Time Warner and Comcast are starting a new streaming media initiative called TV Everywhere. This service will provide full length episodes of TV series online. With a catch.
Sound familiar? Internet users already have a number of options to watch TV shows online, usually in full screen quality and even High Definition, depending on the series/network/distributor. In 2007, NBC Universal and News Corporation successfully legitimized this practice with the launch of Hulu. You probably even know their advertising slogan. Recently, its been announced that Disney is joining the Hulu consortium. CBS Corporation (a company which has a handful of media holdings outside of their namesake television network) has had its own success with TV.com, streaming shows from their own vast library of content holdings.
Now, back to what makes TV Everywhere different? The current powers that be of the online streaming world, NBC, News Corp, Disney and CBS have something in common. They are all content providers, and owners of major over the air broadcast networks. They all own cable networks as well, but they do not own cable systems. Federal law in the United States prevents a company from owning an over the air television station AND a cable system. These broadcasters have ruffled the feathers of those companies that do own cable systems. They have put episodes from their cable networks online for free. For quite a while, one of the most popular series on Hulu was the comedy “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, which airs on FX, a cable network. Fox, as a producer of the show and partner in Hulu may have appreciated the buzz and increased distribution on a platform that they had a stake in.
Allowing cable series to be accessed by non-cable subscribers, to no surprise, has angered the cable providers. Why subscribe to cable, when those shows can be watched for free on the internet? Presently, many cable series are not available for free online. Many episodes, however, are available for sale on iTunes and other legal merchants of TV content. Even in that case, the release of some series are time dated. HBO series, for example, are available on iTunes, but not until after they are released on DVD, generally 6 months to a year after their initial airing.
This is where TV Everywhere has the chance to be a game changer. This service will create an online home for cable series. What is the catch? The shows will be only available to cable subscribers. TV Everywhere is a value added service to the core cable subscriptions, instead of a competitor.
