This year, one full meme’s worth of internet buzz has been TV Everywhere (which may or may not be a trademark of Dish Network). It’s a simple idea, that a viewer should be able to watch any video content on any device, assuming that he makes the right payments to the people who bring it to him. TV wants to be free, y’know?
Unfortunately, a couple of news stories from Friday indicate that the TV delivery infrastructure is running away from the online video streaming of TV Everywhere.
John Eggerton, the hardest working man in Washington, wrote in a story for Multichannel News that the FCC may allow its ban on system-specific programming to expire. That’s the rule that requires every network to offer itself to all multi-channel video providers. For example, Comcast must offer its regional SportsNet programming to other providers, such as Dish.
According to that story, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski circulated an order that would decline to renew that restriction when it expires at the end of 2012.
Separately, the Chicago Tribune ran a Bloomberg News story about a possible internet-based TV provider with an unlikely background. Dish CEO Joseph Clayton said that Dish would start such a service if only it could get the network programmers on board.
“There’s no question there’s a group of consumers, mostly around age 18 to 28, that aren’t going to watch 250 channels of TV, pay $100 a month and watch it on a 60-inch flat-panel display,” Clayton said. “Maybe they’ll spend $20 – maybe less, maybe a little more – for a lot less channels and watch them on their iPhone, their tablet and their PC.”
The trouble is that the six corporations who control almost all major TV content don’t want to unbundle their channels to let streamers pick and choose what they want to watch. And they probably aren’t willing to accept the smaller return they’d get through those cheaper IP-based subscriptions.
Those two articles paint a bleak picture for the immediate future of IP-based TV viewing. If the Big Six won’t cut streaming deals with Dish, a huge customer that already has working relationships with them, what chance would the next internet start-up have? And if the Big Six is free to withhold their programming from absolutely anyone, how will viewers find everything they want in one application?
“(T)he public wants fresh meat and the public is never wrong.” That’s what John Goodman’s character said about talkies in The Artist, and it’s true for IP-based TV now. Movie studios in the 1920s recognized and embraced the new direction. Eventually, the Big Six will also come around. The public is never wrong.