A deal would mark Mr. Malone’s first big investment in a U.S. cable system since selling Tele-Communications Inc. to AT&T in 1999. Charter is the eighth biggest pay-TV provider, with about four million subscribers. Charter’s stock jumped 8.3 percent in early afternoon trading in the wake of The Wall Street Journal’s report of Liberty’s expected investment.

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Scintillating, right?

This isn’t the equivalent of the Viacom/Google data dump, where people like me got to wallow in all kinds of juicy notes, emails and spreadsheets that had previously been private.

Instead, this is just a more formalized version of the argument Cablevision made last week, when it said Viacom had illegally forced it to take lots of crappy Viacom channels in order to get the ones it really wanted, like MTV and Comedy Central. You can read the whole thing, and/or peruse a highlight compilation the pay TV provider put together, at the bottom of this post.

The one really interesting part in here should be where Cablevision explains just how much more expensive it is for them to buy a handful of channels instead of taking the whole package. Their contention is that while Viacom theoretically offers its channels to distributors on an a la carte basis, it charges so much for them that there’s no practical way anyone would do that, because it’s much cheaper to take the bundle. That is, it’s a choice without a choice.

But at Viacom’s request, all the pricing information has been redacted from the complaint. So Cablevision can only say that the price difference between Viacom’s a la carte option and the bundle is something between $1 billion and $9 billion, and that that number is “more than Cablevision’s entire programming budget” for 2013.

That sounds pretty eye-popping. But without a full look at the numbers it’s hard to place that in proper context. For starters, the price difference would apply to the length of the contract, and while I think even the length of the deal may be redacted, it is almost certainly five years or more.

So whatever the price difference is, you’d need to divide it by five, or seven, or whatever, to figure out what it would actually mean to Cablevision.

Here’s what Viacom’s PR team has to say about that one, by the way:

“That figure is nothing more than rhetorical math, an inflated, irrelevant number manufactured to create artificial sticker shock. As Cablevision admits in its own filing, these numbers “do not concern actual ‘deal’ terms, but only Viacom’s initial offers” which were made at the request of Cablevision. Viacom’s ‘rate card’ prices are paid by hundreds of distributors — but never by Cablevision, which has always exploited its market clout to extract deep discounts in every contract negotiation with Viacom and every other programmer.“

Want to hear more from Viacom? Okay.

“This suit is nothing more than a hypocritical attempt by Cablevision to void a long term carriage deal they agreed to only two months ago. Cablevision is crying foul over a standard business practice that expands choice and lowers cost for consumers – a practice they use extensively to sell their own services. Cablevision received significant discount on a package of networks that account for nearly 20% of the total viewing audience. Now they want the lower price without the obligation to offer our networks to their customers. For Cablevision it’s ‘do as we say and not as we do’ – an arrogant approach all too familiar to its customers.”

But wait! There’s more!

“Although they have lower viewership than almost all of Viacom’s smaller networks, the three bundled Cablevision-controlled MSG networks cost Cablevision customers significantly more per month than Viacom’s entire offering.”

I’ll go through the complaint itself, but my hunch is there isn’t anything more revelatory in here, or Cablevision would have already made a big deal about it. I also believe that Cablevision thinks it has much more exciting stuff to show, but isn’t wheeling it out until later in the legal process. Which could take quite a while.

Again, the big picture here: If you take Cablevision at their word, they’re trying to blow up the bundling system that pay TV has used for decades (at least when it comes to wholesale deals with programmers — Cablevision says bundling TV channels it sells to retailers is a great idea). Viacom says it’s a rate negotiation.

If this thing goes all the way through the courts and Cablevision wins, it could re-order the TV business. But that scenario is going to take an awfully long time to play out, so if you’re looking for change in the TV Industrial Complex, you’re going to have to hope for someone else to make that happen. What do you say, Netflix? Apple? Google?

Here is Cablevision’s highlight reel for the complaint:

Complaint Highlights 03.07.13

Cablevision v Viacom 13 CIV 1278 Public Redacted Complaint

As far as the bad news … we’ll get to that. But let’s stay upbeat for a minute, and I’ll try to generate more optimism for you.

