The two companies put out a press release without a whole lot of detail (below) but are holding a press conference shortly where we may be able to tease some more out of them. (Update: Well, that was a waste of 10 minutes. Verizon is also promising to make executives available for interviews this morning, but my expectations are now very, very, very low. Subterranean.)

Right now, all they’re really saying is that they’ll have video content, delivered over the Web and via mobile devices, and that consumers will be able to stream some of it and download some of it.

Roping Redbox into the JV — Verizon will own 65 percent of the company, and the movie rental service will have the remainder — makes sense, because it will give the unnamed service a digital-plus-physical option. Just like Netflix and Dish Network’s Blockbuster already have.

But while the big media companies are very happy to license some of their content to Verizon or any other player that wants to pay for digital rights, they are much less comfortable with Coinstar’s Redbox, and have tangled with that service in court.

Right now, for instance, Redbox has announced that it won’t work with Warner Bros.’ new 56-day “window” for new movies on DVD, and will buy discs from third-party sources instead of getting them directly from the studio. So it will be interesting to see how Warner Bros. and parent company Time Warner treat the new venture, and whether that dynamic plays out with other content guys.

VERIZON AND COINSTAR’S REDBOX FORM JOINT VENTURE TO CREATE NEW CONSUMER CHOICE FOR VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT
Joint Venture Will Offer the Best of Both Worlds – Physical and Digital – to All Consumers Nationwide

NEW YORK – Verizon and Coinstar, Inc. today announced the formation of a joint venture that will create a new choice for quality- and value-conscious consumers seeking a simple and affordable way to access the video entertainment they crave. The venture’s services will offer all of the convenience, simplicity and value of Redbox® new release DVD and Blu-ray Disc® rentals combined with a new content-rich video on-demand streaming and download service from Verizon.

The joint venture plans to introduce the product portfolio in the second half of 2012. It will offer subscription services and more in an easy-to-use, flexible and affordable service that will allow all consumers across the U.S. to enjoy the new and popular entertainment they want, whenever they choose, using the media and devices they prefer. Additional brand and product information will be revealed in the coming months.

“When you consider the core elements the parties bring to this venture – our powerful brands; our national rental kiosk footprint; our anytime, anywhere network presence; and our mutual commitment to customer-focused innovation – it’s clear that Verizon and Redbox are a powerful entertainment team,” said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon consumer and mass business markets.

“Consumers rely on Redbox for the latest new release movies at a great value, and our joint venture with Verizon will enable us to bring them even more value by offering expanded content offerings and greater flexibility for how and when they enjoy entertainment,” said Paul Davis, chief executive officer of Coinstar, Inc. “This alliance is the result of a deliberate and strategic process to identify a partner who shares our commitment to delivering innovative solutions to consumers. We look forward to rolling out the shared benefits this venture will bring to consumers, retailers, and shareholders.”

This venture between Verizon and Redbox will create the kind of national multi-platform product that customers are demanding from video entertainment service providers. It will leverage Verizon’s industry-wide relationships with entertainment content providers, its advanced cloud computing technologies and state-of-the-art IP network infrastructure to distribute video on-demand content to its customers.

“The joint venture will combine the accessibility and value of Redbox with Verizon’s vision for a borderless lifestyle – where consumers easily accomplish what they want or need to do, on their terms, through the power of the network,” said Mudge. “Together, we are erasing old technology boundaries, freeing people to spontaneously enjoy the entertainment they want, whenever they choose, using the devices and media they prefer, at home or away.”

By offering instantly available online and mobile content with immediate access to physical media through rental kiosks, Verizon and Redbox will be uniquely positioned to deliver the best of both worlds – digital and physical – to consumers across the country.
The joint venture is a limited liability company with Verizon holding a 65 percent ownership share and Redbox holding a 35 percent ownership share at the outset.

Per earlier reports, Dish Networks’s big rollout at the Consumer Electronics Show today is focused on “The Hopper,” a supersized video recorder that lets users store two terabytes of data. In English, that means about 250 hours of high-def shows, or 1,000 hours of regular shows.

There are a slew of other bells and whistles, and Dish had other stuff to announce, too, like an expanded deal with Time Warner’s HBO to offer more programming to Dish customers who also pay for the premium TV service, more programing for its Blockbuster movie service, and a broadband Internet via satellite option.

Oh, and a kangaroo, which did duty as both mascot and onstage prop.

