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Apple Eyes Bigger Slice of India's Streaming, Music Market with Airtel Deal

FILE PHOTO: An Apple logo is pictured in an Apple store in Paris, France, March 6, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: An Apple logo is pictured in an Apple store in Paris, France, March 6, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
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Apple Eyes Bigger Slice of India's Streaming, Music Market with Airtel Deal

FILE PHOTO: An Apple logo is pictured in an Apple store in Paris, France, March 6, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: An Apple logo is pictured in an Apple store in Paris, France, March 6, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo

Apple is tying up with India's Bharti Airtel to offer the telecom firm's premium customers its music and video streaming services for free, giving the US giant access to thousands of consumers in the world's most populous nation.
With mostly English-language content, Apple TV+ is a small player in India's $28 billion media and entertainment market, where its rivals include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video , Disney+ Hotstar and billionaire Mukesh Ambani's JioCinema.
The move comes as competition tightens in India and an $8.5-billion merger of the Indian media assets of Reliance and Walt Disney - which have a streaming service each - faces close scrutiny from antitrust regulators.
"Apple TV+ will come bundled with premium Airtel WiFi and Postpaid plans," Airtel said in a statement on Tuesday, though the companies did not disclose a deal value for the partnership or information on costs.
Apple Music will also be available for current premium users of Airtel's Wynk music app, which will be shut down. Its employees are being subsumed by the company, Reuters quoted Airtel as saying.
Two sources familiar with the strategy said that for Apple, the deal is aimed at reaching out to a much bigger pool of consumers with its digital services given Airtel is the country's second biggest telecom operator with 281 million subscribers.
Ambani's Reliance Jio telecom service has 489 million users.
The Apple TV+ streaming service, known for its original series like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show and Slow Horses, has so far differentiated itself in the streaming landscape with a focus on in-house content.
Most rival platforms in India and overseas offer users older movies and TV shows from other studios, as well as their own originals.
Airtel will within days announce new tariff plans that will include free Apple TV+ offerings, said two other sources with direct knowledge of its plans.
Currently, the Apple TV+ service retails at $9.99 per month in the US and 99 Indian rupees ($1.18) per month in India, compared to Ambani's JioCinema which offers cricket content for free and has plans as cheap as 29 rupees a month. Netflix starts with monthly tariff of 149 rupees.
Cricket is seen as a way to attract more customers to streaming platforms in India, and Disney lost millions of Indian users last year when it lost streaming rights to Ambani's Reliance for streaming the world's richest cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League.
Apple has 6% of India's 690 million smartphone users, according to data from research firm Counterpoint. The remaining market is dominated by phones from Samsung and Xiaomi, and are powered by Google's Android operating system.
Apple Music is currently priced at 99 Indian rupees per month and has a library of 100 million songs.

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Entertainment

‘ER’ Creator Michael Crichton’s Estate Sues Warner Bros. Over Upcoming Hospital Drama ‘The Pitt’ 

Author Michael Crichton poses for a portrait at The Peninsula Hotel in New York on Dec. 7, 2004. (AP)
Author Michael Crichton poses for a portrait at The Peninsula Hotel in New York on Dec. 7, 2004. (AP)
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‘ER’ Creator Michael Crichton’s Estate Sues Warner Bros. Over Upcoming Hospital Drama ‘The Pitt’ 

Author Michael Crichton poses for a portrait at The Peninsula Hotel in New York on Dec. 7, 2004. (AP)
Author Michael Crichton poses for a portrait at The Peninsula Hotel in New York on Dec. 7, 2004. (AP)

The estate of Michael Crichton, who wrote the screenplay for what became the pilot episode of “ER,” has sued Warner Bros. Television over a dispute about an upcoming medical drama it says is a rebranded version of an unauthorized reboot.

After Crichton’s estate, led by his widow, Sherri, could not reach an agreement with the television studio to produce a reboot of the famed medical procedural, the lawsuit alleges Warner Bros. proceeded to develop and produce a series based on the same premise without consent.

The upcoming series, titled “The Pitt,” will be a medical drama set in Pittsburgh, as opposed to “ER’s” Chicago setting, and will feature Noah Wyle in a starring role. Wyle is best known for playing John Carter on “ER” in over 250 episodes.

“The Pitt” is also set to include several “ER” alums behind-the-scenes, including John Wells as the executive producer and R. Scott Gemmill as the showrunner. Wyle, Wells and Gemmill are each named defendants in the suit.

“The lawsuit filed by the Crichton Estate is baseless, as ‘The Pitt’ is a new and original show. Any suggestion otherwise is false, and Warner Bros. Television intends to vigorously defend against these meritless claims,” the studio said in a statement.

Because of Crichton’s success with projects including “Jurassic Park” and “Westworld” before “ER” was developed, he secured a coveted “frozen rights” provision in his contract for the series. The provision prohibits Warner Bros. from proceeding with any sequels, remakes, spinoffs or other productions derived from “ER” without Crichton’s consent, or his estate’s consent after his death from cancer in 2008.

“If Warner Bros. can do this to Michael Crichton, one of the industry’s most successful and prolific creators who made the studio billions over the course of their partnership, no creator is safe,” a spokesperson for Sherri Crichton said in a statement to The Associated Press. “While litigation is never the preferred course of action, contracts must be enforced, and Michael Crichton’s legacy must be protected.”

The estate, which filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, is asking the judge to issue an injunction that would force the studio to stop production on the new series, and they are also seeking punitive and compensatory damages.

Warner Bros. began developing a reboot of “ER” for HBO’s streaming service, Max, in 2020 without Sherri’s knowledge, according to the lawsuit.

In 2022, when Sherri Crichton was informed of the developing project, she and the estate engaged in negotiations with the studio, through which she says she was promised that Crichton would get a “created by” credit, backed by a $5 million guarantee for the estate in the event the credit was not given. Ultimately, the term was revoked and negotiations stopped, which the lawsuit states should have ceased all development of the series.

Development continued on, and “The Pitt” was announced in March. A release date has yet to be announced.

“The Pitt is ER. It’s not like ER, it’s not kind of ER, it’s not sort of ER. It is ER complete with the same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio, and network as the planned ER reboot,” lawyers representing Crichton’s estate wrote in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also alleges that Warner Bros. had previously tried to “erase” Crichton from derivatives for his work by downgrading his credit in the 2016 series based off his movie, “Westworld,” from “created by” to “based on,” which they say started “a disturbing pattern.”