The second option is of course the one that’s been proven successful since its inception: allowing users to pay for the show once and keep it forever. One of the two groups on board with the TV episode rental program’s 2010 price drop was Fox as owned by News Corp, (the other being Disney, a group which Steve Jobs is and was on the board of directors and is the company’s largest individual shareholder,) they recently noted the following about the now-axed rental program:
“After carefully considering the results of the rental trial, it became clear that content ownership is a more attractive long-term value proposition both for iTunes customers and for our business. To further enhance the value of ownership, we are working with Apple to make content available within their new cloud-based service.” – FoxMeanwhile Apple has been watching the numbers, racking them all up on their abacuses, and have found that yes, indeed, users do not like to rent television shows. The following message comes from Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr speaking with AllThingsD:
“iTunes customers have shown they overwhelmingly prefer buying TV shows. iTunes in the Cloud lets customers download and watch their past TV purchases from their iOS devices, Apple TV, Mac or PC allowing them to enjoy their programming whenever and however they choose.” – Tom NeumayrWhat do you think? Will you miss your ability to pay an amount of cash to have a TV show for a set amount of time? Or are you more keen on paying JUST a bit more to keep that TV show forever?