We’ll have a liveblog commenting on the game, the commercials, the apps and more, brought to you by tech-and-sports enthusiast Ina Fried, with possible contributions from other staffers, if they can be pried away from the game.

Our coverage will kick off just before the game does. In the meantime, check out our techie guide to the Super Bowl with info on apps, streaming and more.

2:17 pm: It’s still more than an hour to go until game time, but if you want to watch, NBC is streaming the pregame show. http://nflstream.nbcsports.com/

2:23 pm: Sharing a few of my friends’ comments re: The Super Bowl:

“The Super Bowl … keeping Roman numerals alive for 46 years.”

and

“so I heard there’s a Madonna concert on today, with some strange pre-show and post-show entertainment …”

Feel free to email me your observations on the game, the tech and more to ina@allthingsd.com, and I will add in some of them, as well.

2:32 pm: Here’s what NBC’s streaming of the pregame show looks like:

2:35 pm: The NBC app also allows, among other thing, reviewing the ads and switching of camera angles.

2:43 pm: Getting my gear all ready for the game, and to monitor the apps. So far, I have at the ready a MacBook Air for the blogging and, to see the coverage, a Verizon/Motorola Droid Razr Maxx with NFL Mobile. And an iPad. May dig out one or two more gadgets, as well.

2:46 pm: My colleagues at The Wall Street Journal note that there is a traffic jam with folks trying to get to the game — an air traffic jam. I hate when I can’t park my private jet:

3:07 pm: Another shot of my setup as we get ready for the big game.

Meanwhile, it’s time for the starting lineup. Some guy named Manning is starting for the Giants.

The Patriots have some guy named Brady.

3:11 pm: It’s time to meet the players for both teams. And/or heat up the five-layer dip.

3:12 pm: On the commercial front, meanwhile, it’s an ad for Hulu Plus. No Baldwins or aliens, though.

If you miss a commercial, by the way, NBC says you can rewatch it on their site.

Not sure if the same goes for key plays.

3:16 pm: “America the Beautiful,” with Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton. I missed who was singing on the TV. Luckily, NFL Mobile on Verizon Droid Razr Maxx is running about 10 seconds behind. Homegrown instant replays.

3:18 pm: Meanwhile, “American Idol” alum Kelly Clarkson is singing the National Anthem. So far I’d put “Idol” up by a touchdown over “The Voice.”

3:20 pm: Cut to commercial for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film “The Dictator,” followed by a Verizon Wireless add for the Droid Razr, which now comes in colors. AJ’s excited: “You know me, I love colors,” he said.

As for me, I’m more excited by the Maxx and its extra battery life. Should have charged it up ahead of time to see if it could make it through the whole game.

Twitter is doing an interesting special Super Bowl page, monitoring how both teams are doing, tweet-wise:

3:26 pm: Meanwhile, on the field, New England won the coin toss and deferred to get the ball in the second half.

3:29 pm: As a reminder to all those enjoying the free livestreaming of the game by NBC, be thankful they have the game rights and not ESPN.

ESPN boss John Skipper told me at our D: Dive Into Media conference that he totally would have charged fans if he had the game rights.

3:38 pm: Quick game update: Giants will have to punt. Patriots will get it back, but deep in their own zone.

3:39 pm: Nice spot for Audi, touting the vampire-crushing power of its headlights.

3:41 pm: Whoa, intentional grounding call. Since Brady was in the end zone, it’s a safety. For you techie, non-sports fans, that’s two points for the Giants, plus they get the ball.

3:45 pm: Twitter is taking note of the fact that hashtags are everywhere in the Super Bowl ads, so far. Hashtags are the new URLs, says Gartner’s Michael Gartenberg.

3:50 pm: It was a catch and a fumble, but more importantly, the Patriots had an extra player on the field, so it’s just a penalty.

3:52 pm: Touchdown Giants, meaning Team Mossberg is off to a rough start, now down 9-0. Sorry, Walt.

3:54 pm: Best Buy just showed their cellphone ad — featuring, among other tech folks, Philippe Kahn, talking about the first cellphone camera. Also featured: Ray Kurzweil, the creators of Shazam, Instagram, Words With Friends and more.

It’s a fun spot.

3:56 pm: Also fun: The spot with a Chevy truck surviving the 2012 Mayan-predicted apocalypse. A bunch of guys in their trucks reunite, along with the Twinkies, which also survived. Not so lucky: The guy driving a Ford.

4:02 pm: Oh boy. Go Daddy at it again.

4:06 pm: Patriots kick a field goal to make it 9-3.

Meanwhile, colleague Joe Brown has dug up some most excellent Super Bowl related tweets, I’ll sprinkle in here:

@TheTweetOfGod notes this will be the last Super Bowl before the Apocalypse; @AndyBorowitz notes that porn sites are seeing a drop in traffic; while @JimGaffigan aptly points out that “The Super Bowl is like the Super Bowl of Super Bowl references.”

Borowitz also hypothesizes that Madonna’s halftime show will provide “a sneak preview of Lady Gaga’s halftime show in 2032.”

See something you like, send it my way to ina@allthingsd.com.

4:15 pm: Nice Volkswagen commercial mixes cute dogs and “Star Wars” to capture two key demographics.

4:20 pm: Aiming for equal time after that Go Daddy ad, there’s one that consists of just David Beckham in his underwear for 30 seconds.

4:23 pm: Interesting playbook for the Patriots, so far. I think it is the BlackBerry PlayBook.

4:28 pm: There are all these apps for making a game out of watching the Super Bowl. Hopefully, there is one that makes the Patriots make a game out it.

