Slashdot Mirror
CBS Moving To Syndication Across the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the new online media strategy being rolled out by CBS. Just over a year ago they rolled out their 'Innertube' service on the CBS website. The streaming video offering allowed viewers to watch sports and reruns directly on the web, but required potential consumers to view the video on CBS.com. That didn't work, even a little bit. So, they've learned their lesson: 'The company plans to pursue a drastically revised strategy that involves syndicating its entertainment, news and sports video to as much of the Web as possible. It represents a stark departure for the TV industry. Most of CBS's major competitors, including Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and News Corp.'s Fox, are to some degree all betting that they can build their own Internet video portals. Starting this week, an expanded menu of CBS's video content will be available for free to consumers on as many as 10 different Web sites ranging from Time Warner Inc.'s AOL to Joost Inc., a buzzy online video service that is just rolling out. The company calls its new venture the CBS Interactive Audience Network.' This new push is tied into a new advertising strategy, which is covered in-depth in the article."
A couple things come to mind when I see stuff like this... #1, Cable TV and Satellite services are going to go extinct. (Good.) #2, As more and more networks start to "broadcast" online, ISPs are going to have their hands full. The move to cap users who download too much (too combat bittorrent) is going to have to stop. Quickly.
Gifts for Geeks
I hardly watch any television. The days of sitting around and waiting for your favorite show to come on are simply over, and I don't want to spend $40 a month plus $15 a month for Tivo just for the pleasure. It's simply not worth it.
Instead of litigating viewers and websites, it appears CBS may "get it." I hope they follow through with their plan without a team of lawyers getting a hold of it and ruining it entirely. CBS should be congratulated, and we should all vote with our eyes and reward them for recognizing that the Internet has changed entirely the meaning and value of media distribution.
And I must say, it's about time American companies stopped trying to sue their way to success and innovate instead. Real business leadership needs to return to our economy before there's nothing left but corporations suing each other over worthless patents and dead ideas.
That entire article remains silent on Youtube. I would think if they're going to put it on THE video site on the web, the article would mention it. Seems a bit silly to distribute to 10+ media sites with almost zero market penetration when you can distribute to one big site.
On the flip side of the coin... Take into the consideration the fact that not everyone is Internet Savvy enough to watch TV via their machines. For broadcasting companies to think I will sit down on my monitor and watch television there is absurd. For one, me personally, my flat screen has a bigger and better picture. Secondly bear in mind not everyone has a high speed connection, so just because companies are throwing fiber to the home, it doesn't mean that everyone will be jumping on the bandwagon. Not to mention in certain areas, high speed connections are unfeasible. It would be nice to have it as an option, but would a disastrous business model for any broadcaster to ditch the ways of old for the unstable, illogical ways of new just because they're hip at the moment. Come on now, how many hip technologies have become dinosaurs before they were even of the production assembly line... Laser Disc, Betamax, (dare I say... Blu Ray)... Not EVERYONE wants a digital life...
Infiltrated dot Net
(Alternatively, "In Soviet Russia, Joost watches YOU")
The Joost EULA allows them carte blanche to install whatever they like on your machine, and makes it a contractual violation to interfere with it, its settings or its network traffic. That doesn't seem compatible with anti-virus or firewalls (which I imagine invalidates that aspect of the contract instantly, but IANAL and I digress). They swear that they anonymise all collected viewing habit information before passing it onto advertisers, but then again, they can change the EULA, TOS and PP at will. Again, probably invalid, but IANAL.
They state quite clearly that they will be using your bandwidth to communicate with other computers running their software. Obviously, because it's a P2P app. But this isn't Skype, with a relatively small amount of traffic. This is video, distributed P2P. That's going to eat my bandwidth, and probably be dog slow to boot.
This isn't what I want. I'm not sure this is what anyone wants, at least in their target early-adopter group. Who wants ad-supported content, for which I'm paying a variable, uncontrollable amount? Give me ad-free, DRM-free, fairly priced content that I can download direct, thanks. Too much bandwidth? Well, invest in a content distribution network, or keep poking ISPs in the side until they sort out multicast.
Meh.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
One of the networks is starting to get it.
All CBS has to do to make money off this is have advertising in a corner of the screen or just have regular commercial interruptions as usual. Some people will skip the commercials, just like how they do it with VCR tapes, but if the commercials are engaging enough, people will forget. Having a scrolling line of text commercials at the bottom of the screen works as well (remember, since this is not a TV screen, the video can still be 16:9 or 4:3 and still have a small bar at the bottom of the screen with the text commercials without impeding on the video.)
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
People still cling to the idea that you have to watch a stream in real time. That idea is as quaint as televison = three networks. People mostly watch about 10 to 15 hours of TV a week. Some more, some less. People who watch lots of TV tend to be poorer and have less disposable income.
Elitist and completely untrue. The average US household watches 8 hours of TV per day - that's about five times more than you seem to think. Here's a reference (PDF link).
Moreover, there's nothing "quaint" about watching TV in "real time" (I don't think that's actually what you meant - you meant at the premiere date and time). Even if we moved to a completely internet-only model for television, new content is not going to appear all at once, to be consumed at customers' leisure. It takes time to film each episode of a TV show, and there will continue to be staggered "premieres" of series episodes. Fans of each show will still gather around their computers at the same time each week, just as they do around their TV's now.
People like you are misunderstanding the effects of time-shifting. DVR's are great (I have two of them) but most people are home at 8PM and they're not going to delay watching their favorite TV show that happens to be on at that time simply because they can. DVR owners still watch a hell of a lot of live TV. The point of a DVR is not to enable you not to watch shows that are on while you're watching TV; the point of a DVR is to allow you to watch shows when you otherwise couldn't. You're looking at the entire concept backwards.
There will always be timeshifting and there will always be people who can't watch a premiere and will have to watch later, whether it's on a DVR or online. But there will also always be people who will crowd around their screens - whether it's a TV or a computer screen - to watch a TV show premiere on the date and time that it's first posted. The upshot of that is that there's simply no reason for linear TV networks to go away, meaning - with all the equipment, time, and money already invested (and we're talking tens of billions of dollars here) - they likely never will.