NBC, Affils Working On Streaming Plan

The NBC affiliate board is at least as gung-ho about the prospects of TV everywhere as any other affiliate board organization — or so says Jordan Wertlieb, Hearst Television president and NBC affiliate board chairman in the wake of the affiliate group’s meeting in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

“There’s this kind of race to get it right going on,” said Wertlieb, in an interview with TVNewsCheck.

Wertlieb declined to share details about the precise technology that the Peacock Network and its affiliates are planning to use to roll out their own initiative to stream a combination of network and local content for consumers to access with their smartphones and other wireless devices.

But under the basic concept that other TV networks and their affiliates are considering, an affiliate would pay the network a fee to stream network programming through the cable and satellite TV operators serving their markets, with the affiliates free to seek retransmission consent payments from the operators.

“Everyone is balancing caution with speed with the understanding that it’s important to get it in front of the consumer as their expectations and adoption rates of mobile devices and tablets grow,” Wertlieb says.

Wertlieb says NBC and its affiliates have almost worked out an “agreement on a general framework,” but declined to speculate on when the initiative would be ready to roll out.

“The general framework is still being discussed, but conceptually there’s a definite understanding of the importance of localism and importance of the traditional relationship between the affiliates and the networks, and those definitions of market DMAs being respected,” Wertlieb says. “Nothing has been finalized yet, but clearly the affiliate model is weighing heavily in the construct.”

Our board is definitely enthusiastic about moving TV everywhere forward,” he adds. “We understand that the best business is for all of our viewers to be able to get access to the local stations on any device anywhere, particularly during the big events.”

Wertlieb also says that NBC has some very big events coming in 2014, including the Winter Olympics. “I’m not sharing timelines but these events are going to drive interest here and we’ve got to be focused on lining viewers up with these events,” he says.

Among the NBC executives attending the affiliate board session were Ted Harbert, NBC Broadcasting chairman, and Jean Dietze, NBC EVP, affiliate relations, Wertlieb says.

TV everywhere proposals also dominated the ABC and Fox affliliates board meetings earlier this week.