Apple has “pressed the hold button” on its plans to build a TV subscription service, says CBS CEO Les Moonves. More on what that means, and why it happened, in a bit.
Apple’s New TV Ad for Apple TV: We Don’t Need TV, Because We Have TV!
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Apple via YouTube
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
For now, here’s Apple’s message to the TV networks — as well as Apple TV buyers: We don’t need a TV subscription service, because we have TV apps!
Note all the TV content Apple is promoting in its new Apple TV ad that went up last night: Shows from ABC, Fox, CBS (but not NBC!), HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” a bunch of Netflix and newish movies like “The Martian.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OON2bZdqVzs&feature=youtu.be
Reality check: You could have watched all of this stuff with the old Apple TV, and you can also watch all of this stuff with rival Web TV hardware sold by Google, Amazon and Roku. If Apple really wants to make the case that its new box is the “future of television,” it will need to create some apps — or get other people to create apps — that do or show things you can only do on its own box.
More later!
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
