All the major broadcasting giants and the TV service providers are these days in a dispute over the free contents leverage. First off, the contents of Fox, NBC and ABC were blocked for the Google TV users who were trying frantically to access those contents.
Now in a latest turn of events these broadcasting power houses took yet another action towards removing the open TV shows on the internet after they impeded free admittance to their programming online in this month, this blockade was just to enforce their pending demands to be solved and answered.
Industry analysts suggest that recent spree of actions by ABC,FOX,CBS, NBC in a two divergent fee disputes clearly give the indication that after a substantial experimentation with ad supported free content viewing, broadcasters are of the believe that they can scoop up more money from the Cable TV distributors if they put sanctions on the programming online. Well, this is obvious for now that new sanctions and limitations on the online viewing of contents are coming. According to the online industry analysts, broadcasters now might lessen the number of shows available on online for the users or a probability is that they might delay the airing of an episode in some instances making it available online after a month instead of the current few hours span.
This move will further make it difficult for the viewers to leave their Cable TV memberships and go for the online viewing of the contents. If the satellite TV vendors and cable TV companies may clinch on more members, the broadcasters will ultimately ask for more money for them, so that these Cable TV providers can provide multitude of TV programs on their offered variants.
Last week, Fox Channel owned by News Corp made a programming debacle by blocking their online access to the numerous shows, including the “Glee” Show to almost more than 3 million subscribers. As these blocking sprees continues, at the same instant NBC, ABC and CBS also turned off their access to the full TV episodes when they are directly accessed from the search engine giant latest Google Web TV Browser.
So these actions clearly show that the broadcasters are demanding that they should be paid for the shows they air, just as the devices are emerging on the market scene broadcasters are seeing a definite raise.
Rich Greenfield who is a Research analyst at BTIG wrote in a blog post that consumers must apprehend that nothing regarding the multimedia contents will be free anymore on the internet. The General Electronics’ Co NBC, Walt Disney Co ABC Channel were also the part of the channel blocking fiasco, they have too been jamming the web browser of the Google TV to playback the full length TV shows. Google Inc. has said in a statement that they cannot push the said broadcasters to put together their contents for online accessibility. Google said that ultimately it is the prerogative of the content owners to restrict the access of their contents on the said platform.
One evident example is that the Hulu online video site has blocked the availability of its contents on the mobile phones. In order to watch shows aired by Hulu, the users have to get a $10 subscription of Hulu Plus. ABC, CBS and NBC have still now denied any comments regarding this blocking thing.
This broadcasters demand have been going on for several years now; these broadcasting organizations have been pushing the satellite and cable operators to pay hefty amount for the airing of broadcast programming, which can also be received over a digital antenna as well.
Time Warner is trying to launch a model service called as TV Everywhere. This particular service is going to allow the users and the customers to watch various kinds of shows from its partner channels including TBS and TNT after proving their substantial ID. In a somewhat similar kind of a move, the second largest Cable TV vendor in the US, Time Warner Cable Inc. announced on Friday last week that all those subscribers who pay for the plan that include the sport channel ESPN will now also get access to the live sport events through their ESPN3.com web address.
Moreover, the broadcasting factions are also selling their TV contents online for a mere price tag of 99 cents through the places like Amazon.com and the Apple’s highly popular iTunes store.
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