Cablevision Optimum for iPad app now available, streams hundreds of TV channels plus VOD
The new Cablevision iPad app is out, taking on broadcasters (Fox, Discovery, Viacom) attacking Time Warner's live TV streaming TWCable TV app by offering subscribers the same channels as their iO TV package and video on demand.
Context & Ripple Effects
This launch lands mid-fight. The Wall Street Journal flagged a week earlier that Fox, Discovery and Viacom were attacking Time Warner's TWCable TV app for streaming their networks without fresh licensing deals, and Cablevision is now answering that dispute by shipping its own live-TV iPad app anyway — same channels as an iO TV subscription plus video on demand.
The move also follows a year of tablet-TV positioning: Verizon said back in August 2010 that it would put live TV on the iPad, and in February 2011 Comcast and Time Warner switched on their TV Everywhere authentication service under a multi-year commitment to put hundreds of hours of programming online. Cablevision is the first operator in this arc to ship a full channel lineup rather than announce one.
First-order effects
- Cablevision's Optimum subscribers can immediately watch their existing channel lineup and VOD on iPads at no extra purchase, making the tablet a standard part of what a cable subscription delivers.
- Fox, Discovery and Viacom now face live iPad streaming from two major operators — Time Warner and Cablevision — neither of which waited for per-network permission, so the broadcasters must decide whether litigation or licensing is the cheaper response.
Second-order effects
- Other pay-TV operators that had only announced tablet plans, like Verizon, are pushed toward launching rather than negotiating first, since holding back now looks like conceding ground on subscriber retention.
- Retransmission-consent talks gain a new bargaining chip: content owners can demand explicit tablet-streaming rights and fees before granting carriage renewals, raising the cost of every future carriage deal.
Third-order effects
- If operators keep treating the home Wi-Fi iPad feed as covered by existing carriage, the industry drifts toward authentication-gated distribution — TV Everywhere-style logins becoming the default gatekeeper for every screen, with rights renegotiated platform by platform.
- Content owners' leverage shifts from blocking devices outright (as Fox attempted against Google TV devices in late 2010) to pricing access per platform, formalizing tablet streaming as a separately monetized tier of carriage.
The trend: Pay-TV operators are unilaterally extending full subscription lineups to tablets, forcing broadcasters to convert a device-blocking fight into a per-platform licensing negotiation.