Why are TV stations so scared of the internet?
 

Something I have never been able to figure out is why TV stations are so freaking scared to offer their shows on the internet.

Think HBO for instance.. Just imagine the about of new subscriptions they could pull by offering paid streaming via the web. Same with any of the other paid cable stations that barely offer up anything on the web.

It just makes no sense to me as to why they stay tied to the ball & chain of only providing their stations to cable & satellite companies and at best a few random shows on sites like netflix.

Regular TV is the same.. stations almost never air new episodes except a few random stations but they are few & far between.

Do these companies not understand the money they could be making? I can't imagine it's any sort of govt regulations as stations from other countries don't do it either. Anyone have any idea why TV stations seem to run scared from the web?

Hulu was more or less a testing platform for this concept. And it's failing. They are losing money like crazy. Based on the lack of success of Hulu, which is actually a good service, I don't see any of them rushing to fail.

Also, most of the major networks do offer their shows for free on their websites.

Hulu fails because it has nothing of interest.. I mean yea your first browse through it is ok for a few things here and there.

Even netflix lacks real long term pull, due to them getting everything way late, specially when talking about TV series.

If these companies treated the web as they do cable TV, with constant fresh content then they would certainly be booming in business.

IMO the TV,Movie & record industry have all failed miserably to capitalize on the web.

The Music industry is absolutely run by brain dead idiots when you look at how horribly they failed to take advantage of the web and then went with something as shitty as things like itunes, when instead they could have been taking over the entire retailer market place for their products.

The Music industry could have created a massive market grab right out from under retailer stores but they were too worried about killing Napster and other sharing sites.

TV & Movie industry seem to suffer from the same limited gene pool with their inability to understand the internet marketplace.

Again, Hulu already does what you are suggesting and you your self say it sucks. LOL, I'm not sure what exactly you want them to do differently?

Check Hulu on Tuesday. You will be able to watch the TV shows from Monday night that were on ABC, Fox, and NBC.

Check CBS.com and you will be able to watch the shows that were on CBS the night before.

You are saying that if these companies provide their fresh content online, which they already are, they would be booming, which they aren't.

TV stations sell advertising or subscriptions.

The ONLY ONLY ONLY reason a tv station can exist is to sell advertising revenue by inserting content around ad breaks. That is the ONLY reason they exist.

Come to grips with the fact its advertising FIRST, with shows AROUND that, and then you'll understand everything else.

apart from the BBC, but don't be fooled as they use that to drive BBC Worldwide and various over JV's, which errr, make money

Hulu offers up only a very small variety of shows and often only a handful of episodes. I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I browse through the selection of TV shows on Hulu they all seem like very dated series with only a handful of newer shows.

HBO has 28 million subscribers in the US. How many do you have? I think they know how to run a paid subscription TV company based on that alone. You have "whats good for them" confused with "whats good for you".

because of the rights?

People on the internet have a sense of entitlement that whatever media they receive on the internet should be free. Which is why it's hard to monetize a TV station on the Internet and north worth the lost of revenue.

HBO offers even less. Way to contradict yourself.

it's gotta be some contract issue, otherwise it makes no sense, why wouldn't they want to squeeze out the middle man?

Hulu offers a small variety of shows and only a handful of episodes? What? They have almost all of the major networks and they have quite a few cable channels, too.

They have a very nice collection of shows, both new and old. Full seasons of many past shows. Plus a movie collection. All for $8 a month. It's a great little service and could easily replace cable TV for many. And it's losing money.

I have cable, Netflix, and Hulu… I probably watch Hulu the most.

you can put exact the same ads in shows played on the web as you do on the tv...
and you can make the ads interactive which would actually increase revenues...

Umm I said HBO barely offers anything.. I'm saying they should offer up a subscription model on the net and give full access to everything they give you on cable.

contradiction is where?

Maybe, but I'm not so sure.

When I watch TV in the living room, I'm usually doing nothing else. Just watching TV. Captive audience.