4:30 pm: Giants have to punt again, but they pin the Patriots deep again. New England will have it on their own four-yard line.

4:32 pm: It’s retro time, with Lucasfilm touting the 3-D version of “Star Wars,” and NBC touting the 53-year-old version of Madonna.

4:37 pm: Breaking: Teleflora steals ad team from Go Daddy. Then a funny ad from Sketchers, with a dog in tennis shoes.

4:38 pm: Wow, that Cars.com ad was creepy. With a capital “C” and a capital “REEPY.”

4:41 pm: Another tech note: NBC’s livestreaming is being aided by Vertigo, whose CEO, Scott Stanfield, asks everyone to help make the game the biggest streaming event ever.

4:43 pm: Grandma in wheelchair steals back Doritos bag by slingshotting baby to get it. Now it’s Etrade baby and pal “speed dating” in a hospital nursery. Babies are taking over.

4:46 pm: As for that football game thing, it’s almost halftime, with the Patriots in striking distance at the three-yard line, with 18 seconds to go.

4:47 pm: And Mossberg scores. Well, technically speaking, it was one of the Patriots on the field. Anyhoo, touchdown Patriots.

4:51 pm: And it’s halftime.

Or “game time” for many of my friends, who don’t understand why they are playing football at a Madonna concert, anyway.

5:00 pm: Hulu Plus gets another plug. Touts the ability to watch shows on all kinds of devices. Now it’s an evil(er) plan to take over the world.

Meanwhile, Shazam gets a shout-out in a Bud Light ad.

5:01 pm: And now, the moment you have all been waiting for … 1982.

5:04 pm: On the plus side, the wardrobe is fully functional.

5:06 pm: Meanwhile, if you Shazam the halftime show, you get a free LMFAO remake of Madonna.

5:11 pm: Dude, Madonna just stole the football field. We’re going to want that thing back.

5:16 pm: Here’s the Shazam app in action during the halftime show:

5:17 pm: And here’s how Madonna wrapped up her act, as seen on the one screen I haven’t talked about. It’s called a TV — people used to watch stuff on them:

5:23 pm: And, with some final halftime ads from Betty White and Clint Eastwood, we’re back to football. Brady and the Patriots have it just past their own 20.

5:28 pm: Walt carries it in again, as the Mossbergs extend their lead to 17-9.

5:31 pm: Just checked. RIM hasn’t made any personnel moves during this game.

5:36 pm: Some more great tweets curated by our fabulous Joe Brown:

@michaelianblack: Joan Rivers did an amazing halftime show.

@PFTompkins: That oughtta do it. World peace should be here by the next GoDaddy commercial.

@TheTweetOfGod: Patriots 10. Giants 9. Madonna 53.

5:39 pm: Giants did a kick-y thing. Now 17-12 Patriots.

5:39 pm: Update: Fiat also knows how to use sex to sell.

5:42 pm: I want to grab a beer, but I am afraid I might miss a commercial. Or accidentally grab a Bud Light Platinum, whatever that is.

5:43 pm: Meanwhile, NBC is plugging an NBC Sports Talk app.

Madonna gets a shout-out from her peers:

5:52 pm: It’s easy to miss, in all the tweets and ads and Madonnas, but there is actually a pretty good football game going on.

5:56 pm: It’s almost the moment you have all been waiting for … Samsung’s Galaxy Note commercial. It’s kind of like a futchdown.

6:06 pm: Loving the “Ferris Bueller” revamp Honda CR-V commercial with Matthew Broderick. #bueller

First Madonna, now Ferris Bueller. Glad my generation now runs all the companies. Or at least their ad agencies.

6:13 pm: Bud Light gets some “awww” points with its last ad, promoting the beer-fetching rescue dog, “Weego.”

6:21 pm: Woo Hoo. Careerbuilder monkeys. I’ve missed those guys.

6:21 pm: Fourth quarter, 9:24 left to go. You can text your vote to for Super Bowl MVP. Personally, I’ll need another 9:24 to give you my answer.

6:25 pm: Futchdown! Goofy ad for Samsung’s Galaxy Note phablet now on.

Not a lot of stylus fans on Twitter, as Samsung ad is getting roundly panned, as is the product.

6:29 pm: Dow Jones colleague Ian Sherr reports his stream of the Super Bowl is decidedly subpar. “None of the TV ads, and it doesn’t even break at the same time as TV.”

Of course, only at the Super Bowl does one complain there are not enough ads in Internet streams.

“I’ve missed several plays, and they keep playing the same ads with Dwight from The Office and “Act of Valor” over and over again,” Sherr said in a Twitter post.

6:32 pm: Meanwhile, it’s a two-point game, with 3:46 to play.

Giants have the ball, down two on their own 12.

6:34 pm: Throw to the sideline at 50-yard line ruled a catch. Patriots challenge, but looks pretty good. First key use of instant replay this game.

Yep, ruling on field confirmed, and will cost the Patriots a time-out.

6:37 pm: As for that Samsung ad, it was a first-ever commercial for director Bobby Farrelly, who is known for “There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb & Dumber” and “Kingpin.”

If you need to re-watch it, it’s here.

I recommend doing so now, as there is another Go Daddy.com ad playing.

6:44 pm: Giants score, but likely would have rather used a little more clock.

New England will still need a touchdown, and have less than a minute to get it.

It’s now 21-17, Giants.

Sorry, was watching the game. First down, but clock clicking. Just 17 seconds left, though.

6:51 pm: Just nine seconds left now, with Patriots near midfield.

