Olympics: the online agony of defeat
NBC remains in full retreat from live online coverage of the Winter Games from Vancouver, slashing the number of hours offered during the 2008 Summer Games by something like four-fifths.
Meanwhile, Canadian broadcasters are boasting “every second of every competition” live on two web sites.
Computer stuck here in the U.S.? Hope you’re into curling. And hockey. Those sports dominate NBC’s live Olympics video offerings, with a dash of the higher-profile sports that we’ll see on TV.
Want those online scraps? You’ll have to prove to NBC that you’re a paying customer of their cable TV and satellite partners.
Otherwise, you’re in for 3-minute clips of events that already happened. Or the lame 2-minute “Defining Moments Montage” of the day’s action. Accompanied by preroll ads.
As of early Sunday, the highlights on the free video page were dominated by recaps of Friday’s opening ceremony.
Perhaps you’d like to stop by the athlete profiles section, with plenty of canned video.
The upside is the video images filtered through the Microsoft Silverlight platform are pretty good and clear, but we haven’t seen much in HD. You’ll have to download the latest version of Silverlight as the first step in accessing the live content.
As for verifying, be prepared to enter your password for your cable system or satellite provider’s web site. Don’t have one? You’ll be signing up for that, too.
(Give NBC some credit for its integration of Twitter, Facebook and wireless apps.)
NBC acknowledges that people who seek out live video become more involved with the Games and are more likely to watch the (mostly canned) TV broadcasts.
The problem seems to be the unauthorized sites and social video destinations that host pirated online feeds. No live feed online, no problem.
“Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” an NBC suit told Mediaweek. Another rep noted that viewers like “instant storytelling” and not the live action coverage that fans get in football, basketball, baseball — almost every sporting event.
Here’s a concept: Let the “instant storytelling” crowd get their soft-focus feel-good profiles on TV, while motivated sports fans can get their live fix online. That’s what multiplatform multimedia is all about, boys.
NBC has rights to the 2012 Games in London, so expect more of the same. The 2014 Games are up for grabs, with NBC up against ESPN/ABC and Time Warner/CBS. Comcast cable, the likely new owner of NBC Universal, might not be too thrilled with the prospects of another quarter-billion-dollar money loser, however.
That leaves the door open for ESPN, which presumably sees the value in doing right by the international community of sports fans.
The Worldwide Leader has the channels, the online chops and the intelligent love of sport that NBC lacks.
Hulu’s days of freedom are numbered
Hulu may shift to a partial subscription model within six months, meaning the all-free party is almost over.
The big-media online video site is working on a plan that would allow viewers to access the five most recent airings of hit TV series, but older episodes would require a subscription fee of something like $5, the Los Angeles Times said in breaking the paid Hulu story.
Not all series would require paid access, the Times said, speculating that 20 primetime shows would be involved.
Hulu is owned by News Corp., Disney and NBC Universal, an arrangement that has long fueled speculation that the online video site’s days were numbered, at least as a free entity.
Not a shocker. NewsCorp. bigshot Chase Carey signaled the bad news about Hulu last fall:
“I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content,” Carey told a conference put on by Broadcasting & Cable. “I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value. Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”
Comcast’s takeover of NBC Uni probably figured into the subscription-model thinking, as the cabler seeks to wall off network programming on the Internet, a fear of consumer groups.
ESPN team in talks for Xbox 360 video
Microsoft reportedly has been having “in-depth talks” that would bring ESPN sporting events onto the Xbox Live platform.
The Walt Disney Co.-Microsoft negotiations could lead to live streams that would be similar to ESPN 360, which offers major and minor events via some high-speed broadband providers, the New York Times reported today.
The content is similar to what’s offered as premium packages on DirecTV, including ESPN Game Plan (college football) and ESPN Full Court (college basketball). Tennis, cricket and soccer are available on ESPN 360′s schedule as well.
The deal could lead to ESPN interactive games, the Times speculated.
The Xbox 360, with its Xbox Live marketplace, has been the leader in streaming video among the three major “living room” consoles, but Sony’s PS3 and even Wii are busy playing catch-up. Xbox Live now has an audience about the size of a minor cable network.
Microsoft has been reported in talks with most major major entertainment creators — studios and TV networks — regarding broad content deals for the Xbox 360, envisioned as a home media center.
Hulu power trio: ABC, Fox, NBC
The Walt Disney Company is taking a 28 percent share of Hulu, meaning that three of the Big Four television networks are about to become partners in the influential and popular streaming video site.
ABC hits such as “Dancing With the Stars,” “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” are headed for Hulu, reinforcing the site’s ad-supported fare from NBC Universal (NBC) and News Corp. (Fox). Disney owns ABC. Some Disney Channel shows will be shared with Hulu, but not its cash cows “Hannah Montana” and the “High School Musical” spinoffs.
