[Swprograms] Media strategy article in the WSJ

["Richard Cuff" <richard@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of the aspects of international broadcasting I am interested is the role
of program producers versus "broadcasters" in the traditional sense.

There is an interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal "Portals"
column on the use of the Internet that looks at web strategies for both TV
and radio.

It's an interesting read...what I found interesting is that this is
happening more in the Far East than here in the USA.

Richard Cuff

Allentown, PA  USA

---------------------------------------



May 10, 2004

PORTALS
By LEE GOMES


Web TV Is Changing
The Way Programming
Is Watched and Sold

May 10, 2004; Page B1

Meet Hari Sreenivasan, journalism graduate, television anchor and media
disintermediator.

Mr. Sreenivasan is the host of ABC News Live, a news channel available only
on the Internet. It's one of many early examples of the next phase of the
Internet's evolution: as a competitor -- or, perhaps, a complement -- to the
way people watch TV over satellite and cable.

The movie and TV industries initially viewed the Internet through the prism
of Napster -- simply as a means through which their content could be stolen.
Lately, though, they have begun to realize that the Web gives them all
manner of new ways to sell programming that has already aired. Who would say
"no" to that sort of opportunity?

Thus, a growing number of big content companies are putting programming from
"regular" TV out on the Web. Walt Disney, which also owns ABC and ESPN, has
been especially aggressive in this regard. So has the BBC, which already has
most of its radio broadcasting online. It announced last week that it would
be putting much of its TV up, too -- though initially as a very limited test
inside the United Kingdom.

Sports is another growing source of Internet TV. You can pay $14.95 a month
and watch Major League Baseball games at your desk -- or even pay-per-view
cricket, courtesy of Ireland's Setanta.com.
Don't go rushing over to your PC and expect to see a high-definition picture
 with Dolby surround sound.

Video on a personal computer, while better than the matchbook-sized images
of a few years ago, is still confined to a relatively small portion of the
screen, and it offers quality levels that would get booed out of most living
rooms.

But it's slowly getting better. In Asia, connection speeds are already so
good that the Web can be used for full-blown, couch-potato-style TV. In Hong
Kong, a new breed of Web-TV suppliers gives you a set-top box that lets you
plug in an Internet cable; you then watch TV just as you would with cable or
satellite.

(Incidentally, you don't have any Microsoft software controlling things,
despite the strenuous efforts of that company to make its player software a
part of all Internet-enabled TV viewing.)

In the future, as networks get faster and new kinds of easy-to-use
Internet-aware devices are sold for the living room, the role of the
Internet in TV will only grow.

And that is where the media-disintermediation business comes in.
Disintermediation means getting rid of the middleman, and right now, cable
and satellite companies are middlemen because TV is whatever they say it is.
But what if you could connect directly to, say, "The West Wing" without
Comcast? Without, even, NBC? It would be the video analogue of getting your
music directly from the artist. You wouldn't even need a TiVo, because the
whole world would be your TiVo.

In practice, that probably won't happen with mass-market shows like "The
West Wing." For a long time to come, you'll probably still get them from a
big network over cable or satellite, saved on a digital video recorder. But
the Internet will make possible new ways to watch the show, such as paying
to see an old episode.

Of course, the Web is also likely to open up entirely new and previously
unimagined programming possibilities -- just as, in the print world, the Web
didn't put old media out of business but did create entirely new genres,
like blogs. The current explosion of Flash animations, funny clips and other
Web eye candy is a taste of things to come.

In the end, "watching TV" is likely to take on all sorts of new meanings,
including catching a pay-per-view game on your cellphone while sitting on
the bus. Kids today, who send instant messages to friends while watching
music videos while doing their homework, are already tuned into this
emerging multiscreen, multimedia world.

There are technical and business issues to be ironed out, and policy ones,
too. Cable companies sell us both Internet signals and TV programming.
Maybe, says Timothy Wu, a University of Virginia law professor who has
studied the issue, we should insist they not downgrade their Internet signal
as a way of protecting their cash-cow TV business.

Internet TV has something of a Utopian appeal. Everyone has their favorite
riff about the problems with current TV and what it, in a perfect world,
would be like. Usually it's told in the form of a shaggy-dog story.
My own involves a desire to watch the BBC. I want to get the real thing,
unexpurgated from London, not the dumbed-down BBC America version that
endlessly recycles the same few hits and redubs the narrative tracks of some
of its shows with American voices -- the stupidly perky sort that made me
want to flee American TV in the first place.

Of course, media disintermediation means different things to different
people. To me, the Internet might be a way to watch the BBC. But to aspiring
U.K. filmmakers who have struck out with the network, it's a way to get
around the blockheads at the BBC who wouldn't green-light their projects in
the first place. Crazy world, this Internet.


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