Dollar, Dollar Bills, Y’all!
If there’s one thing I’ve come to expect in my past 6 months at the MIR offices it’s this: No matter what the day, no matter what the mood—at any given time, SOMEBODY’S talking about Apple. Whether it’s work related (apps, iAds, etc) or, um…not (the Wall-E Human Transport, anyone?) someone’s ALWAYS got Apple on the brain—and as a general rule, we’re usually of the same brain.
Like I said…usually.
You see, the “rumour du jour” of late has been the prospect of .99 TV show rentals on iTunes—and though they’ve been rumored for what seems like YEARS now, it seems the time is finally right. With the supposed AppleTV [sic] iTV refresh quite possible just a few short hours away, streaming apps such as Hulu+ & Netflix gaining press and popularity, data access being as ubiquitous as ever (and one can only assume Apple’s North Carolina server farm nearing completion), it appears Apple’s finally ready to bestow us with that mythical dollar rental. But no matter which direction our discussions about all of those topics head, the idea of .99 cent rentals, iroically, almost always comes back to one thing: cost.
Darrell (Whitelaw—CEO of MIR) and mine’s chats about .99 rentals almost always ends up turning to the economics of cost. “Why pay a dollar to rent something that you can OWN for just a dollar more…or for that matter, own for free?” And while I can definitely understand where he’s coming from, there may be a couple flaws in his logic. First and foremost, even though Apple always talks about the “$1.99 tv show”, most HD shows on iTunes, in fact, cost $2.99. And secondly, there actually are people who buy substantial amounts of television content via the iTunes store. So I guess you could argue that it comes down to the fundamentals of how each user watches/consumes television, but it got my wheels spinning on what a few potential benefits of .99 cent rentals could be.
A) IT’S ALL ABOUT THE GIGABYTES, BABY — One of the most important benefits really has nothing to do with the price of the shows at all. The real user-side benefit will be not having gigabytes and gigabytes of old episodes of CSI taking up precious space on their hard drives. I mean sure, I’m sure there are SOME of you out there that want to own every single episode, and plan on going back and watching every episode of Lost, and every episode of The Office, but a lot of us are actually “one-and-dones”. We’re the ones who watch the show on our DVRs and then…*gasp* hit DELETE. And you can make the argument about storing your shows externally, but truth be told, not everyone takes the time and effort to archive their downloads. I’d actually argue that most users have those files sitting on their machines locally, just gobbling up the gigabytes.
B) ACCESSIBILITY — Another benefit is simply accessibility. Think about it. How many shitty, useless .99 cent apps do you have sitting in your iTunes, or god forbid your phone, right now? I’d wager more than you’re willing to admit. My guess is that at .99 cents a pop, lots and lots of people aren’t gonna have any problem hitting “rent” on their new iTV/iPad/iPhone. Now, the only question will be if more than 3X as many do it.
C) TRUE À LA CARTE TELEVISION…UNTETHERED — A little fact about me: I stopped watching cable last year. It wasn’t so much a financial decision (it wasn’t) or an ethical one (it wasn’t) I don’t think it rots your brain or anything like that. Fact is, I just didn’t have the TIME to watch. Between hour plus train rides and 12 hour work days, TV just didn’t fit into my schedule. So that’s when i decided to try something crazy.
Rather than worrying about paying for cable and being tied to my couch/TV/DVR every time I wanted to watch a show, I decided to rely almost exclusively on iTunes for all my content. Sure, there were a few that weren’t available (HBO, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, work out a better deal with Apple…we beg you!), and I usually turned to torrents for those, but otherwise for a good part of last season iTunes was my go-to.
I’d run the numbers, and based on the shows I watched, I could download the new episodes every morning, all for around what I’d have paid for cable—but the difference was, I could watch on my own terms*. If I wanted to watch last nights Parks & Rec while having my morning coffee at the kitchen table, I could. Or if I wanted to catch up on LOST on the Q train on my morning commute, I could. You see, as someone with a hectic schedule, I found irreplaceable value in the ability to tailor my television viewing to MY schedule. Between my TV, my iPad, my iPhone and my Macbook Pro, I had the ability to be synced and watch whenever (and WHEREVER) I wanted. And I know that may not appeal to some of you. Some of you like sitting in front of your 60” Internet-connected DVR enabled Plasma televisions, but for me it was perfect. And I’m sure for many more of you it would be, too.
So.
I guess after all that, it’d be a pretty safe bet to say I’m excited about this afternoon’s product announcements. And I mean who knows, maybe today will be all iPod Touches and FaceTime-ing and tiny square Nanos, but I’m holding out hope that I’ll have a gorgeous new iTV sitting next to my television in my very near future, and the ability to watch TV this fall how I want it…and on the cheap.
Oh, and iOS4 for iPad would be nice, too :)
*and I’m well aware of the Hulu argument. I actually have a HuluPlus account. I’m just saying that iTunes has access to more content. But who knows, maybe Apple only launches with a couple studios on board and makes the whole argument null and void.