6:52 pm: Okay. Five ticks left, so this is probably it for both the Patriots and this liveblog. Hope you were at least entertained!

Incomplete. Giants win, 21-17.

6:55 pm: Disneyland or Disney World? That’s the only question that remains.

But for those more interested in the postgame highlights and analysis, the inaugural Super Bowl XLVI app from NFL Magazine might do the trick.

The tablet app is meant to be more commemorative than anything else — think of those dust-gathering magazines you collect each year — and it won’t stream the game live.

The app will offer image-rich season recaps for both teams, player highlight reels, polls and Super Bowl history. (No word on whether it includes a slide show of Tom Brady’s hairstyles throughout the years.)

After the game, the app will be updated with 15 to 20 minutes of highlight clips, breakdowns of key plays, interviews with players, NFL.com articles on the game and 360-degree photos.

The video available on the app during and after the game will be “clean” game highlights from NFL Network. Later on, extended highlights from NFL Films, with NBC logos and graphics, will be made available through the app.

The app, which is available on the iPad and on Android tablets, is selling at a pregame discount of $2.99 — which is less than half of the postgame price.

“We’ve seen a lot of fan demand for this,” said Jeff Berman, general manager of NFL Digital Media. “We plan to keep the app fresh for several weeks as we introduce new content, and ultimately provide a kind of lifetime digital keepsake.”

Nielsen data shows that 70 percent of tablet owners and 68 percent of smartphone owners use their devices while watching TV, while a poll conducted by Velti and Harris Interactive shows that nearly 60 percent of mobile users plan to look at or use their mobile device during the game. We’ll likely see some interesting data after Sunday, as well, about mobile usage during the Super Bowl. These metrics are key for advertisers as they try to gauge how many eyeballs are on second — and third, and fourth — screens during big television events.

And what about those Super Bowl ads, you ask? NFL Magazine’s Super Bowl app won’t feature any third-party ads this year, but it will include NFL promotions, as well as ads for The Daily, the tablet newspaper owned by News Corp. (which also owns this site), since the NFL is using The Daily’s technology platform to power the app.

Berman said that since this is the first time NFL Digital has done a commemorative Super Bowl app — it’s the NFL’s first tablet-only app, as well — they’re not focused on signing up a bunch of ad partners to start, though it’s a possibility for future versions of the app.

Revenue generation aside, the app means something else for rabid sports fans: The ability to call up key plays on your tablet whenever you feel like watching them. And rewatching them. And showing them to your friends. And discussing the nuances of the plays.

And unlike a commemorative magazine — which, by the way, the NFL will be producing, as well — the app provides an interactive and updatable experience. Look, Ma, moving pictures!

That is, ESPN thinks it can preserve its traditional premium fees from paid TV distributors, while also making money from online offerings.

Where some in television have worried about “turning analog dollars into digital dimes” (I believe that originated with former NBC CEO Jeff Zucker), Skipper said of ESPN, “We take the dollar and we take the dime, as well.”

ESPN viewership is 99 percent live, Skipper said, and it fights cord-cutters by not giving its content away for free. That’s in contrast to NBC, which will be livestreaming this weekend’s Super Bowl online.

“We have a different philosophy,” Skipper said. “We believe that the content we sell to distributors for a lot of money, that we should not distribute it for free to someone else.”

By contrast, Skipper said, “The Rose Bowl is not available for free. You have to have a paid television subscription, and then you can watch it wherever you want.”

Since 2005, ESPN has made sure that all its content deals include rights for every device. As Skipper put it, “We don’t cannibalize ourself, we use those platforms to cross-promote.”

Further, Skipper says ESPN is well worth the money distributors pay (something that draws a lot of grumbles from others in the industry). It brings in strong local ad sales, and has pioneered 3-D and HD content on television.

“The rates we get from distributors are directly correlated to the value we provide,” Skipper said.

Asked about last year’s failed Hulu sales effort and expectations he would move on, Kilar said he sees “many winners” among Hulu and competitors like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Apple. “Online video and online video advertising are enormous,” he said.

Last year’s aborted sales effort, Kilar said, was “far more public than I would have liked. I’m a private guy.” Is he surprised he’s still at Hulu? “I’m not.”

Will he be leaving Hulu any time soon? Kilar urged watchers to look at his history, which includes two employers — Amazon and Hulu — since graduating school. “I’m not the kind of guy who dabbles in a lot of things,” he said. “Just judge me on my history, and the team on the history.”

As for the economics of Hulu, Kilar noted (as he has before) that the company made $420 million last year, which was 60 percent more than 2010, but less than the company had expected after a “soft” third quarter.

Hulu Plus, which Kilar described as being in “investment mode,” pays content owners more per user per month than any of its competitors, Kilar said. “The dollars going back to content owners on Hulu Plus are extremely generous.”

Kilar downplayed content negotiations with News Corp., NBC and Disney, the large media companies who own significant parts of Hulu. “Keep in mind we have 330 content partners, three of which we have an equity relationship with,” he said. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

But if you watch the game on the Web, your eyeballs are worth a whole lot less. NBC, which is streaming the entire thing for the first time ever, will be lucky to get anything near a million dollars for that same ad when it runs online.

So why is Comcast’s broadcast network putting the game on the Web, period? Isn’t this the classic analog-dollars-to-digital-dimes trade that Big Media strives so hard to avoid?

Nope, says Rick Cordella, who runs digital for NBC Sports. The network assumes that nearly every eyeball — and every ad dollar — that it gets from the Web this week will be a bonus, because whoever watches online is simultaneously watching on a big TV, the way football is supposed to be watched.

