TV Everywhere, Served Up By The Usual Suspects
Solid article over at BusinessWeek about the cable companies reacting to threat of video delivered using the Internet. The article uses the term “TV Everywhere” which is essentially what I’ve oft-referred to as “digital video nirvana.”
The big reason why the trend hasn’t taken off: The studios are reluctant to free up their content to the Internet. Why? The cable companies pay a lot of money to the studios to air programs. The studios don’t want to anger the cable companies (their biggest customers) by getting too close to any of the new, untested digital video upstarts (Apple, Boxee, Roku, Netflix, Hulu, etc.).
The cable companies response: allow folks to watch content on their computers, as long as they can prove they’re an existing cable customer. The same companies also conveniently control the Internet connections to many homes. This plan is so simple, it will likely work. It’s no inconvenience to current cable subscribers. Customers will take the path of least resistance: accept whatever new services the cable company offers, paying extra on a monthly bill if need be, rather than canceling cable and venturing off into the wild west of Internet video.
It takes a particular personality to pursue Internet video, plus time and effort to set up a cable-less entertainment system. I’ve done it, but certainly see myself in the minority. Many view cable as a necessity, on the level with a water or phone bill, and going cable-free is viewed as some odd personal choice like fruitarianism. Yet the only way the studios will ever get behind video delivered over the Internet is people disconnecting cable subscriptions en masse.
It will be personally, rather disturbing to someday achieve digital video nirvana, but via a bill paid to a cable company — the very people I was trying to get away from in the first place. There’s something uncomfortably circular about the whole concept.
The whole ecosystem is pretty incestuous when you get down to it. Between the two largest U.S. cable providers Comcast and Time Warner you have one, Time Warner, that already has a host of powerful media, film and broadcast properties along with their cable access service. So you’ve got the full vertical integration of content + distribution. And with Comcast’s imminent closing on the NBC Universal acquisition, you’ve have a second gigantic studio+access behemoth to contend with (on top of which they’ll inherit a significant interest in Hulu.com — for better or worse). Kind of frightening when you think about it.
Newscorp isn’t too far behind, I believe they cast their lot with Satellite/DirectTV a while back. But imagine if they purchased Cox or something.
Sadly the final paragraph of the Bizweek article about sums it up: regardless of the corporate chess-game, the little guy will end up getting squeezed for coin one way or another
Btw, did you disable disqus for commenting?
Will definitely be interesting to see how it all plays out — particularly the Comcast / Hulu situation. Am a pretty heavy Hulu user, and would even pay a slight fee to continue using it, but probably not as much as the cable companies would like.