TV networks fight back amid online turmoil

Filed in archive Internet TV on May 18, 2006

I was reading Michael Rogers yesterday. He had a good point to make, which I will summarize as: television executives are throwing a half-dozen business models at the wall to see which ones stick. Television is last medium to hit the Net, but it may be first to get it right

Here is an excerpt from that article. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Five networks - ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and WB - have announced a panoply of varied Internet initiatives that include both streaming and downloading, both for-pay and advertiser-supported, and even a deal with BitTorrent, the current number-one technology used by those offering illegal video downloads.

But what's the Internet upside for television? Print and music, of course, get to shed the costs of physical distribution - no more mailing magazines or shipping CDs.

Television, on the other hand, is already electronically distributed, in a way that makes lots of money for the networks and stations. But there's a different benefit for television - getting out from under the cable and satellite owners. It didn't take long, for example, for network TV executives to figure out that interactive advertising was going to be controlled by the set-top box.