By Kasper Jade

Published: 04:00 PM EST (01:00 PM PST)

Rumors that Apple may have axed live coverage of Steve Jobs' opening Macworld keynote are bunk, AppleInsider has learned.

Apple's decision not to broadcast chief executive Steve Jobs' keynote presentation during next week's Macworld Expo was likely a result of pre-determined plans, and was not in retaliation to spoiled surprises, extremely reliable company sources said on Friday.

According to sources, live webcast video streams of events such as Jobs' keynote presentations, on average, are costly and yield few benefits to Apple as a company. As a result, in recent years Apple has scaled back on realtime webcasts in favor post-event video-on-demand steams, which reportedly costs the company much less.

Additionally, industry sources claim that preparations for live webcasts with mass appeal typically must be made well in advance of the event. Company sources believe such arrangements were never part of Apple's Macworld to-do list.

Sources further cite post-event streams and authorized product pages and press releases as more favorable avenues of news distribution for Apple -- eliminating the chaos and potential misinterpretations of news reported through Mac websites from realtime feeds.

"It's likely that we won't again see realtime event webcasts from Apple for the foreseeable future," said one informed source. "But this is not an indication that [Apple's] apparent decision not to stream this year's Macworld keynote resulted from recent media reports, nor was it a last minute decision."