Molly Wood: What Apple and Comcast are up to

Watching American Public Media’s cord-cutting radio host work through the repercussions.

From @mollywood‘s twitter feed:

Ok I have just read this:

Apple’s plan for its new TV service: Sell other people’s TV service

And also this:

Comcast launches Xfinity Flex internet streaming TV

And now I am wondering why everyone thinks they need or get to be the middle man in my cord cutting. Isn’t that the reason I cut the cord in the first place?

Ok, I figured this out with @acedtect. By failing to negotiate a cable replacement service for all those years, Apple has accidentally waited just long enough to come along and offer us Cable 2.0 — kinder, gentler, minus all the fees, but like, easy bundled one-shop streaming.

And Xfinity is reduced to … let’s be honest … kind of trying to trick people who are intimidated by Roku and smart TVs and all the various streaming options into continuing to do the thing THEY are most comfortable with, which is pay the Cable Man every month.

Commence Thunderdome.

Because people are legitimately kind of confused by all the various streaming options, and starting to wish there was just one nice place to pay for everything and not switch inputs or whatever.

My take: I almost always disagree with Wood’s take on Apple, but this sounds about right to me.