Start with some charts, via Google Finance.

Here’s what happened to AOL stock after the company split off from Time Warner, just like you’re set to do:

And here’s what happened to Time Warner Cable shares when that company did the same thing:

And for good measure, let’s mash them together:

So, on the whole, not too terrible. Two companies that Jeff Bewkes didn’t want weighing down his cable and movie business, and they’ve done okay once he cut them loose. AOL shares are up 62 percent since the split.** Time Warner Cable is down 21 percent, but shareholders have gotten another $6.41 per share in dividends, so things are a bit better than they look here.

Let’s continue to stay upbeat, and channel the talking points you’re likely to hear in months leading up to the split:

• Hey, just because this is Plan B for Jeff Bewkes doesn’t mean he doesn’t want this to succeed. Time Warner, after all, will end up owning a chunk of the spun-off company, so it has a vested interest in this thing working.
• And, seriously, this could be good for Time Inc.! After all, in the last few years the thing has just been in stasis/shrinking mode, and no one cared. Now they’ll have to care, and maybe the newco will go do some serious re-orging and perhaps some investing, too. After all, it’s good enough for News Corp.!

And all of that is potentially true. Or at least truthy. Or something.

Alas:

• Jeff Bewkes doesn’t care about Time Inc., and investors don’t either — they’ve wanted him to dump it forever. If they haven’t priced the spinoff into the share price already, they will do so immediately, and then that will be that.
• It’s hard to imagine any scenario where Time Inc. is able to navigate the print-to-digital shift effectively. But it certainly won’t get its best odds as a public company made to answer to the Street’s quarterly demands. And even if, say, a deep-pocketed and semi-benevolent benefactor materialized to buy the thing, Bewkes wouldn’t sell, because of the tax hit that would generate (the spinoff will be tax-free for shareholders).
• For better and worse, the News Corp. spin (which is set to include this website) is going to be steered by Rupert Murdoch, a man with a lot of money invested in the company’s perfomance, and even more ego tied up in it. Time Inc. will be run by … someone, and they’ll get a nice paycheck and some options for their effort, but no one expects them to work a miracle here.
• And that’s what Time Inc,. stripped of Time Warner’s corporate shield, will need to turn around. It has the classic analog/digital channel conflict, where the latter is the only way out, but the former generates all the cash. And that’s hard enough to deal with at the most nimble and most flexible companies. This one, shoved out of the nest and into the market without any kind of cushion, seems set up to fail. I hope I’m wrong.

*Des Moines is nice enough, by the way. But the Meredith/Time Inc. culture clash stories you heard were very true.
** True, AOL has fired a lot of people since it went its own way. But that’s going to happen at Time Inc., no matter what. And, yes, the stock’s rise has a lot to do with a $1 billion patent sale, but let’s stay positive!

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/mikeledray)

The question is taking on intense importance for the cable-TV business, which for decades has forced customers to subscribe to groups, or bundles, of channels — whether they wanted them or not.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The only way you’re going to see a blockbuster movie like “Skyfall,” for instance, is if a studio like Sony foots the bill. And once they do, they’re not going to let you see it anywhere but in a theater in the first few months it’s out.

Sony boss Michael Lynton made that clear during his interview at D: Dive into Media. There are plenty of reasons why people like me (and maybe you) would like to see “Skyfall” at home while it’s still in the theaters. But Sony has very good reasons for keeping things the way they are.

That said, Lynton is happy to experiment when it comes time for other windows — perhaps there’s a way to charge viewers a premium for home viewing before the movie makes it to DVD, for instance. Hollywood has tried this before and failed, but Lynton says it will likely come back.

And Lynton, who is thoughtful and candid onstage, has lots to say about the other ways technology is affecting his business, from the rise of cable dramas like “Mad Men” — if you love Don Draper, you have Netflix and the DVR to thank — to the way it is grappling with the gabbers on Twitter and Facebook, who can sink a mediocre movie in record time.

