It’s a bad day to be a cord-cutter. According to CBS CEO Les Moonves, Apple has put the brakes on its plans for a service capable of streaming live television through the Apple TV without requiring a traditional cable subscription. “They’ve had conversations on it, and I think they pressed the hold button,” said Moonves at the Business Insider Conference in NYC. “I’m not surprised at all that Apple would be shelving the idea,” said Dan Rayburn, EVP of StreamingMedia.com, in a phone call with Cynopsis Digital. “It has to make economic sense in their business. Why would [a consumer] pay 45 dollars to get less content at less quality on fewer devices [compared to a triple play bundle], with no DVR and only one stream at a time? It just doesn’t make sense.”
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