Rethinking the Model
Love watching all those shows for free from the comfort of your own computer, any time you like? Well, that might not stick around, at least in its current form, for very long. Newspapers haven’t been able to monetize internet ads the way they can in print form and it looks like television and cable companies might be having the same problems. Here’s an interesting look at this from the International Herald Tribune.
The free video Web site Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal and the News Corporation, counted 35 million unique viewers in February - only a fraction of the hundreds of millions who watch TV every month, but a 42 percent jump from January, according to comScore. The ratings for some programs, like “Lost” on ABC, would rise as much as 25 percent if online views were included, according to the ratings service Nielsen.
Nevertheless, television executives are developing a different model in which only subscribers to traditional cable and satellite services would be able to gain access to the full breadth of shows online.
Leading the charge are the cable and satellite companies, which worry that the proliferation of free video on the Web - and downloadable shows on Apple’s iTunes - may be harming the $60- billion-a-year subscription video business by allowing people to unplug their cable services.
Damn. I guess all good things must come to an end.
