CW Strikes Deal with Apple to Bring Content to Apple TV
The CW has struck a deal that will bring the network's content to the Apple TV, reports Deadline. At the company's annual Upfront Presentation in New York today, CW president Mark Pedowitz announced that the CW's TV Now applications …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's living-room ambitions have been an open question since the Financial Times reported in December 2009 that Apple was weighing an internet TV foray, and the company has spent the years since adding content partners to Apple TV one at a time rather than launching a full television service. The CW's deal, announced by president Mark Pedowitz at the network's Upfront Presentation, extends that drip-feed strategy to a broadcast network, with the shows arriving through the CW's TV Now applications.
The move follows the template HBO laid out with HBO In Your Pocket back in 2008 — network content pushed directly onto Apple devices — and the pickup across Deadline, The Verge, 9to5Mac, Cult of Mac, Gizmodo, SlashGear, Electronista and TUAW shows how closely the trade press tracks every new Apple TV content partner.
First-order effects
- The CW's lineup becomes available on Apple TV via its TV Now applications, giving Apple a broadcast-network catalog on the box during Upfront week when fall schedules are being sold.
- Pedowitz gains Apple TV as a promotional window for the network's slate at precisely the moment advertisers are committing budgets.
Second-order effects
- Rival broadcast networks face pressure to negotiate their own Apple TV arrangements or leave the platform's shelf space to CW programming.
- Pay-TV distributors watch another slice of network content reach viewers outside the traditional bundle, further eroding their gatekeeping position over how shows are delivered.
Third-order effects
- If each network keeps cutting device-by-device deals, Apple accumulates de facto carriage agreements that could serve as the backbone of a broader Apple television offering without any single grand licensing negotiation — the same accumulation path the 2009 internet TV reporting implied.
The trend: Broadcast networks are distributing content directly onto consumer hardware platforms one agreement at a time, loosening the pay-TV bundle's grip as the default route to the screen.