According to a report on Bloomberg News via The Verge, Apple plans to roll out their streaming service this November.
The details are thin: no specific date, with the article on Bloomberg stating “by November”, which suggests that the unveiling could take place anytime between tomorrow and sometime in November.
The service – a streaming service intended to compete with the likes of Hulu, Netflix and the Disney channel – is expected to carry a monthly subscription price of $9.99 – although a “free trial” is also expected to be offered.
The service will also be debuting with a very small inventory of shows, putting Speilberg’s Amazing Stories into one of the top slots in terms of name recognition (and, we hope, anticipation).
However, since the first ‘season’ of Amazing Stories consists of a mere 6 episodes, it is easy to believe that anyone wanting to watch it for free ought to be able to binge all six episodes during their free trial period, so, bonus, I guess.
The shows in their opening line up will be:
Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories,*”
“The Morning Show,”
“See” with Jason Momoa,
“Truth Be Told” with Octavia Spencer,
and “Home”, a documentary series about extravagant houses
Most of the preceding is speculative: Apple is “weighing” a monthly subscription of $9.99, and the roll-out date is vague as mentioned previously.
The streaming service will be part of Apple’s TV app, available on existing Apple devices and will also be accessible through services like Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung televisions.
For fans of Amazing Stories, this is a mixed bag: it appears that the show most of us are concerned with may be available for free (trial) – or has few enough episodes that subscribing for a single month (at a relatively reasonable price) will allow the entire first season to be viewed comfortably.
On the other hand, industry experts are a bit puzzled over Apple’s decision to roll the service out with such little content and that may mitigate against wide adoption early on, which could negatively affect show renewals.
On the third hand, how many Apple devices are already out there? According to Apple – 1.4 billion. If there’s a free trial of the service and it’s pushed out to all of those devices, even 1 percent watching the Amazing Stories show is 14 million viewers, which, according to Nielsen, puts it into “successful show” territory.
As always, all we can do is sit on the sidelines and twiddle our…thumbs.
For more detail: The Verge Bloomberg Financial Times CNBC
*the name Amazing Stories is licensed by NBC/Universal from The Experimenter Publishing Company LLC
