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ABC, CBS, and NBC Block Google TV
markjhood2003 writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that 'ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google Inc.'s new Web-TV service. ... Spokespeople for the three networks confirmed that they are blocking the episodes on their websites from playing on Google TV, although both ABC and NBC allow promotional clips to work using the service.' Google has responded, 'Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owners' choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the platform.'"
Seems like this would be easily worked around by changing some useragent strings. Not sure why Google wouldn't do that themselves, but I guess they probably care more about their relationship with media companies than I do.
It baffles me that the networks' left and right hands don't know what the other are doing. With one hand they gleefully provide online versions of the shows and with the other, they smack down anyone (Boxee, Google) that tries to make the consumption of those products easier.
People that choose to watch the shows over the internet are actively choosing to not make regular network TV a part of their day. They aren't willing to sit down at 8 pm, 7 central to watch Chuck; they want to watch it at 6:00 am before work. 10 years ago, they would have been lost viewers. All that advertising revenue would have vanished with their choice. Today, the networks have an option to recapture some of that lost revenue via internet viewers. Granted, they don't show as many adverts, and that ad space (for the moment) is worth less than TV ad time, but they still get money.
Why are they getting upset when google/boxee/whoever drives MORE users to their product? Or are they just afraid that people will choose to eschew network TV in favor of internet TV? If that's the case, they've already lost the battle by offering shows on the internet. Some networks have come up with reasonable solutions though: Fox shows House a week late on the internet for example. Why not offer extra content on TV to encourage TV watching over internet watching. Or, resolve cliff-hangers on the air and make internet viewers sweat it out for an extra two weeks.
What other reasons can /. think of for the networks behavior? Why are they so afraid of internet content aggregators?
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen... --Hobbes