Readers want Internet TV — but cheap!

Michael Rogers Columnist • Profile • E-mail

There’s nothing like a story about television to get the email flowing, and last week’s column on how TV networks are adapting to the Internet was no exception. 

For starters, some readers told me that I was behind the times: that television has already come to the Web, big-time: 

Ray: After reading this, one has to wonder if Michael Rogers actually has an Internet connection. Everything, and I mean everything, that is available on the television networks is available for download on the Internet now, in many high-quality formats, commercial-less, and absolutely free, for those with a computer and a broadband connection. The technology and content exists today and it's not surprising that the networks are behind the curve. Hopefully, television will learn from the example of Apple's iTunes music store: make it cheap, convenient, and al a carte, and viewers will download legally.

Rogers: Uh, Ray, from the network’s point of view, that’s the problem. The column was about legal video distribution on the Web. And as for your example of iTunes: as the column pointed out, there are still far more songs — perhaps by several orders of magnitude — being downloaded illegally than legally. Illegal downloading of television content isn’t nearly at the level that music downloading was when iTunes debuted, so the networks hope they can still get ahead of the trend.

But what if they can't? The television folks have already taken note of the remarkable consumer entitlement that exists on the Web: hey, make it really easy and cheap for me or I’ll just get your programs illegally. There seems to be a sense, especially among younger consumers, that the media companies have some sort of social obligation to keep producing music and programming regardless of how much gets taken for free. Wrong: these are businesses, and if they can’t make money producing content, they’re just going to invest in something that’s more profitable. Record companies, for example, are already cutting back on their investments in new talent. And that’s why television fans should hope the networks can figure out a business model to support their productions.  Otherwise, when 2010 rolls around, the most interesting television content on the Web could be Bonanza, the Will and Grace finale and skateboarding tricks on YouTube.

A few readers thought I was just plain wrong about television on the Internet, for technical reasons:

Beau Tardy, Princeton, NJ:  TV on the Web is a non-starter. It will never develop into a mass market nor is it even really technically feasible. Even with compression at 4 to 1 (MPEG4) it still requires 6mb per second. Besides there already is a 'networked web' that carries TV, it's called cable. Pushing TV thru the Internet is like broadcasting radio over the telephone. They are incompatible mediums.

The big mistake is to think of the Web as simply another delivery system. It is not. It is a wholly realized medium of its own with its own behavior and its own appetite. Yes, there will be TV images on the web, just as there will be music and even movies. But they will be a small part of the total picture. The web has more to do with the post office and newspapers than it does with TV. Downloading TV off the Web is a novelty that will fade quickly as soon as other formats kick in.

Rogers: I received several other reproaches about the inefficiency of existing Internet technology for video distribution, and this is certainly a concern.  But lots of development money is going into various IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) delivery methods, and while many of these may not ultimately employ traditional Web browsers, they will have the key characteristics of the Internet: highly personalized and interactive content delivery.  The television industry shouldn’t spend much time worrying about whether the technology will be ready for them: the question is whether they will be ready for the technology.

I do, however, agree with Beau that there will someday be a pure or native form of Internet medium that will simultaneously combine audio, video, text, graphics and audience participation, all in some sort of seamless interface. But for years to come, we’ll also still be using the Internet to mimic conventional radio and television.

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