This is supposed to be the classic “second screen” experience that Twitter’s Dick Costolo and so many other digital folks are excited about.

And that makes plenty of sense to me. Many TV guys have gotten plenty comfortable with the idea of streaming their most valuable live sports events online, for free. In most of those cases, the general assumption is that anyone who’s watching on the Web is someone who can’t watch the game on a TV to begin with — see the CBS/Turner Sports livestreams of the NCAA March Madness tournament.

And in NBC’s case, it is packing the Webcast full of extra camera angles and other goodies, including a feature that will let you rewatch every Super Bowl commercial once it’s aired. The assumption is that you’re holding the TV remote in one hand, and controlling your laptop with another.

NBC already does a version of this with its Sunday Night Football broadcasts during the regular season, and the network says it draws between 200,000 and 300,000 unique viewers per game (that’s the source of that Vikings-Saints screenshot, above).

Meanwhile, those broadcasts are the networks’ best-performing shows by a long shot, so it doesn’t seem to have slowed them down. The NFL, meanwhile, reports that Web companion streams of the Thursday night games it shows on its own channel averaged 450,000 uniques.

So Cordella argues that putting the biggest TV show of the year online, for free, is really no big deal. But I’m pretty sure that this attitude isn’t shared by everyone in the TV business, and we might hear a bit about that today at the D: Dive Into Media conference. Curious to see what ESPN boss John Skipper thinks, for starters.

Can you please have the post of Brian Williams’ email to Nick Denton taken down immediately? That was sent in confidence as friends and absolutely never intended to be public. A speedy removal would go a long way in maintaining the trust and respect we have for your site.

– An email from NBC’s PR department requesting that Gawker take down its posting of an email from Brian Williams to Nick Denton, criticizing, among other things, the site’s recently reduced postings on the weekends; the request was added to the original post

In a blog post, CEO Jason Kilar blames the shortfall on a “soft advertising market (economy) in the second half of 2011.”

The numbers: Hulu did $420 million last year, via a combination of ad sales and revenue from its Hulu Plus subscription service. But during the first half of 2011, it had told the world — several times — that it was “on pace to approach” $500 million.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see when sales started softening. In July, when Kilar reported his company’s Q2 numbers, he was still offering the same $500 million revenue guidance. But in early October, when he reported Q3 numbers, the guidance had disappeared from his update.

There are a whole lot of people who would like to report 60 percent annual growth. And the fact that Hulu revenue missed earlier projections by 16 percent  – “overall the Hulu ad business grew aggressively and Hulu Plus materially exceeded our plan,” Kilar notes in his post — isn’t going to be the biggest issue for the service by a long shot.

Hulu’s management and its owners — Providence Equity, Comcast, Disney and News Corp. — need to reach a fundamental agreement about the video site’s direction, and how the site fits into today’s entertainment landscape. (News Corp. also owns this Web site.)

But it’s still worth noting the miss, because Hulu is both a digital ad business and a digital ad business that sells very premium video.

It’s an article of faith among digital ad bulls that the industry will keep growing even if the larger economy takes a hit, because ad dollars will shift from old media, anyway. And advertisers are supposed to be clamoring for the tv shows and movies that Hulu sells — which is one of the reasons Google is trying to shift upmarket from dogs on skateboards, with its “channels” strategy.

We’ll start hearing other reports on the state of last fall’s ad market, and the outlook for the future, over the next couple weeks, when public companies start reporting their Q4 numbers.

And we’ll hear a lot more from Kilar himself, who will be appearing at our D: Dive into Media conference at the end of this month. If you want to see him in person, grab a seat.

Instead, I’m focusing on the ones that promise to bring me the TV I want to see, when I want to see it, without charging me a fortune. And without making me pay for stuff I don’t care about.

Try it yourself. See? Things get quiet in a hurry.

All that other stuff that everyone is talking about right now — new ways to get Web video onto your TV set, new ways to chat up your friends while you watch TV, etc. — is sort of interesting. Maybe it eventually turns into something really interesting.

But none of it solves the problem that regular people have with TV right now. Because they actually like TV quite a bit, and watch tons of it every week, and they’re okay paying for it, too, even if they say they’re not. They just want to pay less for the stuff they want.

Making that happen will require a lot more than using AirPlay to throw video from your iPad to your LCD, or making it easier to search the Web via a Google TV. It means fundamentally overhauling the TV business.

And while it can look like the TV business is loosening up dramatically — look at all those shows the networks are putting on the Web, for free! — it’s actually tightening up considerably — it’s getting harder and harder to watch that stuff, it turns out, without paying for cable, or going rogue.

Even the most interesting stuff I’ve heard about — selling TV “over the top,” via the Web — still contemplates buying bundles of channels from the programmers, which means that over-the-top TV will look just like cable TV. Just like satellite TV and fiber TV do.

“I think there’s not a lot wrong with the business models,” says Myspace owner Tim Vanderhook, who wants to launch his own over-the-top service this year. I’m not at all confident that he’s going to pull it off, but I’m sure the programmers are happy to have a chat. They love the idea of more buyers ponying up for their stuff.

One interesting variant you’re hearing more about right now involves keeping bundles intact, but buying less of them. If you don’t pay for ESPN, then you’re not going to get anything from Disney, including ABC Family and the Disney Channel. But if you can live with sports or kids stuff, you could save an awful lot — or put the money into other programming you do care about.

That’s not nearly as sexy as The End Of TV As We Know It, but it is doable. And I’ll definitely holler about that one, if and when we see it.

