Apple Wants To Sell Premium TV Channels in a Bundle

Apple isn't done trying to sell you pay TV. From a report on Recode: Here's Apple's latest proposal: It wants to sell consumers a premium TV bundle, which combines HBO, Showtime and Starz. Apple already sells each of those channels individually. But it has approached the three networks about rolling them up into a single package, as conventional pay TV operators sometimes do. The difference: Traditional pay TV operators, like Charter, usually require consumers to subscribe to a basic level of TV channels before it will sell them a premium bundle. Apple could sell the bundle as standalone product, delivered via its iOS devices and its Apple TV settop box. Apple doesn't have a bundle deal in place with any of the premium networks, industry sources say. Apple currently sells HBO for $15 a month, Showtime for $11 a month, and Starz for $9 a month.

Just wait for ATT/Directv to buy HBO time warner

[Joe_Dragon]

Just wait for ATT/Directv to buy HBO time Warner and see how fast this gets dropped

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[king neckbeard]

With Apple;s income stream on the line, we might actually see a revival of anti-trust law in this country.

can we make our own bundle?

[Causemos]

How about we build our own bundle? Or better, pick our movies/series and lose the channel system completely. That way the creators hopefully get more of the money.

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[XxtraLarGe]

Or better, pick our movies/series and lose the channel system completely. That way the creators hopefully get more of the money.

There's an app for that... [apple.com]

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[jedidiah]

> A-la-carte sounds good, right up until it's five-bucks a channel for the ones you're on the fence about

A lot of people could pay $10 or $15 for a couple of really obscure channels and still come out WAY ahead. The cost of cable is insane and out of control these days.

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[Lumpy]

I do this already. It's called a PLEX server and a VPN with a offshore Torrent collector.

Fuck the tv industry.

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[XxtraLarGe]

Same as the old boss. Selling bundles is exactly what the Cable-Mafia does, and exactly what cord cutters don't want.... But its apple, so iGuess the iSheep will buy it, and claim its the greatest thing since sliced bread...

If they offer them in a bundle for a reduced price, but still offer them individually as well, who cares?

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[fluffernutter]

Because that is just a game to play to make it look like they are giving you the choice, but realistically there is no choice and buying channels individually is just stupid.

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[PCM2]

buying channels individually is just stupid.

It is? I can't think of anything I'd want to watch on Showtime and I haven't a clue what plays on Starz.

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[fluffernutter]

So you will pay 80% the cost of the package and only get one channel out of it?

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[jedidiah]

> They are 100% dominating the HTPC space now

You should really lay off whatever drugs you're abusing there.

And so it beings

[jason777]

The same crap that happened to cable tv, will eventually happen to online tv. Queue the added commercials soon.

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[ausekilis]

The wife and I pay for Netflix, NBC (she loves the NCIS series'), and Hulu each month. Hulu has 2-3 commercials in succession and 2-3 breaks per 20-minute show. NBC, despite getting subscriber money directly, still shows commercials too. Why swap out cash cows when you can combine them?

"The Future Is Now!", "What a time to be alive!" etc...

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[Serenissima]

You can also pay a couple bucks and then not watch any commercials on Hulu. Every once in a while, you get a show that isn't part of that plan and it shows a commercial at the beginning and a commercial at the end. So, you sit through 1 commercial, and then stop the video at/after the credits and not watch the second one. If you watch a lot of shows on Hulu, it's definitely worth a couple bucks.

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[Cro Magnon]

That's what I did. Lately, I've been watching more on Hulu than Netflix, and with summer approaching, I expect my Huluing to exceed my regular TV. The extra money to get rid of commercials is well worth it, and I haven't encountered any show with that one ad yet. :)

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[tlhIngan]

The wife and I pay for Netflix, NBC (she loves the NCIS series'), and Hulu each month. Hulu has 2-3 commercials in succession and 2-3 breaks per 20-minute show. NBC, despite getting subscriber money directly, still shows commercials too. Why swap out cash cows when you can combine them?