But if you were looking for an “over the top” service that lets you get pay television over the Web without getting the standard pay TV bundles, this isn’t it. It’s possible that Dish CEO Joe Clayton will offer that one day, but it’s not here now.

The chief focus here is on the DVR, which doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of thing that will attract new customers, but might keep existing ones happier. Nothing wrong with that.

The most interesting wrinkle here is the Hopper feature that will let customers automatically record the primetime lineup of the four broadcast networks — News Corp.’s Fox, Disney’s ABC, Comcast’s NBC and CBS — and store the shows for up to eight days.

Anyone with a DVR is already able to record any show they want, and keep it as long as they have space, so this isn’t an earth-shifter. But it seems clearly designed to poke a bit at other playback options, like the video-on-demand offerings that many broadcasters offer for free, or the Hulu/Hulu Plus service co-owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

All of those options, for instance, make you wait at least a day after a program airs before they let you see it. And the networks only offer some of their shows through those options (and CBS doesn’t work with Hulu at all).

My understanding is that Dish didn’t ask the broadcasters for permission on this one, and the way it’s constructed — broadcast-only, with a time limit, etc. — make me think it believes it has created something that doesn’t require a signoff, at least legally speaking. But since all of the big pay TV providers — Dish included — are signing “retrans” deals with the broadcasters and their owners, and those deals include restrictions on how the broadcast shows can be used, it seems like Dish would want to make sure its partners are okay with this.

And they might be! As a network executive pointed out to me this afternoon, this doesn’t have to be negative for the broadcasters. If Dish, for example, can get Nielsen to give the programmers full credit for the shows stored on the Hopper, then that’s a good thing — they’d rather get paid for that eyeball, for instance, than one they sell on the Web.

But it still seems like Dish is playing this one deliberately close to the line.

[Shutterstock/Anna Jurkovska]

Which means we’re in for an interesting game of chicken between Time Warner’s movie studio and the two rental services. And the result will be meaningful for Netflix, too.

Here’s where things stand: Warner Bros wants to double the “window” that keeps new DVDs away from rental services from 28 days to 56 days, a strategy that’s supposed to encourage would-be renters to buy DVDs instead. Netflix intends on going along with the plan and will be able to buy discs directly from the studio at wholesale rates.

Warner plans on announcing the new terms next week at the Consumer Electronics Show. But though I reported yesterday that Dish Network’s Blockbuster and Coinstar’s Redbox had signed on, the two companies — directly and indirectly —  say that’s not the case. Earlier today a Coinstar rep told me the company won’t agree to a longer window, and a person familiar with Blockbuster’s thinking now says the same thing.

If neither side backs down, then Blockbuster and Redbox would have a marketing advantage over Netflix, since the companies could boast about getting new movies before their rival.

But that assumes they can get their hands on the movies. That will be costly, and perhaps quite difficult.

In the past, Redbox has bought movies directly from retailers (Netflix also used to do the same thing in the service’s early days. But chains like Wal-Mart and Target have instituted buying caps on their discs  that are supposed to thwart that strategy. (Thanks, Janko Roettgers.)

Grab your popcorn!

A new deal between Time Warner’s movie studio and Netflix, Redbox and Blockbuster will double the “window” for new releases. That means the services will now have to wait 56 days after the discs first go on sale to offer them to their customers, instead of 28 days. [UPDATE: Redbox parent Coinstar now says they haven't agreed to a new deal; see below]

The move is part of Hollywood’s ongoing campaign to bolster flagging DVD sales, and sources tell me the new deal is supposed to be announced at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Warner Brothers executives have already talked publicly about extending the current window.

This is the second time that Warner has been able to get the rental services to wait before distributing its movies.

In 2010, it struck deals with Netflix, and later Coinstar’s Redbox, to wait 28 days before renting its new discs. Coinstar and Netflix later landed similar pacts with most of the other big studios. (Coinstar did up end up in legal battles with Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox, which like this Web site is owned by News Corp.)

Two years ago, Netflix was able to argue that by delaying access to DVDs, it was able to get its hands on more streaming content, and lower prices for the discs it did buy. This time around, though, Warner won’t be granting any additional digital rights to the studios. It will simply be offering them the ability to buy discs in bulk, at a significant discount to retail pricing, like they already do.