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]

We saw the first signs of that last year, when Clayton bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy, then used the video company to create a kind of Netflix challenger. Tomorrow we should see the next steps, when the company rolls out a big announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Here’s a good bet on what that will be: A new broadband Internet service, along with a super-sized DVR.

Trade pub Multichannel News has the details, gleaned from a report that went up briefly on Dealerscope, then went away, presumably because it violated a pre-briefing embargo. (Thanks to Jason Hirschhorn’s very useful Media Redfined feed for flagging.)

Since we never agreed to the embargo, happy to summarize here (not surprisingly, Dish declined to comment):

• The Internet service will be marketed to 8 million customers, most of whom can’t get fiber or cable broadband.
• The giant DVR will be called “The Hopper” and is designed to save and transmit shows in different parts of your house, and presumably outside of it, via Slingbox. You can see a teaser page for that one here, or look at the screenshot at the bottom of this post.
• There’s a cool feature that looks like it will automatically record the primetime lineups for the four broadcast networks (News Corp.’s Fox, Comcast’s NBC, Disney’s ABC and CBS).

All of which sounds interesting, and useful for existing Dish customers. But it doesn’t sound like Dish is ready to try a true “over the top” Web-based pay TV service that would rival traditional cable.

A lot of people think someone, or many people — could be Dish, could be Apple, could be Verizon, etc., etc., etc — is trying to line up one of those. But figuring out how to do that involves lots of deals with TV studios and programmers, and I don’t get the sense that anyone has those pacts yet. If Dish does, and announces it tomorrow, then it will truly be a press conference worth tuning into. If not, no worries — I’ll be watching anyway and will report back.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
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• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
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[Shutterstock/Marko Cerovac]

The carrier is partnering with a consortium of TV stations and broadcasters to be the first to offer Dyle — their live TV application. The initial phone running Dyle will be an Android device from Samsung, MetroPCS said.

Of course, this is hardly the first stab at mobile TV. Although very popular in Korea, such service has not really taken hold. Some of the major carriers offer a limited lineup from MobiTV. Qualcomm had bigger visions with its FLO service, but shuttered the mobile TV offering and sold the spectrum to AT&T.

“We’re excited to be the first mobile service provider to deliver a unique entertainment offering like Dyle, but more important than being first is our belief that this service will meet the needs of our customers and deliver an exceptional mobile experience,” MetroPCS President Tom Keys said in a statement.

Dyle Mobile TV is the brand chosen by a consortium of content providers and broadcasters including NBC, Fox, ION Television, Univision, Hearst, Belo, Cox, E.W. Scripps and Gannett. At launch, the group plans to offer more than 72 stations in 32 TV markets.

For its part, MetroPCS plans to offer Dyle in Atlanta; Boston; Dallas-Fort Worth; Detroit; Jacksonville, Fla.; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Miami; New York; Orlando; Philadelphia; Sacramento, Calif.; San Francisco; and Tampa, Fla.

Notice I said “TV industry.”

Most observers and analysts believe that Siri’s voice commands could eliminate the need for those clunky TV remote controls. With the blurring and exponential proliferation of television and Web content, telling your TV what you’d like to watch, instead of scrolling through a nearly infinite number of program possibilities, makes a lot more sense.

But from my perspective, Siri’s greatest impact won’t ultimately be on users, or on device manufacturers (though they certainly risk losing market share to Apple). It will be on the TV industry’s content creators and packagers. Why? Because a voice-controlled television interface will fundamentally disrupt the six-decade-old legacy structure of networks, channels and programs. And that’s a legacy that — until now, at least — has been carried forward from analog to digital.

There’s an important underlying precedent here.

If the Internet can be generalized to have one effect across every industry that moves online, that effect would be disaggregation. Choices go from finite to infinite. Navigation goes from sequential to random access. And audiences choose content by the item far more than by the collection. We’ve gone from the packaged and channelized to the unbound and itemized. Autonomous albums are fragmented into songs; series into clips; and magazines and newspapers into articles and individual photos.

As much as we may think that has already happened with video, it is nothing compared to the great leveling that will occur in the voice-controlled living room. Voice-controlled TV means direct navigation to individual episodes, programs and clips. And it will almost certainly lead to a discernible deconstruction of the network and channel structure — not to mention the decomposition of even the aggregated marketplaces like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube.

Here’s the simple reason: No one is going to sit on their couch and say, “Siri, show me NBC’s ‘Community.’” In a voice-activated world, monikers like “NBC” become useless. They don’t stand for anything meaningful to the consumer. They’re just remnants of a decrepit channel structure that’s unraveling. And, in the end, they’ll simply connote the fast-fading allure of mid-20th century mass appeal.

To be sure, the TV majors will lose much of their ability to realize network effects. Already, you’re hearing less about “lead in” and “lead out.” What you are hearing more about, however, is disconnected videos. A program on YouTube, for instance, will sit on a level voice-controlled playing field with an NBC show, and that field will soon become even more level, because Siri will eliminate the menus that structure the artificial hierarchies of content collections.

So how will we be able to get network effects back in video? Let’s look at four possible ways:

• Branded Content — Players can build a strong brand that stands for something with their audiences. Break.com, Discovery and Oprah are all meaningful and build long-term customer loyalty. (“Siri, show me new TED Talks.”)
• Curation — Brand the collection with a curation strategy so that the curator’s name and stamp of approval means something to the audience. (“Siri, show me Jason Hirschhorn’s latest movie suggestions.”)
• Social — In the fully social world that we expect to see, focusing on the virality of content means you tap the human distribution network and social operating system. (“Siri, show me what videos my friends are watching.”)
• Personal — We’ve already seen the extraordinary value of well-tuned personalized recommendations, with Netflix’s notable prize and other famed stories of the benefits of great recommendations. Increasingly, our own patterns of individual videos and the brands we affiliate with, along with recommendations from friends, will be combined into personalized recommendations we won’t even have to ask for. I have no doubt that Siri will be as good a “Genius” as iTunes is at recommending what else to watch. Ultimately, in the age of data, whoever knows the most about us will be able to give us the best experience.