This one was a lot of fun to do live. Now you can enjoy it on your own time:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130226/hollywood-goes-digital-but-not-too-digital-sony-boss-michael-lyntons-candid-dive-into-media-interview/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130221/ok-microsoft-whats-your-next-game-machine-going-to-look-like/ http://allthingsd.com/20130221/ok-microsoft-whats-your-next-game-machine-going-to-look-like/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:50:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=296965 Sony showed off its next-generation gaming machine last night — except it didn’t.

So what does Microsoft plan to do when it replaces its own gaming console? We asked Xbox head Yusuf Mehdi when he stopped by the D: Dive Into Media conference last week, along with Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive hired to build up Xbox’s video business.

You can see what they had to say below, in the full-length version of their interview. Warning: Neither Mehdi or Tellem wanted to spill much (then again, they didn’t promise a “launch” event, so you can’t blame them).

But you can read between the lines and get a sense of where they’re headed: While lots of people are interested in lightweight casual games and low-cost machines that can play them, Microsoft seems committed to the idea of a heavy-duty machine with lots of proprietary bells and whistles. So you shouldn’t expect an Apple TV-sized box, for instance.

Tellem, who is building a full-fledged studio in L.A. to create shows, series and events for Xbox, is noncommittal as well (likely because she is still figuring it out). But she is talking about the same kinds of ideas: Video that isn’t just proprietary to Xbox, but that takes advantage of the device’s hardware and processing power. Assume that once she gets going, for instance, she’ll create stuff that takes advantage of Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensors.

One big difference between Sony and Microsoft is the way the two companies are positioning their machines: While Sony’s customers spend plenty of time streaming video on the PS3 (they log more Netflix hours than Xbox users), Microsoft is much more explicit about using the Xbox as an entertainment device, period.

Which is why it’s interesting that Microsoft has decided, at least for now, not to go ahead and simply become a pay-TV provider, like Intel says it will do this year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130221/ok-microsoft-whats-your-next-game-machine-going-to-look-like/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130114/the-vicious-cycle-of-the-cable-bill-comic/ http://allthingsd.com/20130114/the-vicious-cycle-of-the-cable-bill-comic/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:58:55 +0000 Nitrozac and Snaggy http://allthingsd.com/?p=285342

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130114/the-vicious-cycle-of-the-cable-bill-comic/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20130108/aereo-raises-38-million-to-take-its-cord-cutting-service-to-22-more-cities/ http://allthingsd.com/20130108/aereo-raises-38-million-to-take-its-cord-cutting-service-to-22-more-cities/#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2013 18:05:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=283302 Right now you can only watch Aereo, the Web TV service the TV networks hate, if you live in New York City.

That will change soon, Aereo says: The startup plans to roll out 22 more U.S. cities this year, starting in “late spring.”

That expansion will be funded by a $38 million B round that the company is also announcing. It’s an inside round, led again by Barry Diller’s IAC, along with previous investor Highland Capital Partners.

Other early backers, including FirstMark Capital and First Round Capital, are also back. The company has raised $63 million to date.

Aereo grabs over-the-air TV signals and routes them to users over the Internet, so they can watch broadcast TV whenever and wherever they want, via devices like PCs, iPads and Roku boxes.

It doesn’t pay for access to the broadcasters’ programming, but it is spending plenty of money on a court fight over that issue. It will also have to spend a chunk of change for each new city it opens in, both for marketing and to build out an array of tiny antennas it uses to pull down the TV signals.

Aereo’s expansion won’t change its operating plan, which means that it will only let users watch “in-market” TV. That is: If you live in New York City, you won’t be able to use Aereo to watch a Bears game airing on a Chicago station.

Speaking of which — here’s the Aereo expansion list, which includes Chicago and 21 other cities. Assuming, of course, that the courts don’t shut the company down before they get a chance to get going: Boston, Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Cleveland, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, Birmingham, Providence, and Madison, Wis.

And here’s a statement from Diller: “Free over the air television has been core to communications in the US since its beginning. Aereo is a superb technology allowing consumers to use the modern tools of the Internet to receive this, and other programming, with a great user interface and navigation that is easy and inexpensive. I continue to be excited by the possibilities and fully support its expansion.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130108/aereo-raises-38-million-to-take-its-cord-cutting-service-to-22-more-cities/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130104/let-jason-kilar-take-a-bow/ http://allthingsd.com/20130104/let-jason-kilar-take-a-bow/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 22:27:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=282547 Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is headed out the door, as is CTO Rich Tom. Other employees at the video site are going soon, as well.