Earlier today, news broke that HBO, another Time Warner unit, would stop selling its DVDs to Netflix altogether, but sources tell me the two moves aren’t directly related. Next week’s planned announcement is supposed to be tied to Warner Brothers’ continuing push for Ultraviolet, an industry consortium that’s supposed to allow home video buyers to watch their purchases on multiple machines, in multiple formats.

Reps for Time Warner, Coinstar, Netflix and Blockbuster parent company Dish Network declined to comment.

UPDATE: Coinstar is now commenting, via email. “The current agreement Coinstar has with Warner Bros. is to receive movie titles 28 days after their release. No revised agreements are in place.” The company’s current deal with Warner Bros. expires at the end of January; PR chief Marci Maule referred me to comments CEO Paul Davis made last fall about pursuing “workarounds” if studios try to extend their windows.

If you’re in the big-deal camp, then you’ll like a new survey from Deloitte, which finds that a staggering one in five U.S. residents say they have either cut the cord or are thinking about doing it. The breakdown: Nine percent of survey respondents say they’ve recently cut the cord and are getting their shows from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, etc. And another 11 percent say they might do it. (Click image to enlarge.)

To repeat: The Deloitte survey is asking people about cutting pay TV — Comcast, Verizon, Dish, etc. Not cutting back on certain channels like HBO (that would be cord-shaving) or simply never signing up in the first place (that would be the “cord-nevers” we’ve started to hear about).

How can that possibly square with the pay-TV industry’s reported results, which show that overall subscription levels remained basically flat last year? Even if you allow for a significant margin of error, things don’t add up: If the pay-TV business had lost a single percentage point of its customers in the last year, it would be a huge deal.

But Deloitte is reporting that approximately nine million people say they’ve recently stopped paying for TV. That’s the entire population of New York, plus another million or so, vanished. Can’t be.

I’ve asked Deloitte if they’ve got any insight on the gap, but haven’t heard back. But my hunch is that — for now, at least — cord-cutters are like vegans: They’re real, and they’re out there. They’re particularly notable in certain places like New York, the Bay Area and college towns. And they over-index at certain Web gathering places, like this one. But McDonald’s sales are still chugging along.

While Dish has a chunk of airwaves, or spectrum, that would fit nicely with AT&T, the two companies don’t appear to be best friends. Dish was one of the more vocal critics of AT&T’s T-Mobile deal, and the satellite TV operator appears to have wireless ambitions of its own, making it more of a direct rival to AT&T.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Greenfield, a very sharp media analyst at BTIG, says that 2012 will be the first time we’ll see a true “virtual” cable-company offering in the U.S., where consumers can subscribe to TV delivered over the Web. This is different than the on-demand services that currently exist, like Netflix and Hulu, which offer up programming that’s already been on TV. This will give you access to “real” TV, in real time.

His summary: “While [quality] will not match what you are accustomed to from your traditional [cable provider] (due to Internet congestion), virtual MSO pricing to the consumer will be substantially lower, subscribers will receive a significantly better user-interface/navigation across a wide-array of IP-enabled devices in the home and service will be accessible anywhere in the US, rather than being stuck in a certain region.”

Who/what/where/when? Greenfield’s prediction post (registration required) doesn’t commit to any of that. But it does sketch out the basic “how” framework:

• The “virtual” cable company will have to cut distribution deals with all or most of the big TV channels/programmers, just like the satellite TV guys did in the ’90s. It’s possible that some of the programmers won’t want to play along, for fear of upsetting their existing deals with the cable guys. But just like in the ’90s, as long as the “virtual” company is paying market rates (and likely higher) for the programming, the cable guys can’t really do much about it. (And if they do, they’ll have a lot of explaining to do in Washington: Note that when the Feds blessed the Comcast/NBC deal this year, they required the company to make its programming available to this kind of competitor.)
• All those deals mean that this won’t be “a la carte” cable, where you can get ESPN but not the Disney channel, or vice versa — these will be all-or-none deals.
• And all of the above means that you won’t be getting these channels for next to nothing. Greenfield figures the pricing will be “substantially lower” than what the cable guys currently charge. But since he assumes that the “virtual” cable guys will have to pay at least $40 a month per subscriber for the programming, it’s going to cost at least that much for consumers — he envisions the new guys selling this stuff at “razor-thin” margins, but not at a loss.
• Getting your TV programming from a “virtual” cable company doesn’t mean you’ll be able to tell Comcast or Time Warner Cable, etc., to pound sand — you’ll still be paying them, or someone, for broadband. Greenfield thinks this could actually be a good thing for the cable guys in the long run, because the margins on broadband are much better than in the TV business. And they’ll probably be able to force many customers to upgrade their broadband subscriptions to a higher tier, so they can stream all of that video.

