The Silicon Valley trades have been just about roaring with delight over what will allegedly be Apple’s big TV announcement next week. Seems those mavericks are going to “reinvent the bundle.”
Kinda, sorta, not really.
What they are allegedly doing is packaging up a bunch of streaming services like Showtime, Starz and HBO, and letting you get a full year subscription for less than it would cost you to subscribe to each individually. Plus, you get a bunch of new original shows from Apple as part of the package.
On paper it sounds sort of interesting, but let’s dive a little deeper into the proposition.
Subscribing and unsubscribing to HBO and Showtime is a hassle if you have them as part of your cable bundle. There’s some magical math the provider does that somehow makes it seem like you’re paying less if you add some premium cable stations as part of your Super Platinum Plus bundle, and cancelling means spending hours on a phone chain and arguing with a rep who is incentivized to talk you out of cancelling.
So there’s that.
But if you have a Roku or Amazon Fire TV, you can easily subscribe and unsubscribe from HBO or Showtime via the apps. No one will argue with you and it will take all of five minutes. What’s more, you can subscribe via your Roku or Amazon account, as both companies already have a system that lets you manage all your subscriptions. So while the Apple offering will be useful to people with Apple TVs, it’s a me too offering, not an innovation.
Then there’s the bigger question: why would I want to lock myself into a 12 month contract with services I may not watch at all during many of those months, especially in the Year of the Flixcopalypse, when new services from Disney, Warner and NCBU are going to be out there competing for my limited viewing time alongside massively pumped up offerings from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu?
I can understand why HBO, Showtime and Starz might want to lock people in for a year right now, but I’m not really getting what’s in it for consumers. (And let’s be real: the cost savings of just a one-month cancellation to any of these services is likely to equal the savings from signing up for a full-year subscription.)
There's also the fact that it seems Apple is going to launch with just a few of the smaller streaming services, which means they're not likely bundling a big percentage of most people's streaming bill, which further reduces the service's usefulness.
Well, one could argue, there is all that new original programming that Apple is going to be offering for free.
Which brings up yet another “yes, but…”
You see, you’ll only be able to watch those shows on an actual television set if you have a $179 Apple TV device. And a $179 Apple TV device is not something a whole lot of people have. (Nor should they, given that they are in no way superior to a $29 Roku or Amazon Fire TV device.)
Apple’s new shows can also be watched on a few models of Samsung TV, and, it seems likely, viewers will also be able to stream them to their Roku devices using Airplay 2, something I can all but assure you that very few people will even be bothered to try and figure out.
Now Apple’s announcement may not turn out to be a total bust. There are also rumors they’ll include a program guide of sorts for all your subscription services. That’s yet another “not a bad idea on paper” as one of the biggest complaints I hear about the all-app ecosystem is that it’s hard to actually find anything.
That, however, is because people forget whether that new series Russian Doll their friend told them about is on Netflix or HBO or FX, not what time it’s on, so the guide is likely to be of limited use, especially since given the limited number of partners Apple is likely launching with, it’s not particularly all-encompassing.
Bundle 2.0
Apple has deep pockets and a loyal fan base plus hundreds of millions of iPhone users worldwide. That gives them bandwidth to figure this all out and to iterate.
The lessons they learn selling Bundle 1.0 may prove valuable to them in launching Bundle 2.0, which is definitely something I see happening in the post-Flixcopalyptic TV industry, as astronomical churn rates cause both subscription services and vMVPDs to see bundling as the best way to increase stickiness. Future bundles will likely include non-TV media platforms with monthly subscriptions, like music streaming and newspapers and magazines. (Similar to what Hulu and Spotify are already doing, but only on a more massive scale.)
As for Apple, we’ll find out what they’re really up to next week. At which point it may make sense to revisit this piece.
Or not.