When I watch TV in my office, I'm usually doing at least one other thing. I don't see any advertisements at all. I do something else. Not a captive audience.

How do you guys watch TV? The same or are you captive always?

Who do you think has a larger archive of content? HBO or Netflix?

They both charge under $10 a month.

You already said Netflix isn't good enough. Why would you pay for HBO, when they have less content, when you wouldn't pay for Netflix, when they have an incredible amount of more content?

You are missing the concept here.. When you get HBO from a cable provider, it usually cost about $5/month. They could bring that same model to the web and sell directly bypassing cable companies and also gain a a worldwide marketplace creating an enormous amount of new customers..

I'm not saying they would offer the same product as netflix or Hulu, but directly sell their product to consumers on the web.

There are contracts in place. Hundreds if not thousands of them. For example, when they syndicate re-runs, the company buying the re-run rights has to know nobody else is able to air those episodes. Then you go all the way down the line to producers, writers, and actors and they all get residuals based on those initial contracts. When you just air whatever, whenever, there is no way to make all those contracts.

People often wonder why media companies don't just offer all their stuff on the internet, and the simple answer is they can't. They would violate all kinds of deals and contracts that are already signed. If you play an episode on the internet for free and the producers of that show don't have anything regarding that in their contract, they can sue you. Not to mention, once you air it for free, the syndication value goes to shit and the advertising on internet videos is still nowhere near that of TV. Ads on internet videos are worth pennies. A 30 second spot on TV costs up to $250K.

I'm looking a Hulu right now..

Nothing from Discovery Chanel..

History Channel has 11 series and are all old and very limited amount of episodes. American Pickers for example is a popular show on that channel and they don't even have a full season. Pawn stars is the same..

National Geo is a bit better in the fact at least they offer a full season but again very limited amount of shows compared to what they air on cable.

This is what I'm saying, Hulu is doing what they can I'm sure, but the TV networks aren't going full in and by treating the net like they do cable and that is why they are failing.

Good to know a resident lunatic has it all figured out - surely the billion dollar companies will follow suit now that the business model has been laid out on a porn webmaster forum. Obviously, they don't know their numbers, the economics of their business, the agreements they have with producers, distributors, unions etc etc etc.

All they need to do at HBO is read GFY - sifting through 100 posts a day about how shitty everything is, how conversions suck and how many people are going out of biz, to make their next $10,000,000,000.00.

Seems kinda obvious.

I'm not missing the concept at all. I'm telling you this concept already exists in many facets, and it is not working. It is failing.

Let's just say for a minute that HBO was going to do exactly what you want. The cable companies would cut them out of the picture, because the cable companies need programming like HBO. Not only that, the movie studios would come along and do the same thing. Those movies would then go up for auction across the complete Internet spectrum and HBO would lose the contracts because they would not have the volume to beat other guys like Netflix and Walmart due to their now low subscription count.

HBO has over 20 million TV subscribers. Netflix has 28 million subscribers. There is no way HBO would be able to make up the difference by losing their TV audience after cable companies and studios cut them out of the picture. HBO would be dead.

Netflix is buying the rights to those shows. Everything you just mentioned is available on Netflix, prior seasons. I'm looking at them right now. For $20 a month you can have Netflix and Hulu.

Cable TV is more protective of their content because they don't make as much money. They need to license it out to the highest bidder so that they can pay for their shows. In this case, Netflix won. Also, in order for cable channels to get airtime from the large TV networks (Time Warner, etc.) they need to make the large TV networks happy. Time Warner is not going to be happy if Discovery Channel starts giving away all of their content online. They will get cut off, just like HBO would.

The networks, like ABC, etc. have more bargaining power because they are already free across the country. They can more or less tell the TV networks to shove it because they don't matter all that much.

American pickers and pawn stars are on netflix to watch. But I'm sure you're the kind of guy who won't buy access to any of them and will only look for excuses on why he won't pay for it. You are the internet version of a tire kicker.