OK. So who might do this?

Greenfield runs through a laundry list of every potential player, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, even Wal-Mart. I assume that the most logical step would be for someone who’s already in the video business, but with a limited footprint — like Verizon or Dish Network — to try this out.

But over the phone this morning, Greenfield said he thinks the first player will be someone who’s not in there already, but wants to build another platform that gives them direct access to millions of consumers. Start speculating now!

So congrats to Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke and Sinead Carew, along with The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner, Anton Troianovski and Spencer Ante on their new gigs! If you guys ever want to get together and trade tips (Google Analytics or Chartbeat? etc.) I’m totally down for a Meetup. It would be good to get out of my pajamas …

Meanwhile, this blogger can also report that Verizon has been talking to programmers about a Netflix-style video service. There don’t appear to be any signed deals, and there may not be anything formal on the table yet, so don’t expect to see anything until next spring at the earliest.

But the idea of offering packages of video programming, delivered over the Web, is a fairly straightforward one. Which is why it has also appealed to satellite TV provider Dish Networks, which has also had grown-up conversations about the idea. And to Microsoft, and Google, and Apple, whose discussions about it over the years haven’t progressed very far.

And, of course, to Hulu and Amazon, who are already doing it.

So we’re certain to see more “over the top” video from big brand names down the line. “Shame on those [Netflix] competitors for not being in the market years ago,” says a TV executive — who would be happy to sell any of them some programming when/if they do get into the market.

So if that’s the case, what does that mean for companies like Verizon, which sell traditional pay TV services right now?

Here McAdam, speaking at the UBS media/telco conference this morning, doesn’t just disagree with professional typers. He’s also butting rhetorical heads with Ivan Seidenberg, whose last job was … CEO of Verizon.

A year ago, Seidenberg told investors that “over the top” video — stuff that comes from the Web instead of a cable subscription — was going to be a big problem for pay TV services: “Young people are pretty smart. They’re not going to pay for something they don’t need to … Over the top is going to be a pretty big issue for cable.”

Nah, says the new guy, who takes the conventional line that over the top is a complement to his business, not a threat. Or at least not anytime soon. “We have a tendency to see trends like this in the industry and extrapolate it to become the majority. I think it will be many years before it is,” he said.

Still! McAdam did allow that Verizon was interested in offering stuff that sounds a whole lot like the “over the top” options that Reuters and the Journal reported about yesterday (and I am reporting this morning! From my basement!).

He acknowledged, as we reported earlier this year, that the company had kicked the tires on Hulu this summer. “We kind of  looked at that,” he said. “And we’ll continue to look at alternatives.”

I don’t know how to say this any other way, so I’ll be direct: Please stop with the spam.

I’m talking about crud like this, which you left in the comments of one of my stories:

Personally I’m done with Netflix. They became too much of a hassle, too confusing, and with the price hike, kind of expensive for what I was getting out of it. I have the Blockbuster Movie Pass now, and I like it a lot more. Now I realize I could be called biased since I’m a long time subscriber — and more recently an employee — of DISH Network, but Blockbuster costs less, at $10 a month, and includes streaming to my receiver and computer, DVD’s, Blu-rays and video games (which lets me cancel my Gamefly account too, saving me more money), plus 20 movie channels. And it’s all on the same bill so it’s easier too. So for me it’s a no-brainer.

Now, this pitch, written by “Andrew_K_Anderson,” does disclose that “Andrew” works for you guys. And it’s on a post about Netflix and Dish and Blockbuster and that new rental service you’re launching. So it wouldn’t seem like a completely obvious piece of spam, except that “Andrew” left the comment yesterday. And I wrote this post back on Sept. 23.

Who leaves comments on two-month-old posts? Sometimes it’s a bona fide reader who just happened across something they’ve never seen before. More often it’s a spammer.

In this case, Disqus, the commenting system we use at AllThingsD, makes it quite easy to figure out that “Andrew” is the latter. Because it tells me that “Andrew” leaves the same kind of comment on sites all over the Web.

Here’s another one he left yesterday, on SlashGear:

Now that I’ve had some time with both services, I have to say that I like the Blockbuster Movie Pass a great deal more. It simply provides more options. There’s no additional charges for Blu-rays, you can rent games (a huge bonus in my book) …

Etc.

