Warner Bros. execs find Apple's 99 cent TV show rentals too cheap
According to The Associated Press, Barry Meyer, chief executive of Warner Bros., said his company decided to not participate in Apple's proposal for 99 cent TV episode rentals, because they feel the price is too low. Meyer revealed his company's stance this week at an investor conference hosted by Merrill Lynch in California.
"Meyer said the deal was not a good value for the studio subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., which sells permanent downloads shows such as 'Gossip Girl' on iTunes for $2.99 each," the report said.
While Warner Bros. didn't agree to Apple's deal, other networks did join on for the rental service, upon which Apple's new cloud-centric Apple TV will rely. That device, which will sell for $99, will have limited internal storage and will focus on rentals of HD movies for $4.99 and TV shows for 99 cents.
Announced earlier this month, the new rental service has been agreed to by major U.S. networks Fox and ABC.
"We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said during his keynote address earlier this month.
Before the rentals were announced, reports indicated that major content providers including NBC Universal, CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc. have all "dug in their heels in opposition" to Apple's plans. TV executives are said to believe that inexpensive episode downloads would break their current economic model.
109 Comments
Hi Warner Bros,As the consumer, I'm not interesting in paying more than $0.99 cents for a TV show. Watching a whole season of your show simply gets too expensive. It's not viable. I could spend my money on a lot of other things that would make more sense (like Netflix).
I'm sure Pepsi would prefer to charge $5.00 for a 2-liter, but the market demands cheaper products. Either figure out how to hit the $0.99 cent price point or don't expect many people to be buying your shows.Thank you,
AndrewP.S. If your high price points make people not buy your shows, don't blame it on piracy and go crying to the public. This is your problem, not ours. Pepsi doesn't blame poor sales on store theft, neither should you.
Full package digital cable costs $2/day. If WB truly expects me to pay that much for a single episode they're nuts.
Executives with Warner Bros., producer of numerous primetime network TV shows, believe that Apple's 99 cent prices TV show rentals need to be more expensive.
According to The Associated Press, blah... blah... blah...
I was sort of thinking $.99 was a little high for a TV show rental. You can rent an HD version of Avatar that runs for about 2+ hours for $4.99 but a TV show is generally 20(ish) minutes once you take out the advertisements. The way I see it, we should get to rent TV Shows for $.79 or Free if we take them with advertisements (just a matter of time before the iAd works it's way in - hulu style).
Let's see. They're willing to have Amazon SELL the episodes for $1.99 to $2.99 each (mostly $1.99), but they won't rent them for $0.99?
Idiots.
Full package digital cable costs $2/day. If WB truly expects me to pay that much for a single episode they're nuts.
Completely agree. I'm paying $1 a day for DISH, and this idiot wants me to pay $3 for one episode of one show?!?!?!?! By far one of the more absurd things I have ever heard.