Last year, I expressed some enthusiasm about Apple’s new Apple TV set-top box. There was one caveat to this enthusiasm, however — I assumed that it would soon be followed by the launch of Apple’s own TV streaming service that would go head-to-head with Netflix in the battle for our living rooms. That hasn’t happened yet and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon or even at all.
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Per 9to5Mac, CBS CEO Les Moonves said on Thursday that CBS and Apple “had conversations awhile back, and we haven’t had recent conversations with them.” If Apple isn’t talking with CBS anymore, it’s a good bet that it’s not talking with other major networks either, which means its ambitions to shake up the TV industry are indefinitely on hold.
The TV industry is notoriously difficult to negotiate with when it comes to putting their content online for streaming services. In fact, Time Warner reportedly wants to gut Hulu by taking away its rights to stream shows the day after they air, which would effectively kill the service’s usefulness for most viewers.
Given this, it’s remarkable just how successful Netflix has been not just in negotiating deals for the third-party content it still has but also having the vision to see that it would need a lot of quality original content to remain a force in the online streaming market.