I don’t know what else “Andrew” does for you, but he was sort of busy yesterday. He left the same comment, taking time to tweak each one by just a few words — I gather this was to defeat the Disqus spam filter — on six other sites, too: The Atlantic; VentureBeat; CNNMoney; the Washington Examiner; and two Time.com sites.

This wasn’t a one-day binge for “Andrew.” Disqus tells me he’s left 188 comments using the same account and, as far as I can tell, they’re all promotional pitches for Dish, Blockbuster, etc. Last month, for instance, he found a four-year-old blog post complaining about Dish competitor DirecTV, and chimed in on that one.

So who is “Andrew”? Disqus tells me he signed in to their system using the name “Ender Chadwick” and a Dish Network email address. Somebody on Facebook named “Ender Chadwick” says he works at Dish, so maybe it’s that guy.

But who knows. Andrew/Ender signed on using an IP address owned by Dish. It’s the same one used by people named “Rose” and “Monica” to write Dish love letters, too, as Gizmo Lovers pointed out last month.

And this gets to one of the reasons this stuff is such a downer: Look at all the calories burned on this petty little exercise, on both sides of the equation. What a waste.

I asked Dish about this yesterday, expecting them to explain that whoever was leaving this stuff probably wasn’t a Dish/Blockbuster employee. Maybe an over-zealous contractor, and that “the wires had gotten a little crossed.”

That’s what Blockbuster marketing head Kevin Lewis told me back in September, when I asked him about a story that seemed to involve the Blockbuster Twitter account offering a free year’s subscription to people who would tweet about dumping Netflix. (I wasted a bunch of time and energy on that one, too. Never bothered to post it. Glad I kept my notes!)

But Dish PR head Marc Lumpkin didn’t try to apologize for Andrew/Ender/whomever, at all.

“We require our employees who post about DISH products to identify themselves as a DISH Network employee,” Lumpkin told me via email. “This appears to be an informative posting describing the options consumers have for getting entertainment and is posted in a discussion of a similar topic.”

Really? I asked. You sure you want me to print that?

“It looks informative to me and appropriate for those Web site discussions. I’m fine with the response.”

Okay. So, Marc, Kevin, Dish Network CEO Joseph Clayton, et al. — we don’t really need to spell out why this isn’t “informative” or “appropriate,” right? Because we don’t need to explain why you shouldn’t show up at funerals for people you don’t know and hand out flyers for term life insurance, either. Right?

But think about it this way: Stuffing BS comments onto Web sites is the kind of thing that low-rent scammers do. You? You’re a big, publicly traded company. You have 14 million satellite TV subscribers, a left-for-dead video-rental brand you want to revive, and big plans to launch a new Web TV service.

That’s a whole lot to take care of. And spending time and money on tacky, clumsy astroturf seems like it won’t help, and could probably hurt. This article, for instance, doesn’t go in the “win” column, right?

Meanwhile! Here’s “Explosion,” by Eli “Paperboy” Reed, which I learned about from your newest ad campaign. It’s great. More of this, please.

[Image credit: Christina Richards/Shutterstock (litter crew);
Wikimedia (Sisyphus)]

Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen has raised the idea with multiple media companies as part of a broader effort to control rising programming costs. The programming wouldn’t include sports channels in its most-basic tier of service, according to the people familiar with the discussions. Sports channels are among the most expensive for cable and satellite operators to carry.

In part, offering channels over the Internet could give Dish more flexibility to exclude channels whose existing contracts with Dish mandate that they appear on the satellite company’s most-widely distributed tiers of service.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Dish Network Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. remain in the mix but have all proposed different arrangements, the people said. Yahoo Inc., which made the initial approach to Hulu that kicked off a full sale process, has withdrawn from the process, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The offers reflect the potential buyers’ estimates of the value of the service, which is based on the duration of Hulu’s contracts with its owners for providing television programming online, as well as the video site’s technology, the people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The company held a 40-minute press conference in San Francisco to unveil its new Blockbuster branded service, and by the end, many folks, including myself, were left scratching their heads.

But best as I can tell, this is a service that might appeal to some Dish satellite TV customers who are paying for Netflix and want to save some money — they can get more or less what Netflix offers, at the price Netflix used to charge before its 60 percent price hike.

That’s not a terrible thing for Dish to offer. And if it does cost Reed Hastings and company some subscribers, then that’s certainly not a good thing for Netflix.