Beyond disaggregation, personalization is ultimately the most powerful consumer value of digital media. My mother’s TV experience was to walk over to her TV set and turn a dial to select among three channels to satisfy her individuality. But in the next generation, no two people will receive the same recommendations from the millions of content choices available.

Before he died, Jobs now famously told Walter Isaacson, his biographer, that he had finally cracked the TV code. It’s unclear what Jobs meant, what this entailed or what he thought it would lead to in the years to come. So, barring further posthumous disclosure, Jobs’s own predictions of his ripple effects will be a media mystery for now.

One thing that’s clear, though, is that Jobs’s Siri will start the dismantling — or creative destruction — of the TV industry as we’ve known it for the last 60 years.

This post originally stated that Siri was unveiled the day after Steve Jobs passed away. It’s been corrected to reflect that the announcement actually occurred the day before.

Ben Elowitz (@elowitz) is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a next-generation media company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. Ben is also author of Digital Quarters, a blog about the future of digital media. Prior to Wetpaint, Elowitz co-founded Blue Nile (NILE).

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics has hired former AOL and Google exec David Eun to lead a new push to create more media offerings, the company said.

In a press release, the maker of a wide range of devices — from televisions to tablets to smartphones and more — said Eun would serve as executive vice president of its media-related units.

About Eun’s role, Samsung said: “He will play a key role in developing a global media strategy and driving new business opportunities to take advantage of Samsung’s growing number of digital televisions and displays, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices.”

It’s not clear what that means, but presumably it could spell more investments and acquisitions in digital media, and even in the social space.

The move is part of a larger reorganization at Samsung Electronics, which it also announced has divided into two parts, digital media and communications and device solutions.

Samsung’s deepening of its media efforts — it has previously launched various smaller content initiatives — is an interesting one, especially in light of the fast-changing market it now competes in, in which partners like Apple and Google have also become intense rivals.

Google bought Motorola recently and has been increasing its media offerings, as has Apple. Samsung and Apple are also engaged in a series of global legal battles over devices.

In turn, companies like Amazon — which recently released the Kindle Fire tablet — have upped their efforts in the consumer electronics area.

In addition, Japan’s Sony — which already owns a major Hollywood studio — now owns all its handset business and has recently added tablets to its lineup.

Eun is an interesting choice, having been part of Google’s earliest efforts to move beyond its core search business into media, such as its acquisition of YouTube.

He left his most recent job at AOL, where he had headed its content unit, earlier this year. Eun has also previously worked at both Time Warner and NBC.

Here’s the official press release about his hiring:

Samsung Electronics Appoints David Eun as Executive Vice President

Eun to Enhance Samsung’s Global Media and Content Efforts

SEOUL, Korea — December 14, 2011 –Samsung Electronics Co., the technology leader and innovator in consumer electronics and telecommunications, proudly announces the appointment of David Eun as Executive Vice President.

Eun joins Samsung after an accomplished career in media and content. He was most recently President of AOL Media and Studios, where he oversaw AOL’s efforts to become a leading provider of premium content, spanning over 100 different websites and production studios in NY and LA. Before that, he formed a global Content Partnerships group at Google with oversight for media strategy, partnerships and strategic alliances spanning over 30 different Google products including Google Books, Maps and YouTube. He also has a deep knowledge of traditional media businesses from working at Time Warner and NBC.

He will play a key role in developing a global media strategy and driving new business opportunities to take advantage of Samsung’s growing number of digital televisions and displays, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices.

“Samsung Electronics has an unparalleled footprint across multiple devices and platforms that provides a unique experience to consumers around the world. The competition for prominence in the living room has already begun, and Samsung Electronics is ideally situated to extend beyond that to connect the entire home and the lives of consumers,” stated Eun. “I’m looking forward to joining the impressive leadership already in place and to building a new presence in media for Samsung Electronics.”

Eun received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he was a Teaching Fellow for the Harvard Negotiation Project, and an A.B., magna cum laude in Government, from Harvard College. He was selected “Digital Power Player of the Year” by the Hollywood Reporter in 2010, is an Advisory Board Member for the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and sits on the Board of the Television Academy of the Arts and Sciences Foundation.

The study, by ad-buying firm Optimedia US, one of the first to examine the issue, raises questions about the effectiveness of social media as a promotional tool for TV.

It found that the top five new shows in terms of online buzz — Fox’s talent show “X-Factor,” the NBC drama “Playboy Club,” the Fox comedy “New Girl,” the NBC comedy “Whitney” and the ABC action show “Charlie’s Angels” — didn’t rank nearly as high in terms of viewership.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Disney, which has been busy reorganizing its interactive group, is buying Babble Media, a New York-based parenting platform that features several hundred mom bloggers.

The entertainment giant declined to provide the purchase price for the New York-based start-up, which was founded by aiming at urban hipster parents and has garnered more than $6 million in funding since it was spun off from Nerve Media several years ago.

Babble’s venture investors include Greycroft Partners, Village Ventures and iNovia Capital.

