Are Apple TV Rentals Too Cheap?
Don’t expect The Big Bang Theory to show up on your Apple TV any time soon — at least not as a rental. Warner Bros. Entertainment Chairman Barry Meyer told the audience of the Bank of America / Merrill Lynch 2010 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference yesterday that his company doesn’t see a good value proposition in these rentals, according to a Los Angeles Times report. The paper quotes Meyer saying that he doesn’t want to “open up a rental business in television at a low price.” His biggest fear seems to be that cheap rentals will hurt the licensing of entire seasons to other broadcasters. Holdouts like these could be problematic for Apple. The company has up to now only won over Disney and News Corp. for its TV show rental service, with NBC and CBS waiting on the sidelines as well. That’s decidedly different than one of Jobs’ earlier low-priced success stories: The iTunes music store had songs from all five major labels when it first introduced the idea of a 99-cent price
