Fruit themed toymaker Apple has been wining and dining television executives in a bid to set itself up as an affordable cable company. The cunning plan seems to be to have the great unwashed pay $30 a week so that they can watch telly through iTunes.

Rumours have been flying all across the world wide wibble that Apple does not want to tie the new service to any particular hardware. So it is ignoring its fairly useless Apple TV and much hyped forthcoming tablet. Since it is coming on the back of its iTunes store it means that punters could even download it on PCs.

The idea is that the service could theoretically rival the ones most consumers already buy from cable TV operators if Apple is able to get enough buy-in from broadcast and cable TV programmers. Disney is likely to sign up for the service. Mostly because Apple CEO Steve Jobs is Disney’s largest single shareholder.

However other networks are less enthusiastic, even if they might give a try in a bid to raise more revenue. It does mean that Apple is attempting to go down a path which other companies in the tech industry, such as Microsoft, have tried and failed to succeed.