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Bloomberg Businessweek is the latest iPad subscription magazine
Fortune Tech is reporting that another major magazine publisher has agreed to Apple's terms for iTunes magazine subscriptions, increasing the grand total to ... four. Bloomberg Businessweek (free iPad app) joins Maxim, Elle and Popular Science as the fourth magazine to provide subscriptions through iTunes. Most magazine publishers are unwilling to cede Apple 30 percent of the take of subscriptions and have chosen to sell individual issues for the iPad instead. For many of the publishers, it's not really the fact that they'll only make 70 percent of the sales price of the magazine subscription; they're more concerned that subscribers will not agree to share their personal information for market research purposes. The app is free to download, at which time you can buy a subscription through in-app purchase. A subscription to Bloomberg Businessweek will sell for US$2.99 per month, the same price as a subscription to Elle. Popular Science weighs in at $14.99 annually, or $1.25 an issue. Now that a respected business magazine has joined the small group of publishers that have decided that the iTunes model might actually work, we can only hope that some of the other magazine publishers may follow suit. Such heavyweights in the industry as Time, Inc. (Time and Sports Illustrated), Condé Nast (New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired) and Hearst (Cosmpolitan, Esquire) are still refusing to embrace the Apple model.
Disney and CBS interested in Apple's subscription-based iTunes TV idea?
Disney and Apple -- now, where have we heard about these two mingling in content related activities before? Sure enough, whispers of a potential tie-up regarding a $30 per month TV service for iTunes are turning into more of a gentle roar, with The Wall Street Journal reporting today that both CBS and Walt Disney Company are "considering participating in Apple's plan to offer television subscriptions over the internet." Naturally, this comes from those ever present (and perpetually undisclosed) "sources," but considering that the outfit just shelled out for Lala, we wouldn't put anything past it. As the story goes, CBS is considering offering up content from CBS and CW, while Disney could include programming from ABC, Disney Channel and ABC Family networks; details on the purported program are obviously still under wraps, but we know that both of these guys would be looking for some sort of monthly compensation in exchange for access to their lineups. Whatever the case, it's being bruited that Apple could complete licensing deals and introduce the service sometime in 2010, so we'll be keeping an ear to the ground for more.
Apple pitching $30 a month TV service for iTunes to the networks?
According to Peter Kafka over at AllThingsD, he's had "multiple sources" tell him that Apple is shopping around a subscription service to TV networks that would give iTunes users a catch-all subscription for $30 a month. As far as he's heard, nobody's jumped on board just yet, and of course networks have to work out their typical fears of such a service cutting into ratings and biting into cable revenue. However, at least one unnamed executive briefed on the plan says "I think they might get it right this time," and with Disney's cozy relationship with Apple there's reason believe they'd be the first to sign up. Unfortunately, for people scrounging for a new evidence of an Apple tablet or something useful for their oft-dormant Apple TV to do, there's no word on what role devices have to play in this deal, but we have to believe that Apple would be working to push the content to the rest of its iTunes-based ecosystem, whatever that might encompass if and when the service launches early next year as Apple has proposed.