ABC shows currently stream for free on abc.com, some in HD. That site does not appear in the top 10 online video rankings. Hulu will be the first free site to carry ABC shows. The deal also brings the alphabet network’s content to Hulu’s network of partner web sites such as AOL.
As part of the deal, ABC is giving Hulu $25 million in network ad tradeouts, the New York Times reports.
NBC Universal and News Corp. re-upped for another two years on Hulu as part of the new structure.
CBS, the lone wolf at this point, issued a statement saying it preferred to distribute its own shows on the Net. Its shows appear on several outside video sites.
“CBS has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships (allowing us to) control our distribution, sales and profit,” the company said Thursday. “Controlling our own rights for that content — in all media — preserves its value in a multi-platform business system.”
Talks for Disney to go exclusively with revenue-hungry YouTube fell apart over owner Google’s refusal to offer an equity stake in its video site, the Times said. YouTube could only manage a watery deal with Disney that brings clips from ESPN and ABC to the user-generated-content giant. Analysts say YouTube will have to come up with equity or big-time payments to woo premium-content providers.
Another company no doubt watching the developments with interest is Apple, which sells ABC episodes on its iTunes Store. Apple chieftain Steve Jobs is a major Disney shareholder. (MacWorld ponders the Disney-Hulu impact on iTunes.)
Google put out a statement Thursday bragging that “the average YouTube viewer spends nearly 150 minutes a month watching videos on YouTube,” and that the Disney-Hulu deal was good for the online video industry.
Regardless, the new Hulu most likely will swamp YouTube’s aspirations of becoming a premium content player, at least for the next two years.
Hulu is third in market share behind YouTube and Fox, soon to be a distant second. Viewer time spent on Hulu has been increasing impressively.
Meanwhile, Sony’s Crackle video site trumpeted the addition of dozens of guy-friendly movies such as “Spiderman 2,” “Stripes,” “Groundhog Day” and a heaping pile of Japanese “Godzilla” movies.
“These are the movies that matter for guys 18-34,” said Eric Berger of Sony Pictures Television’s digital unit. Crackle also rolled out Cinemactive, an interactive trivia game. Sony Pictures also has embraced trivia games in its Blu-ray BD Live features.
Crackle’s movie page features a scroll of “Assassins and Ass-Kickers,” leaving no doubt that Sony Classics fare won’t be coming soon.
Weird times: Chernin out, Comcast in
The folks at Hulu couldn’t be blamed for losing sleep over the exit of News Corp.’s president and COO, Peter Chernin.
The highly regarded exec basically made Hulu happen, and pushed for its relative independence from the entrenched old media interests at News Corp.
“You can’t protect old business models artificially,” Chernin said, famously, as he campaigned for embeddable video and Web-wide video search on Hulu.
In the past week or so, we’ve seen Hulu reluctantly shut down its feeds to TV.com (CBS) and the freebie Web-to-TV software Boxee, not a good sign for Hulu’s open creative model.
With 78-year-old Rupert Murdoch taking the reins of Fox new media, no one would be stunned to see Hulu become just another self-serving online video outlet, serving up leftovers from its corporate relatives. There are darker scenarios.
Silicon Alley Insider offers five reasons the Chernin exit puts Hulu in danger, with two or three of them making total sense.
Download Movies 101 has long argued that true “new media” won’t emerge in effective and macro-synergistic models until the Boomer executive corps begins to fade in Hollywood and NYC.
Chernin was an exception proving the rule: In my decades of slinging news about the entertainment industry, he was one of the few veteran Hollywood suits who managed not to sputter and drool while discussing the Web and its potentials.
Speaking of old media, Comcast is making noises about offering its cable TV subscribers access to network programs off the Internet.
Yes, the same Comcast that declared cold war on BitTorrent users and was sanctioned by the FCC for secretly capping broadband. The same Comcast that went on to institutionalize its 250-gigabyte cap on monthly bandwidth use.
Safe to assume the cabler likes free-spirited Hulu about as much as P2P networking sites.
Comcast reportedly is in talks with Time Warner Cable and DirecTV about setting subscriber-only viewing sites. Among the content providers in the mix: NBC Universal, the other half of the Hulu ownership.
Jeff Gaspin, president of NBC’s Universal Television Group, told the AP that, “There’s pressure on all of (the TV networks). We get paid quite a bit of money from cable operators. … It’s important we find ways to do business that protects that business model.”
This could be a good thing, if we trust the cablers and satellite companies to participate in the online video party, instead of calling the cops. Maybe. Maybe not.
Much of the free access to TV network video online could, in paranoid theory, be gone within a year if distributors put up enough of a fuss — and enough money to dwarf gains from the shaky online ad model. Remember the bad old days when you couldn’t watch cable TV network programs without paying someone? Not that long ago. …
And so the media empires strike back. You have to wonder what took them so long.