[OtinG]

The announcement from Netflix seems to indicate that Apple wanted to directly stream at least parts of the Netflix offerings in a transparent manner. It makes me wonder if Apple is trying to make deals with services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. where you don't have to pay for each of those services individually but would instead have one subscription through Apple's service and be able to transparently get movies and shows from other services. But apparently Apple was asking for a 30% fee from Netflix, and I assume other streaming services, for that privilege. It makes sense to have the biggest library for streaming by transparently including parts of the other streaming services's libraries while only having to pay for one subscription, but it would also be extremely complex to negotiate all of that. Basically that is what cable/satellite providers do. They sign contracts with as many TV stations and networks as they can to provide a large library of available programming. But that leads to expensive service.

With the current trend of providers for live TV content (TV stations and networks) starting to offer their own paid streaming services, that will also get very expensive to us consumers! To watch all of CBS's programs you have to subscribe to their all access streaming package and pay for that privilege. That is on top of what you pay cable/satellite/streaming service to view the regular CBS shows. That is ridiculous! Before long the greed will be so high that none but the wealthiest will be able to watch TV. We will have to amuse ourselves with shadow puppets and community theater.

Here in the USA the government still requires broadcast TV stations to actually broadcast their offerings over the air (OTA). That means if you live close enough to local TV broadcasting towers you can receive OTA content for free. But you only get the local broadcast stations, not the cable only stations nor any stations not located in your geographical area. So basically OTA means at best you get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, CW, and a bunch of independent stations that broadcast old reruns from decades ago. If you live in a large enough metro area you will likely get programming for non-English language stations too. But I suspect one day the government will remove that OTA broadcasting requirement and then most of our OTA channels will go off the airwaves and only be available through paid subscriptions.