But Netflix — and its investors — have known for a long time that they’d be fighting new entrants in the streaming video game. If this is as tough as the competition gets, they’ll be quite happy.

Though Dish is trying mightily to differentiate between the two, they seem quite comparable, except that:

1) The service is only available to Dish customers, and only to a subset of the satellite service’s 14 million subscribers, those who have the correct boxes/tech connecting their sets.
2) The Dish service will give people the ability to pick up movies directly from a Blockbuster store instead of waiting to get it in the mail box.
3) Dish will offer a much smaller selection of titles for on-demand streaming than Netflix: 3,000 movies available for streaming to TVs, and 4,000 for streaming to PCs; Netflix has roughly 20,000 movie and TV titles.
4) The service will include videogame rentals via mail, which Netflix doesn’t offer yet but plans to roll out via its new/old Qwikster spin-off.
5) It costs $10 a month. That’s $6 less than a comparable Netflix disc + DVD combo, but $2 more than the Netflix streaming-only package. (Like DirecTV and its Sunday ticket package, Dish will also use the service as a promotional freebie for new sign-ups.)

I think as we have a little more time to delve into this, we’ll get a better sense of how the services really stack up: Does Dish/Blockbuster have access to the same kind of “long tail” content that Netflix says its customers value? What about Apple and Android apps? Etc.

But so far, at least, investors have taken a look at what Dish has to offer and shrugged: NFLX shares up 1.73 percent for the day.

[Image via rick seeney / Shutterstock.com]

You don’t have to be terribly perceptive to see this one coming.

For instance: The company’s invitations for today’s event (you can watch a livestream here) tease that Dish and Blockbuster will be offering a “stream come true.”

Meanwhile, everyone — including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings — assumed a new streaming service was the reason Dish paid $320 million to buy Blockbuster out of bankruptcy back in April.

And then there’s the fact that Dish itself has said, on the record, that it wants to launch a Netflix-streaming competitor.

So that mystery is just about solved. Real question: What will it mean for Netflix?

We’ll have to wait until we see crucial details about pricing and catalog. [UPDATE: Here we go. Verdict: A not-bad but not-exciting service that's only available to Dish customers, for now. Most definitely not a Netflix-killer.]

The obvious play would be to offer more titles for the same $8 a month that Netflix charges, or less. But that isn’t a given.

For one thing, while lots of folks like to gripe about the relatively limited selection that the Netflix streaming service offers to its customers, it’s still a whole lot more extensive than anything else out there.

Netflix has some 20,000 titles; Amazon, its next-biggest subscription rival, has a mere 9,000. It would be quite tough for Dish to acquire anything close to Netflix from the very start.

And the Hollywood studios that Dish is counting on to help it battle Netflix aren’t going to be that psyched about another $8 all-you-can-eat plan. They feel that kind of pricing undervalues their movies and discourages customers from buying or renting their films as one-offs.

Recall that many people believe the reason Netflix hasn’t been able to renew its Starz deal is because the cable network insisted that Netflix create a new, more expensive tier for its stuff.

If the Blockbuster service includes Starz movies, as Bloomberg reports, then it’s hard to imagine it working without a premium tier.

So we’ll see. The good news — if there is any — for Hastings and Netflix is that Dish/Blockbuster isn’t creeping up on anyone, so that should (theoretically) cushion any blow. We’ll come back this afternoon once we hear the full details.

And then there’s Google. The search giant has also made an offer for the video site, but it seems to be playing a different sport than the rest of its peers: Rather than bid on what Hulu’s owners have offered for sale, Google has proposed a different acquisition, on a larger scale, say people familiar with the sales process.

I don’t have details on the Google offer. And there’s some debate about whether Google has actually made a formal bid yet, or has simply indicated that it’s still willing to spend a lot of money.

But by looking at what Google’s competitors are offering, you can get a sense of what’s in play. As the Financial Times reported this weekend, Yahoo, Amazon and Dish are all expected to offer between $1.5 billion and $2 billion for Hulu, in exchange for the free video site, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.

Google seems to want something much more than that, and is willing to pay much more to get it. If you want to speculate, you could imagine Google asking for access to more content, for a longer period of time, and perhaps offering up a couple billion dollars more.

Since that’s not what Hulu’s owners have put on the table, “normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that,” says an executive familiar with the sales process. But Google “indicated that there’s enough money” involved so that Hulu’s owners are at least thinking about continuing the discussion.

