Apple Abandons TV Show Rentals
No surprise here. As I wrote three weeks ago when the television cloud features quietly launched:
Of course, Apple would never frame it this way, but with the emphasis now squarely back on purchases, it seems pretty safe to say that the television show rental model was a failure.
Today, Apple’s official wording is:
iTunes customers have shown they overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows.
Of course, that’s not the entire picture. Yes, customers preferred to buy TV shows instead of rent then — because there was a shit selection for rentals and a great one for buying.
For whatever reason, it seems Apple could not get the networks to bite in a major way on the rental model. Something tells me we’ll hear more about this in a few weeks.