None of that is surprising, and if you’re trying to figure out what that means for Hulu, you’re asking the wrong question.

The real issue for the site is what its corporate owners — Comcast, Disney and News Corp., which also owns this website — want to do with it. We’ll get to follow that story for quite some time.

In the meantime, we can take a minute and give Kilar credit for building and maintaining an influential, important and valuable site many people pronounced dead as soon as it was born.

As Kilar himself notes, Hulu’s unofficial launch name was ClownCo, because any sensible person knew that there was no way Big Media companies could form a worthwhile joint venture, and zero chance they’d be able to create a decent video site. That’s the kind of thing that you left to the smart tech guys at places like Myspace, Veoh and Metacafe.

Surprise! Those guys are gone, and Kilar and his team ended up building a really great website, and then kept it up and running for 5 years, while generating real money by the end of his run. Meanwhile, the site’s value doubled, to $2 billion.

Kilar’s detractors — and he had many, both at the big media companies that owned Hulu and outside of them — argued that anyone who was given access to programming from ABC, Fox and NBC could turn that into a real business, and that he gave himself too much credit for doing so.

But even today, Hulu stands apart from the rest of the pack when it comes to design and experience, and that was most definitely the case back in the old days. If you can’t remember what NBC’s video offerings looked like in 2007, you’re lucky.

And while Kilar also gets knocked about for not playing well with some of his corporate owners, the fact that he kept the thing together this long shows that he was able to accomplish a very difficult juggling act.

Hulu in 2013 isn’t nearly as exciting as Hulu was in 2007, but you can’t blame Kilar for that. The site’s original corporate boosters are long gone, and in their place are people who aren’t nearly as enthusiastic about its chances, and can’t decide what they want to do with it regardless. You can’t blame Kilar for looking around, cashing out his stake and moving on.

I talked with Kilar about a lot of this stuff a year ago, at our first D: Dive into Media Conference (more on next month’s edition here), and you can see our entire conversation below.

Note that my first question to him was about his long-expected departure; not surprisingly, he didn’t really want to answer that then. So I asked him again, near the end of the interview. His response: “I’m not the kind of guy that dabbles in a lot of things; I tend to go deep. And I’m a big believer in the long term. … It’s highly amusing to read all the stuff that gets written, but all I’d ask … is judge me on my history.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130104/let-jason-kilar-take-a-bow/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130104/why-al-jazeeras-cable-move-could-cost-much-more-than-500-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20130104/why-al-jazeeras-cable-move-could-cost-much-more-than-500-million/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:40:58 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=282480 Al Jazeera could have been the first really serious player to make a big bet on Web video news. Instead, it’s placing a giant bet on cable TV.

Why? I asked yesterday, and many of you replied. Thanks!

Your answers break down into two basic schools of thought:*

Al Jazeera wants to be on American cable TV because of optics. That is: Its Qatari owners think being on American cable TV will validate it as a Very Serious News Operation, like CNN — just being on YouTube won’t cut it. So according to this line of thought, Al Jazeera will spend anything to make that happen — even $500 million for a cable network many thought was worth far less. (Note to Al Jazeera/Current completists: I’m told that the deal was $450 million plus debt, which means the $100 million figure we’ve been batting around for Current TV founder Al Gore’s take from this may be a touch high.)

Al Jazeera wants to be on American cable TV because it thinks being on American cable TV is a great business. This is the argument people on Al Jazeera’s team have been making publicly and privately. The nice thing about the argument is that we won’t know for several years how it plays out. The tough thing about this argument is that the odds are against it.

Why? Because while Gore was able to convince most of Current TV’s pay TV partners to keep carrying the network once Al Jazeera bought it, those pay TV deals will expire over the next few years. And as they do, players like Dish Network, Direct TV and Comcast will try to drop the network, or at least push the per-subscriber fees they pay for the network way, way down, as Reuters notes.

SNL Kagan analyst Derek Baine predicts that Al Jazeera may end up having to give up on its subscriber fees altogether to convince pay TV operators to keep the channel on. And if that happens, a profitable operation ends up becoming a money loser quite quickly.