One big problem with the Google proposal: Hulu was created in large part as the TV networks’ response to YouTube, and their fear that Google would swallow up the Web video ecosystem.

And in large part, Google has. YouTube is by far the biggest video site in the world, and the one part where it’s struggled is in landing long-form premium content that Hulu owns. So are the networks any more willing to hand over their most valuable programming today?

On the other hand, you can see how an over-the-top bid would appeal to Google CEO Larry Page, who has been making some sweeping moves since he stepped into office in April. Google executives made a point of saying that their $12.5 billion deal for Motorola wouldn’t stop them from making other big acquisitions.  And since any big-ticket buy Google proposes is going to get heavy government scrutiny anyway, why not make it worth Google’s while?

Still, Hulu’s owners don’t seem entirely convinced that they want to sell the site at all. Disney CEO Bob Iger told reporters earlier this summer that he intended to sell the site, but News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey has floated the notion Hulu’s owners will hang on to it. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

We may hear more soon: Hulu’s owners are scheduled to discuss the array of bids later this week.

But the network doesn’t always want to play hard to get. Right now, you can go to iTunes and watch an episode of “New Girl,” a show so new it hasn’t appeared on Fox at all yet.

Fox started giving away free downloads of the Zooey Deschanel sitcom via Apple’s store this morning; next week, it will start promoting the show on Hulu, Fox.com and other sites. All of the free views will disappear before the show’s debut on Sept. 28.

After that, the show will be tucked back into Fox’s new eight-day “window,” which will make the show harder to watch on the Web, unless you’re a subscriber to either the Dish Network or Hulu Plus. (Here we’ll note that News Corp. owns Fox, and part of Hulu, and this Web site, too).

As Variety notes, TV networks have been handing out freebies on iTunes for years, but the trade journal thinks this is only the second time a U.S. broadcaster has done it. That’s worth noting, because the broadcasters have to worry about appeasing powerful local affiliates, who worry that free Web views equal small audiences for them and their local advertisers.

The other issue with the strategy: Last year, when Fox tried it for the first time, it didn’t work at all. Fox aired two episodes of “Lone Star” before it pulled the plug.

Here’s the first sneak peak Fox offered for “New Girl,” back in May, when it unveiled the show for advertisers.

CEO Philippe Dauman said that a “substantial bump” in licensing revenue generated last quarter by the company’s TV shows came from “new and renewed digital distribution agreements” — i.e., deals with services like Netflix and Hulu.

The size of the bump may not be that big: BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield did some quick math and figured that new digital dollars added up to $70 million this quarter. That’s a tiny fraction of the overall $2.4 billion Viacom’s cable networks generated in the same time period.

But digital dollars are exceptionally profitable — Dauman said the margin on those deals was upward of 75 percent. And Dauman and his lieutenants took great pains to stress that they’d be signing up new digital pacts, both in and outside the U.S.

Unlike CBS CEO Les Moonves, who listed Apple, Microsoft and Google, among others, as potential buyers, Dauman was a little more circumspect when it came to new prospects — the only one he cited by name was LoveFilm, the “Netflix of Europe” that Amazon owns.

But he also suggested that some of the digital deals would come from cable and satellite companies who are already paying him to show stuff like “The Daily Show” and “Jersey Shore” on analog TV, but would want more digital rights. Both the Dish Network and DirecTV are obvious candidates there.

Again, this is the best-case digital scenario for the TV guys — the one where the Internet doesn’t eat into their business, but supplies it with new streams of easy money. It’s hard to believe it will stay that simple — a lot of this depends on customers deciding that it’s easier to pay for content than grabbing it for free off the Web – but right now it’s a pretty good place to be.

CBS, which saw revenues jump up 8 percent, said the increase was “driven by” a 21 percent increase in licensing and distributing dollars, “which benefited from a new licensing agreement for the digital streaming of select library titles.”

Translation: “That $200 million Netflix deal we announced back in February, which lets us resell stuff we’re no longer putting on the air, is kicking in and paying off.”

There is more good news for CBS coming down the pike, as the results don’t include a similar Amazon deal, and another Netflix deal (for international), both announced last month.

Again, this is the best-case digital scenario for Big Media titans like CBS: The one where technology doesn’t carve up their existing business, but gives them a chance to sell old stuff (in some cases, really old stuff, like the original “Star Trek”) “over and over again,” in the words of CEO Les Moonves during today’s earnings call.