NCIS is CBS, which you can view for free with ads on cbs.com (2-3 ads per commercial break). In theory you can get CBS all access which is supposed to be ad-free, but eh I'll just be cheap and stick with the free version.

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[jedidiah]

Forget cbs.com. Just stick up an antenna and pull it off the air for free. OTA tuners are the easiest to deal with regardless of platform. There's none of that stupid encryption to get in the way and the tech is cheap and simple.

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[Obfuscant]

The same crap that happened to cable tv, will eventually happen to online tv. Queue the added commercials soon.

Cable has always had commercials on non-premium content, and commercials on premium content are part of the premium network feed. The 'extra' commercials that cable has are called "local avails" and are ads that replace network-supplied ones.

Most international channels come in as packages

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I just bought Tamil channels from Lycatv.tv. Some 50$ for three months. It comes with about 25 or so channels. And a few dozen new movie titles. All movies streamable on demand. The TV channels have one live feed from India, but the live stream is automatically archived every 30 minutes. The archive goes back one week. So any show in any channel in the last 7 days I could watch on demand! Very nice, no need to TiVo no need to set up stuff. Very nice.

But, there is nothing much worth watching in all the 25 c

Not a paradigm changer

[Rick Zeman]

$36 a la carte for those three channels is kinda ridiculous. At those bundled prices to all of the other streaming a la carte channels you need to pay for and you may as well stick with your cable/FIOS and at least gain the advantage of a unified interface. A game changer would be ESPN being ONLY available via an app or some sort of exclusivity like that. This isn't that.

A bundle

[OneHundredAndTen]

Wrong, Apple. We do not want bundles. We do not want to buy N channels in order to watch M channels, where N >> M.

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[OneHundredAndTen]

Actually, I was wrong. We do not want bundles. We do not want channels. We want to purchase individual shows or movies. Channels and bundles belong in the 20th century.

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[PCM2]

We do not want channels. We want to purchase individual shows or movies. Channels and bundles belong in the 20th century.

Oh, I dunno. Sometimes I don't want to be responsible for picking what I want to watch right now. Just show me something. And I'm not alone -- the El Rey network seems like it might work for my purposes, but millions of people pay extra on their cable bills to get ESPN.

Or how about this: Maybe people don't want terrestrial radio stations anymore, but does nobody pay for SiriusXM? Does nobody use Pandora or Spotify?

A la carte or death!

[Tablizer]

We need more forced-bundling like a whole in the web. The great promise of web-based content delivery was more a-la-carte choice. Now Apple is doing the same bleep as the other bleepsters. Bleep you, Apple!

All I want is A La Carte.

[XxtraLarGe]

There isn't any "cord cutting" TV service I can get that lets me only select the channels I want. Every single one (DirectTV Now, PS Vue, Sling TV) forces me to get a bunch of channels I don't want to get the channels I do want. The closest one comes for me is PS Vue's Core Slim package, but I can count 41 out of 61 channels on that package that I have absolutely no interest in, and probably another dozen or so I wouldn't pay for on their own. I'd gladly pay $25/month in order to get the 10 channels or so that I'm actually interested in.

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[c-A-d]

It's the same here in Canada. Mandatory "basic cable" which I don't watch, or even want to support (I'm looking at you CBC and Sportsnet). If this was available in Canada, I'd probably buy it. As for now, Youtube is my go-to for documentary programming.

Channels?

[nealric]

I think the entire concept of a "channel" (except for perhaps live sports or news broadcasts) is a slowly dying concept in the streaming age. On-demand content bundles (like buying the rights to all Netflix content) are what this will shape into.

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[sit1963nz]

Been using Netflix for a couple of years now.
Here's what we have noticed:
1. We HATE adverts on TV with a passion now, all they do is force us over to Netflix
2. We HATE watching a series over weeks now, we prefer to binge watch so you keep the continuity
3. Channels....what are channels ?, we watch programs on Netflix the idea of Channels showing large volumes of crap with minor breaks for a program you wants to watch is abhorrent.
4. The ONLY ting we watch on regular TV is the news, because it is local