Time Warner Cable's (NYSE: TWC-WI) iPad streaming app attracted too much attention from both the right and wrong places. Programmers lined up to demand more money for showcasing their wares across the applications--and legal action is predicted--and so many people logged on to use the app that it crashed.
Of the two problems, the second portends more trouble than the first since TWC executives contend that their agreements with such programmers as Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Discovery (Nasdaq: DISCA) give them the right to distribute content to any screen in a residence. The iPad streams don't lave the home.
Of course the programmers, being programmers, disagree. "Our agreement doesn't cover tablet distribution," one exec told the New York Post.
Perhaps a more egregious problem is the crash, which happened at 8:00 on Tuesday evening and was resolved by noon on Wednesday.
"We were pretty sure that our iPad app was going to be fairly popular, but we had no idea that it was going to be the most downloaded app in the iTunes store yesterday," Time Warner Cable's Jeff Simmermon said in a blog post. "The demand was overwhelming."
For more:
- the New York Post has this story
- see this blog
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