SONY TO OFFER PAY TV SERVICE

Sony is the latest company planning to offer a package of broadcast and television networks to consumers via the Internet. Called PlayStation Vue, the service will make available CBS, NBC and Fox as well as 75 TV channels to subscribers. Conspicuously absent from the package are Disney’s ABC broadcast network and its ESPN cable network and Time Warner’s HBO and its Turner Broadcasting networks such as CNN, TNT, and TBS. The service will reportedly combine some of the best cable and Internet features for navigation via the PlayStation game console. (Initially it will require an Internet-linked PlayStation console, although the company reportedly has plans to extend the service to users of tablet devices such as the iPad.) It presumably is aimed at "cord cutters" — people looking to get out from under the high costs of cable and satellite subscriptions, but some analysts quickly expressed skepticism that they will respond favorably to it. "People are expecting a transformative, disruptive new model where they can say, ‘I just want to pay for this or that like iTunes,’" Todd Juenger, a media analyst with Bernstein Research, told the New York Times. "That is not coming. Everybody is conspiring to make sure that is not going to happen."