Dish Thinks Streaming TV Sites Should Delay Shows 30 Days

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Oh, the humanity. In another reminder that TV service providers don’t have your best interests in mind, Dish Network executive Bruce Eisen recently said streaming TV sites (like Hulu) that allow you to watch new episodes of shows the day after they air should instead delay new shows by 30 days.

According to GigaOM:

“‘If I can watch Glee tomorrow morning and I don’t have to pay a pay TV service –- I think that’s bad,’ Eisen said during a panel about cord cutting at the Streaming Media West conference this morning.

The model of sites like Hulu that make catchup content available immediately isn’t benefiting the industry, he said, adding that broadcasters should instead reserve catchup episodes for authenticated TV Everywhere services, and only make them available freely after 30 days. ‘If people decide that they don’t have to pay for pay TV, then one of the pillars (of the TV industry) starts crumbling,’ he said.”

So TV, in general, is still broken. Let’s clear off the kitchen table and take a look at how this all works.

We have the content creators—the networks—like NBC, ABC, FOX, and CBS. We have the TV service providers—the cable companies—like Comcast, Cablevision, Dish Network, and DirecTV. And we have online TV streaming sites like Hulu.com, TV.com, and XfinityTV.com, to name a few.

The content creators broadcast their most popular programming over the air for free. The programming is supported by advertising, but all you need is an antenna to watch it on your TV set.

The TV service providers retransmit these broadcasts over their own pipes and also offer additional programming that’s not available for free over the air—we call it “cable TV.”

Even though the content creators broadcast basic channels over the air for free, they charge the TV service providers a retransmission fee for delivering the same content over their own pipes (cable).

Through the air? Free. Underground? Not free.

Granted, TV service providers make money from providing content to customers, so some of that should go back to the creators. That’s how the argument goes, at least. Never mind that the content is built around selling ad space and more viewers equals more money from advertisers.

FOX made headlines recently for demanding more money from Cablevision and Dish Network in order for those two service providers to rebroadcast what’s normally available over the air for free. CNN reports that “Cablevision has said the company is paying more than $70 million annually for Fox programming, and that Fox wants to bump it to $150 million.”

Now everyone’s up in arms about streaming TV sites. Dish doesn’t like that Hulu offers new episodes the day after they air. Why subscribe to Dish Network if you can watch everything online the next day for free?

Dish should also be irate at over-the-air broadcasts—even more so than Hulu. With Hulu, you have to wait until the next day. With an antenna, you can see it all as it happens.

And surely the content creators can’t be happy about this potential loss of revenue. Dish needs subscribers so it can pay for content. Someone should demand payment from Hulu!

The problem is that Hulu is owned by ABC, NBC, and FOX. They can’t charge themselves for showing their own content online. Someone must pay!

Let’s charge Google.

The rule is that you can watch Hulu if you’re sitting at your desk, but if you’re sitting on a couch and your TV has a built-in web browser that displays Hulu.com exactly the same as your computer’s web browser, that’s not okay. Same goes for ABC.com and TV.com, which is owned by CBS.

Now here comes Comcast throwing a curveball at everyone with its XfinityTV.com site. It’s like Hulu, but only Comcast subscribers have access to it. This system probably makes content creators the most happy. They get to charge Comcast to retransmit content twice—once through the cable boxes and again over the internet. And we wonder why cable is so expensive.

So in summation, here’s what’s happening.

– Dish is mad at streaming TV sites but not at antennas.

– FOX broadcasts free, ad-supported content over the air, but wants $150 million from Cablevision to run the same ad-supported content through underground cables.

– You can watch ad-supported streaming TV in a web browser if you view it through a computer monitor. You may not watch it in a web browser when viewed on a TV set. Replacing your TV set with a big computer monitor will cause the universe to collapse in upon itself.

– Money is made in the following ways:

– Content creators sell national ad spots.

– Content creators charge TV service providers to rebroadcast programming.

– TV service providers sell local ad spots.

– TV service providers charge monthly access fees to subscribers.

– Content creators sell different ads inside their online streaming content.

– Hulu (owned by content creators) charges $10 per month for access to a back-catalog of streaming content with ads in it.

– Content creators charge Google for making a computer that connects to a TV.

Clearly, we consumers are the winners in all this.

More on Techland:

Comcast Customers Now Get TV and Movies on the Web

TV Networks Blocking Shows From Google TV’s Web Browser

Internet TV’s Killer App is the Entire History of TV

(image: flickr)

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