has much power to push it’s vision here.
HD is better than classical TV, HD offer great pleasure to eyes.