Thursday, September 2, 2010

Why Apple Hasn't Signed More Studios

Though Disney and News Corp. have agreed to allow Apple to sell content at 99 cents per episode or show, other studios are balking.

As typically is the case for changing rights arrangements in the TV content ecosystem, the issue for studios is the disruption of other parts of the revenue ecosystem.

The 99-cent price tag that represents a steep discount from the TV episodes already offered on iTunes for about $3.

Apparently some executives are worried about devaluation of the content, not just for online consumption, but also "downstream" release windows such as DVD and syndication.

As typically is the case, content owners are trying to protect existing big revenue streams while slowly growing the new channels. But the bigger risk right now is cannibalizing the big revenue channels in favor of much-smaller ancillary channels.

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