TV Execs Favor Mix Of Subscription, Ad Fees For Online Content
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Bowman Feels Offering Online
Content For Free Isn't Viable |
Media industry execs Wednesday said that the "best model" for content owners to pursue online is a "hybrid approach that relies on both subscription and advertising fees," according to Steve Donohue of CONTENTINOPLE.com. MLBAM President & CEO Bob Bowman said, "You can't just give stuff away for free. It just can't happen. I don't see premium content publishers doing that forever." Bowman added Hulu has "done a good job," and it is a "marvelous site, but I don't understand the business model." Bowman, Verizon Communications VP/Content Strategy & Acquisition Terry Denson and YES President & CEO Tracy Dolgin all "threw their support behind a hybrid subscription and advertising distribution model, and also touted the cable industry’s efforts to distribute subscription content online through projects like TV Everywhere, which will rely on authenticating that a consumer is a paying cable subscriber before he can access premium video content online." Donohue noted Verizon, MLB and YES "have some experience at authentication." Verizon earlier this year began offering Yankees games "to FiOS TV and FiOS Internet subscribers that already subscribe to YES," while Cablevision "offers the same product to its iO: Interactive Optimum customers." But Denson said that the "bigger challenge" will be for Verizon and "other pay-TV providers to develop a TV Everywhere distribution system that has an interoperable authentication system that will work with multiple providers and TV programmers." Meanwhile, Dolgin, who moderated the panel discussion, said that the TV business "needs to avoid the mistakes made by the music and newspaper industries" in regard to online content. Dolgin: "The TV business right now is at the crossroads of what's going on between old media and new media" (CONTENTINOPLE.com, 9/23).
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