Apple In Talks To Get HBO Now On Apple TV
Apple has been most aggressive in courting HBO in a bid to add the service to Apple TV, sources say. Apple TV already carries HBO Go for current HBO subscribers, but it may add a second app for HBO Now. Apple has spent the past several years negotiating for the rights to offer its own linear TV package; in the meantime, HBO Now is seen as an added service to drive adoption of Apple TV.
I said on the Happy Hour podcast this week, the announcement of a new Apple TV is easily given away by watching for ancillary reports that say that Apple is negotiating TV content deals.
It is interesting that Apple is pushing ‘aggressively’ to get HBO Now, but it doesn’t count as part of above rule. This should not be treated as evidence of an imminent launch of a new Apple TV, in my opinion.
The future Apple TV will revolve around content deals that involve a direct service from Apple itself, not an amalgamation of third party services. As the report suggests, the negotiations surrounding HBO Now are targeted at improving the content offerings for the current Apple TV hardware.
For whatever reason, Apple’s talks with content providers have a very high tendency of leaking to the public in the press.