How Apple could shake up TV: A la carte channels
Apple can set its much-expected television set apart from those of competitors—and shake up the TV industry to boot—if it can figure a way to introduce a la carte pricing for shows and channels on Apple TV, a new analyst report suggests.
In a note today to investors, Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu asserts that Apple’s strength lies less in the hardware innovation it might bring to the TV market than in letting customers subscribe to particular channels or shows of their choosing.
Such a model would run counter to traditional TV packages offered by cable providers that sell channels to subscribers in pre-packaged bundles.
Reading this, my first thought was, if this proves to be true, I will buy one of these no matter what the cost. This has long been one of my big hopes for cable TV - to not have to pay for 600 channels in order to get the small handful of them that I actually want. If Apple can somehow provide this, they will completely destroy the traditional cable television market. This sounds like the kind of revolutionary approach to the TV market that would have appealed to Steve Jobs.