BTW, hbo has on demand. I'm not sure why anyone would want it on their computer if they can stream it on their TV any time.

In for the win! :2 cents:

hbo is more like $10-$15 a month

and with the HBO you get online access

if they sold hbo separate less people would get cable meaning they would not be making more $$$

Man are you a self entitled prick. I hate to inform you that yes I have a subscription to netflix and that's the very reason for this topic. I find that netflix is great when it comes to archive of old shows but they are very slow to get new stuff in most cases.

The reason for this topic, is because I believe if TV studious treated things like Netflix & Hulu more in line with how they treat cable companies, they wouldn't be failing. ie treat online broadcasting like a 3rd media streaming source for fresh content instead of treating it like a red headed step child to the cable & sat companies.

I don't pay for Hulu, because I found it was kind of redundant when I already have Netflix. I tried Hulu first before I went with netflix.

Cable/Sat companies are regional.. (Sat of course has a bit broader coverage to remote areas)

Meanwhile the internet is world wide.

Would you ever offer up a porn site for just the US and exclude the rest of the countries of the world that have the ability to be billed? Seems like a silly idea doesn't it..

Buy a season pass for newer shows on iTunes (for example). Then you'll be no more than a day or so behind those who watch them on television.

There are plenty of ways to get good up to date content on the Internet, you need to pay for it.

Most TV stations embrace the web, especially in countries like Australia, they also offer catch up TV for viewers in many instances.

Yeah the sense of entitlement reeks through each of his posts.

Various ways you can get shows more quickly:

1. iTunes and similar services. Buy a season pass to the show, download and enjoy.
2. Wait for the DVD Box set and buy that.
3. Watch it on TV, subscribe to the channel or expand your Pay TV subscriptions

Correct and this is precisely why shows aren't just released onto the Internet at the same time for everyone. Different countries & regions show programming at different times. They're not going to cannibalise their own product by making it globally available before regions have had the chance to put it to air.

One day the middle man will be cut out - just isn't the time yet. But when that day comes when an HBO thinks it can make more profit on its own selling directly to its customers it will happen. HBO gets 7 dollars per subscriber, roughly half of what the subscriber pays the cable company for HBO. The formula has worked out great for them. They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them until they have very good $$$ reasons. And offering an Internet version of HBO would certainly be biting the hand that feeds them.

HBO has a simple job now, produce and buy great programs. The cable companies pay for everything else, the marketing costs, all the hardware and engineering crap that goes into cable. Going it alone would be a huge undertaking. It's why the big sports leagues are and for a long time still will continue selling their broadcasting rights to the networks and cable. But they are inching toward a day when they will cut out the middle man.

What I always wonder about is do the cable and satellite companies shave the cable channels like HBO. Do the cable companies give them the names/addresses of every one of the 28 million HBO subscribers?

I would probably pay for HBO GO as a standalone service like Netflix if it worked on more devices and they rotated a lot more movies in than they do.
The fact that they have their entire library of shows online is very, very cool.

The main problem the music industry has/had is that for a very long time they have been able to sell a low quality product for a premium price and the internet changed that.

Up until the internet if you wanted a song your only real option was to buy the entire album (Vinyl/tape/CD depending on the decade) and so often you found out that the album had 2 good songs on it and a bunch of crappy filler. When the internet came along those days ended. Now instead of being forced to plunk down $15 for a full album to get the song I want, I can just spend $1 and buy that song. The record industry was not prepared for this and had stables full of shitty bands that couldn't sell once it became a singles driven industry.

Rick Rubin said it best when he said that the music industry used to be the business of selling art, but they lost their way and got in the business of selling product and it cost them.

This is what I'm saying TBH.. They already offer the service online but you can't buy it directly.

It's not like people wouldn't pay $10-15/month for it I mean jesus people pay $40/month for shitty porn sites.

in china i was watching a site that had all kinds of good shows on. They played commercials at the beginning and end of the shows.