The optimistic version of this argument holds that Al Jazeera America will be able to keep its subscriber fees intact, or even raise them, because pay TV customers value news.

After all, they say, look at what Fox News gets (82 cents per subscriber, per month). Or CNN (57 cents). Or CNBC (32 cents). Compared to them, the 12 cents per sub that Al Jazeera is getting right now under Current TV’s old deal is a bargain.

I have a rooting interest in that view being correct, because a big and previously untapped market for serious news and international news is good for the journalism job market. But there’s a reason American TV news avoids serious news and international news.

Meanwhile, as I noted yesterday, Al Jazeera’s embrace of cable means it will have to move away from the Web. As my corporate colleagues at The Wall Street Journal report, Al Jazeera is going to stop streaming its Al Jazeera English broadcast on the Web to placate pay TV owners. The new channel won’t go on the Web, either.

That leaves open the possibility that Al Jazeera’s American audience could actually shrink once it goes to cable, instead of expanding. And that would be a bummer.

*Though we should note that “Peter Kafka is an idiot” was a popular third option.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130104/why-al-jazeeras-cable-move-could-cost-much-more-than-500-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130102/al-jazeera-to-buy-current-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20130102/al-jazeera-to-buy-current-tv/#comments Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:37:03 +0000 Keach Hagey http://allthingsd.com/?p=281909 Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network owned by the government of Qatar, is buying Current TV, the struggling left-leaning current-affairs channel co founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal could give al-Jazeera its first access to national cable distribution in the U.S., a goal it has campaigned hard for over the last several years.

Current doesn’t have the full distribution to 90 million homes that most cable channels have. However, it does reach about 60 million homes. Right now, al-Jazeera’s English channel is distributed in local cable markets including Washington, D.C. and Burlington, Vermont, as well as online.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130102/al-jazeera-to-buy-current-tv/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121218/meet-the-man-who-wants-to-blow-up-the-tv-business-dish-networks-charlie-ergen-comes-to-dive-into-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20121218/meet-the-man-who-wants-to-blow-up-the-tv-business-dish-networks-charlie-ergen-comes-to-dive-into-media/#comments Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:44:54 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=278903 Charlie Ergen brings TV into 14 million houses, which means he’s got a very nice business that has made him a billionaire.

But while lots of pay-TV operators are happy to keep things the way they are, Ergen keeps trying to blow them up: The Dish Network co-founder and chairman is constantly fighting with the rest of the TV Industrial Complex, in disputes that often end up in court.

His most recent and prominent battle is also the most important one: Dish’s new “Auto Hop” technology lets satellite TV subscribers automatically skip commercials, and that has both advertisers and TV networks in fits, for obvious reasons.

But that’s just one of Ergen’s recent adventures. He has also bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy in an attempt to take on Netflix, engaged in bruising battles with Cablevision and its AMC Networks spinoff, and rattled his saber against ESPN and its ever-increasing sports fees.

Oh. He’s also talking to Google, and everyone else, about getting into the wireless business.

All of which means the former blackjack and poker player is someone everyone in the media world watches very, very closely, even though he doesn’t say much in public. Which means we’re very excited to interview him at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February.

Ergen will be joining an all-star cast on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, and USA Today publisher Larry Kramer.

And there’s more to come! Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we’re getting close to showtime, so make your reservations now.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121218/meet-the-man-who-wants-to-blow-up-the-tv-business-dish-networks-charlie-ergen-comes-to-dive-into-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121217/hulus-year-end-report-were-pretty-darn-big-and-were-not-saying-anything-else/ http://allthingsd.com/20121217/hulus-year-end-report-were-pretty-darn-big-and-were-not-saying-anything-else/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 18:00:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=278518 Hulu has put out its 2012 numbers and, boy, are they good for a company that everyone said would never work: Almost $700 million in revenue, and “more than” three million paying customers for its Hulu Plus subscription service.

And as far as everything else: Nada.

In the past, Jason Kilar has used these state of the company reports to make big declarations about The Future Of TV, or at least the near-term future of Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp., Disney and Comcast (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

Today, there’s none of that. Just the numbers, sir.