Co-founders Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman and the rest of the 40-person Babble staff will join the Disney Interactive Media Group unit as part of its Moms and Family portfolio, Disney said in its official press release (see below).

Disney described Babble as the “premier blogging platform for a new generation of connected parents.” To me, that roughly translates into Brooklyn-living, Bugaboo-pushing, organic arugula-eating, yoga-calm moms and sensitive New Age dads.

But don’t take my word for it — today’s front page features on Babble include “15 Vegan Recipes for Thanksgiving” and “Is It Selfish to Have One Child?” (Yum and kinda!)

The next obvious stop for its audience, after the kids get a little bigger: Gwyneth Paltrow’s fabulously twee and irksomely addictive GOOP.

But Brooke Chaffin, who is SVP of Moms and Family in the Disney Interactive Media Group, said in an interview that the highly interactive content site with a definite “sophisticated” editorial voice has become mainstream, and is actually where the whole category is going.

“Babble is sharing the experience and stories on a daily basis through the parents lens,” she said. “And it brings in a blog network that is so important to this audience, because it’s by, for and about parents, and that’s far more important for them than experts.”

There will be that, too, said Chaffin, who noted the site has grown 100 percent year over year. It is now up to four million unique monthly visitors.

Disney plans to add its more evergreen family-focused content to Babble, to give it more heft to compete with other similar parenting sites, such as Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter, NBC’s iVillage, Parents.com and CafeMom.

Interestingly, Disney had taken a gander at buying CafeMom a while back.

Chaffin, who came to Disney earlier this year after a stint at Auditude and a long time at Yahoo, said Babble has carved out a unique niche in combining content with social — the current gold ring for a lot of publishers.

“What Babble is doing is best of breed … it is just a different approach to blogging,” she said. “It felt like we at Disney are about storytelling and Babble does an amazing job doing just that.”

Added Jimmy Pitaro, co-President of Disney Interactive Media Group: “Disney has a long legacy of storytelling, and no mom-blog platform empowers storytelling better or more powerfully than Babble. Babble is a strategic complement to our Moms and Family portfolio of sites, which together make up a business that is critical to Disney Interactive’s mission of delivering world-class products and content and growing engagement among our guests.”

In other words: Mainstream and hipster!

Here’s the Disney official press release:

THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY ACQUIRES LEADING ONLINE PARENTING PLATFORM BABBLE MEDIA, INC.

Burbank, California — November 14, 2011 — The Walt Disney Company, through its wholly owned subsidiary Disney Online, has acquired Babble Media, Inc., a leading online parenting platform featuring more than 200 influential mom bloggers. The acquisition of Babble further strengthens the position of Disney Interactive Media Group’s Moms and Family portfolio as a leading online resource for moms and families.

Disney Interactive’s Moms and Family portfolio is a trusted resource for parents today, giving them the online tools and information they need and the ability to share their experiences. Through the acquisition of Babble, Disney Interactive’s Moms and Family business gains a blogging platform that elevates the first-person stories of parenthood.

Since its inception in 2006, Babble has become one of the most celebrated parenting sites on the web, named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2010 and by Forbes as one of the Top 100 Websites for Women. Its stable of bloggers contribute daily to parenting topics including pregnancy, child care, health, food, family activities as well as lifestyle topics such as home, fashion and family products. As the premier blogging platform for a new generation of connected parents, Babble has created a vibrant community of parents who support, encourage and celebrate the highs and lows of raising children.

Babble attracts a broad and engaged audience with its nearly constant stream of posts, written for and by moms. Disney Interactive will infuse its Moms and Family evergreen content into Babble, thereby enriching the Babble user experience and extending the best of what Disney has to offer to today’s parents.

“Parents’ relationships with Disney are founded in stories, and Disney’s best stories are about families. We believe that Babble and Disney can harness the power of storytelling to inform, entertain and empower parents everywhere,” said Brooke Chaffin, SVP of Moms and Family, Disney Interactive Media Group. “With more than 3.9 million mom blogs in the US alone, Disney Interactive recognizes and values the important and powerful role moms have taken on in new media.”

“We can’t imagine a better next step than joining the world’s leading media company for families, The Walt Disney Company, and look forward to bringing together Babble’s resonant voice and community with Disney’s expansive family audience, wide range of content and multi-media platform,” said Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, Co-Founders of Babble.

Babble will remain headquartered in New York. Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman will join the Disney Interactive Media Group.

HULU EQUITY OWNERS ANNOUNCE DECISION TO TERMINATE THE HULU SALE PROCESS

Los Angeles, New York & Providence, RI – October 13, 2011 – The following is a joint statement from Hulu owners News Corporation, Providence Equity Partners, The Walt Disney Company and the Hulu senior management team:
“Since Hulu holds a unique and compelling strategic value to each of its owners, we have terminated the sale process and look forward to working together to continue mapping out its path to even greater success. Our focus now rests solely on ensuring that our efforts as owners contribute in a meaningful way to the exciting future that lies ahead for Hulu.”

So that ends one chapter of the odd Hulu story. Not a shocking end, because it has never been clear that Hulu’s owners — who include Comcast, Disney and News Corp., which also owns this site — actually did want to hand it off to someone else.

I can save myself some work by quoting from the piece I wrote back in June, when the sale process kicked off, sparked by an overture from Yahoo:

… while it’s natural to think about who might be interested in buying Hulu, it’s the wrong question. The right one: What are Hulu’s owners selling?

More specifically, what kind of content licenses are Hulu’s three broadcast owners — News Corp.’s Fox, Disney’s ABC, and Comcast’s NBC — willing to part with?

