Steve Jobs Discussed Potential Television Deal with CBS CEO Les Moonves

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"I told Steve, 'You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business,' " Moonves said, citing his concerns about providing content to a service that could disrupt CBS' existing revenue streams.

Right there is the problem. He might know the business as it was, but has no idea about where it is going and doesn't know how to make that work and embrace it.

This internet thing is the future, Les. Go with it.

Seems short sighted on the network's part. TV is moving to the internet...like it or not.

Pretty sure the same things about "knowing an industry more than you" were said to Steve vis a vis music.

Famous last words Mr. Moonves.

I'll further add

Steve Jobs was a smart guy - no denying that. But that doesn't mean he had all the answers. It doesn't mean he always knew better than others in the industry - his own or other industries. The world is made up of many very smart and savvy business people.

TV and FILM industries have to wake up and realise their megabuck days are numbered. Better to go first than try catch up later.

When the megabucks end, so goes the content production. A model that flows 30%+ to Apple and cuts our current cable/satt bills by 80% or more (in some magical cheap subscription offering from Apple) means tons of shows, movies, etc could not be produced anymore. Sure, there's profits in the entertainment business- even fat profits- but it's the lure of those potential fat profits that motivate the show & movie entrepreneurs to risk money on all those failures (all the shows/movies that flop) to deliver a few that turn into big hits.

Kill the "megabucks" and you kill that risk model. And don't think for a minute that that would mean that only the "good" shows will be made. If there was any way to tell the good shows from the bad shows, we would have long since only been getting good shows. A future of low margin/no margin video-oriented entertainment is YouTube content. We already have that future.

In a nutshell, somebody has to pay and it won't be Apple. That means either the Studios take a massive hit to their revenues (which will kill off interest in producing most shows/movies) OR we consumers have to pay up. We already have that latter model too in the iTunes store "as is". But we don't want that either because the pricing is "too high".

What we apparently want is to pay <20% of what we currently pay now for cable/satt, get all of our programming commercial free, let Apple take 30%+ of what we pay and have those who actually make all that content take the massive hit. We also expect our broadband internet provider- which is probably our cable provider- to just roll over and let their cable subscription business be swallowed up by Apple while Apple's replacement solution is dependent on the cable provider's broadband pipes. And we ignore the flaws in the thinking because we want Apple to rule the world and we think we'll somehow end up paying for a fraction of our existing cable/satt bills while getting all of our desired programming.:rolleyes:

If they get a few major networks involved, hopefully the rest will sign up once they know it's successful.

I see no reason why a customer paying for the TV they watch is a bad idea. Only watch one football game a month? That's fine, you don't need 24/7 Sky Sports 1, 2, and 3 broadcast into your home all month at a cost of around £30.

The television execs are exactly the same as the music industry execs. Disrupt the revenue stream?? Say it like it is Les... You are a greedy CEO and don't want to share the money with Apple. Truth is, you are either going to work with Apple's HUGE customer base, or you will fail in creating any additional revenue through internet delivery.

The music industry didn't want to 'share' the profits with Apple and failed at trying to create their own subscription service. Maybe CBS and other networks need to realize that ANY subscription service is revenue that they did not have before.
CBS and other corporate networks need to realize that today's society doesn't sit down in front of the TV with the family like they did in the 80's. We are a society that carries our media devices everywhere we go. We also are starting to realize that being bombarded with commercials every 5 minutes is no longer a necessary evil to watch our favorite shows and we will gladly pay a few dollars to get rid of the commercials. After all, time is our most valuable commodity, and if it takes me 30 minutes to watch a show on TV, but only 23 minutes to watch it from the internet, guess which one I have more time for??

I don't watch regular television and haven't for years. A lack of interest in currently available content not withstanding, it's been the commercials that's driven me to seek alternative media streams, such as iTunes, Netflix streaming, Amazon streaming, etc.

While this tidbit doesn't really say anything about what this "advertising" on this subscription service would look like, I wouldn't pay for content that's interrupted with ads - defeats the value of paid verse free content IMO.