With two swift strokes, HBO and CBS have opened new doors to a future where you won’t have to pay for a huge bundle of channels to get their TV shows. Now the questions are which networks will follow suit — and how seriously the movement will threaten the highly profitable $80 billion pay TV sector.
The season finale of the Matthew McConaughey-Woody Harrelson procedural aired on HBO Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET, but viewers hoping to watch it via the network’s online service were out of luck. The live stream crashed shortly after the linear telecast began, and many users took to Twitter to report that the loading screen stalled out altogether.
CBS’s homage to the Sherlock Holmes myth, Elementary, is getting $2.7 million per episode in the aftermarket, according to the network’s top executive — the result of a demand for exclusive licensing windows from the emerging field of online-video streaming sites.
Comcast reached a deal with CBS to offer subscribers more of the network’s shows on video-on-demand and they cut a separate pact to offer all past seasons of two shows through its multiscreen Streampix service — giving the cable giant a bit more ammunition to fight over-the-top services like Netflix.
WRC Washington To Stream Newscasts Online
NBC-owned WRC Washington (DMA 8) will begin streaming all weekday newscasts on NBCWashington.com beginning Monday, July 1. “We are excited to bring News4’s No. 1-rated newscasts to our growing digital […]
Exclusives
The network may not follow ABC down the “TV Everywhere” road for local broadcasts on smartphones and tablets.
Aereokiller, embroiled in litigation with the TV networks, is putting at least one legal dispute behind it. Founder Alki David agreed to stop calling his online video company Aereokiller, in order to settle a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by its Barry-Diller backed rival, Aereo.
More than 4.5 million Boston-area consumers will have access to Aereo’s antenna technology to watch live television online starting May 15.
The European Union’s Court of Justice sides with ITV Broadcasting and others in ruling against TVCatchup, a service that allows consumers to watch over-the-air TV on their computers and digital devices.
Three judges of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seemed poised to reverse a lower court judge who in July reluctantly gave a thumbs-up to the online TV streaming service Aereo Inc.
The IAC chairman says that Alki David’s company is violating his intellectual property to divert people from Aereo.
Online Streaming Hurting Some Networks
The online streaming availability of TV content may have helped TV ratings in the early going, but its benefits are peaking and even reversing for some networks, Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible suggests.
Barry Diller isn’t shrinking from his battle with broadcasters over Aereo, his new streaming device that allows anyone to watch and record TV shows on the Internet via a dime-sized antenna. “It’s going to be a great fight,” Diller told a panel at the SXSW Film Festival Sunday. The service is scheduled to go live in New York on Thursday.
NBC’s will begin streaming one of its biggest hopes for midseason, the Broadway drama Smash, three weeks before it premieres on-air. The strategy is becoming increasingly popular as a way of building buzz.
