Good content in the Internet era is like water in the Mississippi:? try as we might, we can’t keep it down.? And, just like the debate surged over levees, spillways and channels preceding the Great Flood of 1927 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mississippi_Flood_of_1927), the real issue is money.
If you pay gazillions for the rights to, say, every NFL game being played on any given Sunday, you want to protect your investment.? Buying sweet, rich Delta farmland conjures the same instinct, ’specially when the river rises.? Cotton doesn’t grow under water, and nothing kills content owners like watching their hard-earned inventory spill freely onto the screens of non paying viewers.
The best way to seal content from freeloaders has been, until recently, to avoid the Internet altogether.? You want to see how the second season of True Blood ends?? Watch it on HBO on September 13th.? Don’t have HBO?? Oh well.? The DVDs should be out by Christmas.
The dish folks heard people hated their cable companies and gave us an alternative.? By offering content not otherwise available, they lured us onto our roofs with power tools and an afternoon to burn.? Same basic idea:? you want to watch every game on Sunday?? Get DirecTV.
Eureka!? Turns out boatloads of folks love that all-you-can-eat football menu.? But in Manhattan, and other cities, that’s a problem.?? Many? building owners don’t let tenants decorate their southern-facing walls and windows with DirecTV’s pizza-sized receivers.? So every Sunday the city’s most avid fans poured from their own homes in search of DirecTV.? They’d happily buy the package if they could, but they were stymied.
Until now.? Thanks to some creative thinking and a little technology DirectTV is skirting the building owners and selling the football package online for $349.? That’s just fifty bucks more than what they’d charge for the package as a full DirecTV subscriber.? Landlords and cable companies, like levees, can only keep the flow of content down so long.
Speaking of cable companies, looks like Time Warner is getting some “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” religion.? The Wall Street Journal reports today a test to put TV programs on the Web for paying subscribers.? According to the Journal, “Time Warner Cable’s test follows a similar effort started in July by Comcast Corp. as the U.S. TV industry tries to address a major concern:? how to keep people from canceling cable-TV subscriptions to watch free TV online.”
You can read the full article here:? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125133475038162379.html.? But you’ll have to pay for it!? Mr. Murdoch paid $5 billion for Dow Jones.? He intends to protect his investment.
We should all hope he succeeds, along with DirecTV and everyone else who actually gets paid (in cash, via attention to advertising, or some other means) for valuable content online.? If they fail, they’ll stop paying the folks who actually create great content.? And then we’re back to home-grown pet videos.? Shoot me now.