Asked who else might be willing to pay up for his re-runs, Moonves got more effusive. “[Satellite TV operator] Dish just announced today that they’re going to spend a significant amount of money buying content and libraries,” he said, adding that “we hear about Apple wanting to buy content, and Google. Et cetera, et cetera. And Microsoft.”

A slightly less enthusiastic version of the same story comes from CBS’ book division at Simon & Schuster: Revenue dropped 3 percent, as a boom in digital sales couldn’t outweigh a drop in print revenue. But because digital sales are more profitable than print, earnings moved up 12 percent.

And they do! But they also require subscribers to do some work.

Part of that is because the cable guys really haven’t worked out the technology yet (Facebook could help here).

But it’s really because the point of The Great Free TV Web Pullback of 2011 (alternate title: The Great Web Video Piracy Boom of 2011) isn’t to make it easy to watch TV shows on the Web. It’s meant to protect the traditional TV business.

And it looks like the new “authentication” program that Fox announced last night, which will pull back free TV shows on Hulu and Fox.com, will follow form. (News Corp., which owns Fox, also owns this Web site.)

Take a look at the Web site that Fox rolled out last night in conjunction with the move. It warns surfers that in order to watch shows on the Web, they’ll need to:

• Be a Dish Network subscriber.
• Create an online Dish Network subscriber ID and password, which will require them to dig up their account number from their paper bill.
• Be prepared to log in again every 30 days.

This is about standard for authenticated TV, and while it’s not rocket science, it’s also not much fun. (Quick quiz: Where is your most recent cable bill?)

On the other hand, it is easier than being waterboarded, as “Glee’s” awesome Jane Lynch reminds us in a 15-second video. But it’s certainly nowhere near as easy as the instant gratification you can get by going to Fox.com or Hulu.com and watching last night’s “MasterChef” (or just stealing a peek from a pirate site).

Speaking of Hulu — it’s interesting to note that there’s absolutely no mention of the site on Fox’s Web page, even though Hulu Plus customers can also get access to the Fox programming. But also not surprising.

Starting Monday, the New York media giant plans to make live simulcasts of its CNN and HLN cable-news channels available on the Web to people who subscribe to participating TV distributors, including Comcast Corp., Dish Network Corp., and Verizon Communications Inc.

Subscribers can sign in to watch on CNN’s website or on Apple Inc. devices like the iPad. The simulcasts—which will mirror everything shown on TV, including ads—will be made available on other mobile devices in coming months, CNN said.

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The two sides have battled for more than six years over Dish’s alleged infringement of TiVo’s patents on its digital video recording technology.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld a district court finding of contempt and award of sanctions against Dish parent EchoStar Communications Corp. for failing to comply with an injunction.

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Bids for the movie-rental chain were due Thursday evening, and a handful of potential suitors have been considering whether to square off against a group of hedge funds that already offered to buy Blockbuster for about $290 million, the people said.

The hedge funds, led by Monarch Alternative Capital, hold a big chunk of Blockbuster’s senior bonds and made a so-called “stalking horse” bid in February, setting a floor that other suitors must top to win the video-store chain.

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That’s because the cable guys always raise their prices, year after year after year. It’s what they do. And the notion that some tech-savvy customers may be dropping their subscriptions in favor of some sort of Hulu/iTunes/Netflix broadband combo isn’t scaring them off.

The slightly less bad news is that it seems as if the price hike will be smaller than previous years’. But it will still be a hike. Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett shows you how much more you can expect to pay depending on which company sells you your TV shows.

There are some caveats here. Because Moffett’s sample size is relatively small for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, those numbers could end up moving around. And the Dish Network hike looks a little bit outsized because the company has promised it will freeze rates for the two following years.

But the main takeaway doesn’t change: None of this looks like an industry convinced its customers are really heading out the door, or are about to in the next few years.

TiVo’s shares jumped 9.7 percent to $10.08 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq trading, while EchoStar slid 1.1 percent to $19.30 and sister company Dish Network Corp. (DISH) fell 2.7 percent to $19.10.

“This decision by the PTO is final and not appealable by EchoStar,” TiVo said. It also expressed confidence a federal appeals court will uphold and enforce an injunction against EchoStar’s “ongoing willful infringement of the time-warp patent.”

EchoStar had no immediate comment Wednesday. Dish didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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