Sony's new Internet pay-TV service to have 100 channels, may cost between $60-$80/month
Sony sets high price bar for Web TV — Sony's upcoming Internet-delivered TV service will carry 100 channels and a surprisingly high price tag of as much as $80 a month, The Post has learned.
Context & Ripple Effects
Sony announced this Internet TV service back in January 2014, saying it would begin testing before year-end with testing planned for later that year; The Post's report is the first to attach a shape to it — roughly 100 channels at $60–$80 a month, figures Sony has not itself confirmed. The pickup across eight trade and consumer outlets signals how much attention the pricing number carries.
The stakes for Sony are company-specific: it has spent September shrinking — exiting PCs with Vaio, taking a $1.7 billion smartphone goodwill charge, confirming the March 2015 shutdown of PlayStation Home — and has said it aims to lead the Internet TV market alongside Verizon. A service priced at cable rates would extend a familiar Sony pattern of premium-priced TV hardware and software, echoing its $400–$1,400 GoogleTV lineup from four years earlier.
First-order effects
- At up to $80 a month, the service would enter the market priced at parity with cable bundles rather than beneath them, betting that PlayStation owners will switch delivery for convenience rather than savings — and offering networks a new bidder willing to pay cable-scale carriage fees.
Second-order effects
- Programmers gain leverage in every pending Internet TV negotiation, since Sony's reported willingness to buy 100 channels at full price sets a reference rate for rivals like Verizon, which Sony has named as a co-leader target in the category.
- Cable distributors lose their sharpest marketing weapon — the price gap — pushing competition toward devices and interfaces, where Sony's installed PlayStation base becomes its main distribution advantage over telco entrants.
Third-order effects
- If Internet-delivered bundles settle at cable prices, the disruption shifts from cheaper television to who owns the screen and billing relationship — favoring console makers and device platforms over traditional operators.
- A high-price floor for Web TV would test the core premise of cord-cutting economics; if viewers decline to pay cable rates for IP delivery, expect later entrants to unbundle into smaller, cheaper packages instead.
The trend: Pay-TV is moving onto the internet faster than it is getting cheaper, with console makers and carriers bidding cable-style rates for traditional channel bundles.