And maybe, if you’re into tea-leaf-reading, an oblique reference from Kilar: “So much has changed” since the company’s conception in 2007, he notes.

Which might be, among other things, a reference to big changes behind the scenes with Hulu’s corporate owners, who haven’t had a consistent approach to the site in five years. And/or its employees, who have had a “liquidity event” worth roughly $200 million this fall.

Or maybe it was just some he words he typed up and put on a blog. (I know the feeling!)

Back to the numbers: Hulu will do $695 million in revenue this year. That’s up 65 percent from the $420 million it did last year, when revenue was up 60 percent. And that three-million-plus number for Hulu Plus is two times last year’s tally (Hulu competitor Netflix has around 27 million paid subscribers worldwide).

In the past, Hulu has said that it expects subscription dollars to make up more than half of its total revenue. It doesn’t spell that out here, but I believe it’s still the case.

So that’s all good and bow-worthy for the Hulu team. The questions about how it works with its content/partner owners, and who at Hulu will be around to work with them, we can tackle some other time.

 

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121217/hulus-year-end-report-were-pretty-darn-big-and-were-not-saying-anything-else/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121207/excited-about-apple-tv-dont-watch-this-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20121207/excited-about-apple-tv-dont-watch-this-video/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:13:30 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=276039

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Lots of Apple watchers listened to Tim Cook’s NBC interview last night and concluded that the company has big plans for the fabled Apple TV.

After all, Cook said TV was an area of “intense interest.”

But that would be bigger news if Cook hadn’t said the same thing back in May, speaking to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at our D10 conference.

See for yourself, courtesy of Rich Greenfield and Walt Piecyk, the smart guys at BTIG who mashed up the two interviews:

So what does last night’s interview really mean? Well, it means that Tim Cook is very good at staying on message. But we already knew that. What’s more relevant is what Tim Cook is actually doing.

We know Apple has tried out various permutations of an “Apple TV” product with the Television Industrial Complex in the past — sometimes it’s a programming offering, sometimes it’s a cable box alternative.

But so far, there haven’t been any signs that the company has made any real headway on the content/services side. Until we hear otherwise, hard to get too excited about a couple words.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121207/excited-about-apple-tv-dont-watch-this-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121206/web-video-on-your-tv-that-looks-like-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20121206/web-video-on-your-tv-that-looks-like-tv/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:00:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=275655 There are now lots of ways to get Web video onto your TV. But in lots of cases that stuff still looks like Web video — clips you’re not supposed to watch for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

So here’s another attempt to blur the line between Web video and “real” TV: Net2TV, a new service that takes Web clips and tries to create TV-like “channels” designed to be watched from your couch.

Sound familiar? YouTube is embracing the “channel” concept too, because Google thinks that’s the best way to get TV-like engagement and ad dollars. But YouTube is always going to be a freewheeling site, designed to be consumed on lots of different screens.

Net2TV’s take is much more focused: The company is only interested in getting stuff onto TV screens.

It takes clips made by Web video producers like CBS Interactive and Discovery’s Revision 3* and stitches them together into something that should resemble a “real” show. Then it moves them to a clever app designed for Web-connected TVs, which lets you see previews of the shows instead of static screenshots.

This won’t appear revolutionary if you’re sitting on your couch, which is sort of the point. The Net2TV guys want this stuff to look and feel like the TV you’re already used to watching. Or, at the very least, some of the video on demand programming lots of people now watch. Here’s a sample clip of programming from CBS’s Chow.com:

Things get a little more confusing from there then they should, since some of the programming will get presented via their own brands like Chow, and other stuff falls under a “Portico” brand Net2TV is trying to launch. But maybe all of that gets sorted out over time.

Right now, the Net2TV shows will appear on all of Philips’ Web TVs, and the company says it has other deals in the works. The plan is to generate money via ads (the programs themselves are free), and split the proceeds between the content owners, Net2TV and the hardware guys. Net2TV has seed money from Lauder Partners, and is out trying to raise a B round now.

*Net2TV is also working with the Wall Street Journal, which like this site is owned by News Corp.

 

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