Another Missed Opportunity

I read with great interest last week that ABC's television show "Alias" was going to be available for download. After years of promising that the internet would be used for distributing TV's video content had the network's finally embraced it and stopped viewing it as their worst nightmare?

After all, the major networks all got their start by sending out their content over the airwaves. Today, they would have to dub this as "wireless distribution of content." Around a third of US households view their TV this way as opposed to cable or satellite distribution.

With the overactive lifestyles that many of us embrace, we are home less and less to watch our favorite programs on TV. Most of us have recording methods available for time shifting a show. Take your pick among the current varied choices: VCR, Tivo, DVD recorder, TV tuner add in card or a full blown Media Center PC. Some utilize a combination of these technologies. However, all of these represent work, organization and effort in order to view the show at a later time. I know that countless times with my VCR I've not viewed the show as the tape went bad, or got lost shuffled among the other tapes.

I went on a quest to see what content I could find directly on the major television station web sites. This should be the perfect place to find legal content that the networks want the public to view. Just like the programs that they broadcast, wouldn't it be great if folks could view their favorite program on their own schedule? With the penetrance of broadband connections, the time is ripe for this kind of technology.

I went first to ABC's video section. The downloads are limited to a few minutes of "previously on" segments, and "tonight on" segment coming attractions. For the privilege of watching these snippets, I first had to endure a 30 second commercial. It was hardly worth watching the commercial, to only see more of a come on for the show.

Undaunted, I headed on over to CBS. This network had caused many companies networks to be overloaded when they streamed March Madness over the 'net. What did they have now that college basketball is over? Well, if you're a Survivor fan, you're in luck. There were several clips available for viewing, but they were all from Survivor. There were whole episodes of Survivor for the download at an affordable 99 cents. If you're not a fan of Survivor, well, there were some short videos sprinked on each shows website.


Next, I surfed on to the NBC site. NBC is the network that streams its Nightly Newscast online. At first, I was very unimpressed with the video selections. It was just a handful of assorted videos, many clips from SNL. However, by going to the individual shows, I was able to find a reasonable selection of clips, but not whole episodes. Of note, for some reason I couldn't get the NBC videos to play, although I have seen them in the past so i'm a little puzzled by this.

Over at Fox, they surprisingly had one of the better selection of video clips. There were both the smattering of "next episode" clips, and original episodes. There were no full episodes to be viewed, and there were the ads before the clips could be viewed.

The only television provider that had an episode to be downloaded directly from their site was CBS, and they charged for it. True, ABC has select shows on Apple's iTunes for sale. If the networks want to end up with either Apple profiting from their content, or driving the content underground as previously occurred in music, they're doing a great job. All of the major networks need to embrace this new technology, and take some giant leaps ahead, and distribute their content online. If they realize the potential, the rewards can be great in terms of advertising dollars. If they can broadcast via a TV signal, then the time should be right to do it through their web site. When they complain once again, and they will, that they're losing market share to cable providers, email them this article!

I look forward to discussing your comments below.

--Jonas