TV Networks Finally Discover Live Streaming; Still Get It Really, Really Wrong
from the of-course-they-do dept
Over and over again people have pointed out that one of the reasons people flock to "unauthorized" versions of content is that legitimate versions aren't available. For a decade or so, it's been odd that network TV has been generally resistant to embracing the internet. A big part of the reason, of course, is money driven, since they make so much cash from cable deals (even if their content is free over the air). The fight with Aereo, of course, is not so much about copyright as it is about retransmission fees that the networks can get from cable. So it might seem like a bit of progress to see that the networks are finally moving towards live streaming of content.While many shows are now available online, they usually aren't available until hours (or sometimes days or weeks) after things air. And while, yes, we're now a DVR world, where people don't always watch shows when they air, there is still a sizable population of fans of shows that like to watch them in real-time. In fact, many have said that the supposedly evil internet is actually making them more interested in watching live, because they can share the cultural experience more widely via things like Twitter and Facebook. So, recognizing that reality, making it easier for people to view the content live at the same time, such as via online streaming, makes a lot of sense. Kudos to the networks for recognizing that, about a decade later than they should have.
Disney's ABC network will become the first broadcast network to stream its shows live online through an ongoing service, starting with viewers of its TV stations in New York and Philadelphia on May 14 and expanding to its other stations by the end of the summer.Okay, that's the good part. But, given who we're talking about, of course there's a catch. There's always a catch:
Starting on July 1, Disney will only provide its WATCH ABC service to subscribers of cable, satellite and other TV subscription services that have agreements with ABC to offer the service to their subscribers in New York and Philadelphia. Subscribers must provide an authentication code to be granted access to the shows.Remember, this is free, over the air, network television we're talking about. But they're so frightened of pissing off the cable/satellite guys from whom they make boatloads of money, they won't offer the content to cord cutters -- only to people who are already paying ridiculous sums for cable/satellite TV.
Later this summer, Disney said it will expand use of its WATCH ABC service to authenticated subscribers that receive its TV stations in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno, California.
Oh, and rather than make it work on any platform, it appears to be specific to certain devices:
The app will initially allow users to be able to watch the service on Apple's iPad and iPhone and on the Kindle Fire device, and later this summer on Samsung Galaxy devices.Oh, and they're not done with the bad ideas either:
The report also claims that in the future, ABC will “withhold its most recent TV episodes from the free versions of Hulu and ABC.com, further limiting access to paying subscribers of cable and satellite providers only.”Way to take a good idea (live streaming) and make it completely crappy and pointless again (locking it to devices and existing overpriced pay TV offerings while taking away the value for everyone else and further fragmenting the space).
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Filed Under: authentication, cord cutting, fragmentation, live streaming, network tv, pay tv, tv
Companies: abc, disney
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Another annoying "feature" of the free Hulu service is only having the latest 5 episodes of a show available. If someone happens to catch a middle episode at a friends house, likes it and then wants to see the series from the beginning they are SOL. Those are new eyeballs on ads that they are missing out on. Doesn't make much sense to me.
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These are foreign to me now. When I cut cable, it's more apt to say I severed my relationship with these "businesses".
Cable bill? Haha. It's amazing what one can do with an HD antenna and a $100 DVR (because the wife demands her CSI).
Though, I suppose ICE, FBI, CBS, ABC, and NBC will one day kick in my door and scream "INFRINGEMENT!" at the top of their lungs I'm not paying for the show.
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They're climbing the mast of a (slowly) sinking ship.
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SWMBO is the main stumbling block in cutting the cord, but since espn and dish had some sort of falling out (whatever the fuck do i care what their bidness bullshit is ? i just want my stoopid fucking teevee), she is pissed off that our online espn streaming got squeezed out in some Big Media powerplay...
she wrote them (not that it does any good), but she is about ready to drop the whole enchilada because they have fucked with watching our Gators one too many times...
really, if they (or any big name university) would sell their own broadcasts (which they already do with all but football and basketball) DIRECTLY to us online, we would be happier than a pig in slop... i can't believe they wouldn't make a TON more money, rather than going through espn and the networks...
fuck the dinosaurs, small mammals for the win ! ! !
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
art guerrilla at windstream dot net
eof
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There is absolutely no technical reason why content cannot be made available online globally. There is even no technical reason why people in the UK, for example, should not be able to subscribe to online cable services. As far as I can see, the only reason for region blocking is control and even that is negated by piracy.
The Internet does not have borders and I believe the licensing laws need to be upgraded universally to reflect this.
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Hey, you aren't blameless either! BBC iPlayer won't let me watch QI and WILTY — and I'm in Canada, for chrissakes! We're basically you! :)
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What's ABC's excuse?
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"share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
The world is being Masnicked -- trumpeting ephemeral "culture" while the surveillance state marches on to total control.
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Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
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Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
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Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
I think it's English, but none of it makes any sense.
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Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
At this point, it's clear that these companies produce not cultural works of art, but products to be sold. Their usefulness is limited by the media companies to be time-wasters, not artifacts of cultural significance to be shared and enjoyed together. Let's stop wasting our time trying to treat locked-up (and mostly crappy) shows, movies and songs as cultural artifacts and just forget about them completely because they are useless time-wasting products.
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Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
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Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
As for culture, that's really a much bigger thing than just what's good art. I don't think reality television is good art but it's certainly a real element of our culture, like it or not -- and dismissing the medium of television because of it is as silly as dismissing magazines because the most popular ones are vapid ad-rags.
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Re: Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
If they don't want to change with the times and the technology they are doing nothing but destroying the business of broadcast entertainment by not moving into the future and giving people what they want. I would watch live if they gave me a reason, possibly a free access to a site where the show could be partially interactive or give more info that made you feel that you were more in contact with the actors.Actually they could make the whole experience more interactive and encourage more of us to play along. But no they would rather fight for the right to prevent us watching what we want.
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Where's the beef?
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Re: Where's the beef?
- Breaking Bad
- Mad Men
- The Wire
- The Office (UK edition and the first two-thirds or so of the US edition)
- Arrested Development
- Lucky Louie and, even moreso, Louie
- Peep Show
- Archer
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Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
That's more or less what they used to say about Shakespeare, about jazz, about rock, about movies, various late 19th and 20th century art movements, etc.
Just because it isn't your cup of tea doesn't mean it isn't art, and isn't worthy of appreciation at least by people who find something to appreciate in it. By all means, let the finer arts exist and flourish, but don't attack things just because you don't like them.
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Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
At this point, it's clear that these companies produce not cultural works of art, but products to be sold. Their usefulness is limited by the media companies to be time-wasters, not artifacts of cultural significance to be shared and enjoyed together. Let's stop wasting our time trying to treat locked-up (and mostly crappy) shows, movies and songs as cultural artifacts and just forget about them completely because they are useless time-wasting products."
I completely agree. And since they are no longer works of art they no longer qualify for copyright protection (which is for the EXPRESS purpose of promoting the arts and useful sciences.)
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Re: Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
If it didn't "Promote the progress of the sciences" it wasn't copyrightable no matter how artistic it was
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Re: Re: "share the cultural experience" -- TV? -- HA, HA! & OY.
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and with very little additional effort, i can then remove the commercials, and then i can store them on my HDD, and then i can watch them any time i want commercial free forever.
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Drink up me 'earties, yo ho.
We're devils and black sheep, we're really bad eggs.
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho.
We're beggars and blighters and ne'er do-well cads,
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho.
Aye, but we're loved by our mommies and dads,
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho.
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
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Just what I always wanted. Thank you, TV, for providing me just the service I was looking for. What would I do without you?
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So, cable companies pay ABC a significant amount of money, and in return they're granted the privilege of being able to show a TV channel that anyone could get for free with an antenna. Then ABC just happens to give them veto rights for their online streaming services. Completely unrelated, I'm sure.
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Disney exec 2: "Brilliant! Let's do it."
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Actually it's not the pay TV guys they're worried about. It's the cord cutters. As I explained in a comment to yesterday's post about ESPN, they are Disney's cash cow. You should also make sure to look at the link in Dave's response to mine where he provides much better detail about ESPN pricing.
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media center
I would love to show a room full of network execs a cheap system running media center software that can directly access linking sites then explain to them that people can already access virtually any movie or TV show that's ever been created with no chance of getting an infringement notice just so I could watch there heads explode.
Make it easy and make it available and people WILL PAY, make it difficult and make it hard to get and people will still get the content at ZERO risk.
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This'll cut down on piracy of TV's
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Hardware locking... now that's dumb, old, disconnected thinking.
So they want to corner exclusive eyeballs, those with cable subscriptions; but within that group, they only want those with exclusive devices.
All on... The Internet...
Sure, one could do things like that, but good lord Why narrow a potential audience of billions to a few million worldwide???
IMO at least partly this comes from our the asinine values people with money seem to share today. With investors thinking the way they do, a couple of million $$ showing up on a company's books today from an exclusive deal trumps any assessment of viability for future success. Its all about today.
This lack of concern for the future shown by investors mirrors that of voters who go to the polls once every four years (and look blankly at you if told elections happen 8 times that often) and make 99% of their decisions based on the blurbs, or 'headlines' as I like to call them, on the ballots themselves.
We can say its just the executives at ABC who are stupid, but I'm convinced that here is another case of the bell curve majority trying to keep us moving backwards.
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It's a mess, and I have no idea how to fix it. All I can do is avoid contributing to it; like you, I do my homework before voting. It takes a couple of days, but it's worth it to not be part of the problem.
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The main reason ABC is being so dumb
Networks love to own local stations -- local TV is under economic pressure, but it still has the sort of profit margins usually seen in narcotics distribution -- but they legally can only own stations that reach 35% of the nation's viewers.
That means 65% of the nation gets its network programs from independently owned affiliates. This applies whether you watch on cable or OTA -- your cable company must carry the local network affiliate.
The minute a network starts live streaming its primetime shows direct to viewers, the affiliates will revolt and pull the plug on network programming OTA and cable. Now the network can only be seen by cordcutters in 65% of the country's homes (or, what they care about, the 'television households').
That's why Disney thinks they have no choice but to limit this option to cable subscribers in the geographic area served by their network owned and operated stations.
Eventually, this won't be an issue. The network-affiliate model is a dead man walking. But right now it's huge business worth billions of dollars.
And because of a) the television industry's determination not to be disrupted and b) the pathetic state of American broadband and the entrenched interests who get rich on keeping it that way the network-affiliate model may survive for quite some time.
Ok, actually, I guess I should note that the reason Disney's being so dumb is because ABC is run by TV network executives, who have never found a good idea they couldn't ruin. It's like they can't help themselves. But a close second would be the affiliate issues. :)
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Just Galaxy?
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If the twats cannot move with the times then fuck'em
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-No one. Ever.
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Elsewhere I have just read that DVDs are being released the same day as the movie. Will it stop people going to see movies? Of course not.
Wake up. Live streaming is what the people want.
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How..??
Many Thanks....
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This is crazy to me
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