Because it’s the TV shows from those three companies that give Hulu almost all of its value. And while those shows have helped Hulu build a big Web business very quickly — Hulu has said it’s on track to generate $500 million in revenue this year — that’s not nearly as important to Hulu’s owners as their core TV business.

That fundamental tension is what led to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar’s Web outburst in February this year, and it’s what has underscored the networks’ recent renegotiations of their distribution deals with the site.

And all of that has been going on while the networks own big equity stakes. If they sell that, then those tensions only increase. Or, put another way: They’ve got even less incentive to make Hulu work. …

So once again we’ve got diverging interests at Hulu. But if push comes to shove, I’m betting on the guys who own the content. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t end up selling a thing.

Next up: Now that Hulu’s owners are keeping the site, what will they do with it — and who will run it? Jason Kilar is still CEO, but prior to this summer’s auction he’d spent months butting heads with his owners, who don’t see eye to eye with him on many things. My gut is they’ll offer him a significant incentive package to stay, but that it won’t be enough.

Spoiler: It’s up!

That’s good news for a Web video company that’s trying to go public, and also not surprising. But the survey is a fun skim (PDF), with interesting nuggets about consumption on different kinds of platforms — Apple versus Android, etc. — and from different kind of publishers — TV-based sites like Hulu versus pure-play sites like YouTube, etc.

And buried in there is a good reminder of exactly what it is we do when we watch video on the Web: We don’t stick around.

We’re most likely to watch longest if we’re watching on a “broadcast” site like Hulu or NBC.com, but even then we’re not parked very long: The average session for one of those sites clocks in around 3:30, Brightcove says. It’s much less for anyone else.

So here’s a clip that’s just a tad over the broadcast average, and which should be on a broadcast site. Alas, NBC’s unlamented “Studio 60” isn’t available anymore on Hulu, so to track it down online you’ve got to hunt and peck on YouTube. This excellent “Network” homage is how the show’s pilot kicked off in 2006.

And while we’re on the topic — weird that this failed Aaron Sorkin show doesn’t get more love, especially in a post-“Social Network” world. Yes, it’s overwrought, over-the-top stuff, which treats a “Saturday Night Live”-like show as if it’s every bit as important as “The West Wing” — there’s even an Afghanistan kidnap plot late in the show’s single season. But whatever! I’d rather watch hours of flawed Sorkin stuff than almost anything else on TV. Surely there have to be more people like me out there. Right?

On NBC’s “The Office,” the fictional Dunder Mifflin team was forced to sell a triangle-shaped tablet, dubbed the Pyramid. It’s heavy and has poor battery life and, well, it’s shaped like a triangle. It has enough flaws to make the TouchPad and PlayBook seem like home runs.

Of course, unlike the products from HP and RIM (and dozens of less-than-successful Android tablets), what the Pyramid has going for it is that it was never meant to be real.

That said, its arrival should provide some comic relief for the tablet industry, at least until they remember that Apple continues to laugh its way to the bank.

The biggest broadcast and cable-television channels are racing to launch tablet apps linked to their broadcasts and used simultaneously with the TV shows. The hope is that viewers will tune in live and interact.

The offerings include apps from NBCUniversal’s Bravo and News Corp.’s Fox that present material such as photos, quotes, polls or background about particular scenes as a show plays. Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. have apps that display updates about shows from Twitter or Facebook in real time.

USA Network’s TV comedy-mystery series “Psych” has an app that asks users to enter keywords that flash during the show’s graphics to unlock content like behind-the-scenes footage and games.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Phew! The NFL kicks off tonight, on schedule, on NBC, when the Saints play the Packers. Which means that some of you, for various reasons, are going to watch it on the Web.

And you can! Even better, you can do it legally, for free: Comcast’s broadcast unit is offering a complete stream of the game, via NBCSports.com, along with additional camera angles and other digital goodies. From the press release:

Sunday Night Football Extra employs a full HD-quality player, which includes a draggable picture-in-picture feature for any of the online-only cameras, plus full DVR functionality allowing the user to pause and scroll back-and-forth – even review plays in “slo-mo.”

After tonight’s game, NBC will offer the free streams for every game it broadcasts this season, every Sunday night.

It’s the fourth season in a row that NBC has done this, and I’m always surprised that more people don’t make a big deal out of it. NFL TV rights are the most valuable thing in video, and they only get more expensive each year — Disney just agreed to pay nearly $2 billion a season for Monday Night Football rights.

So the notion that a broadcaster would put this stuff up for free on the Web at the same time seems counterintuitive. (Note that Monday Night Football, for instance, is one of the only things you can’t watch via ESPN’s excellent new iPad/iPhone app.)

The only conclusion I can draw is that there just aren’t that many people watching the live streams — because really, if you have the option, you want to watch this on your big HD set, right?

OK. So what about the rest of the season? Well, you can watch that on the Web, legally, too. But it will cost you: Head over to DirecTV to see how much they’re charging for access to their “Sunday Ticket” package, which now includes unlimited access on your laptop, as well as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, etc.

(FYI: If you’re willing to shell out for Sunday Ticket but don’t want a two-year DirecTV commitment, and you have a Sony PS3, try out the game device’s new service, which will let you order a season’s worth of football for $340. Pricey, but it will give you more flexibility and you don’t have to worry about installing a dish. Hint: When it asks you if you are able to receive DirecTV where you live, say “no.”)

I don’t condone stealing this stuff off the Web, of course, and those of you who want to do that don’t need my advice, anyway.

I will note, however, that readers who live outside the U.S. and want to stream the games can buy what appears to be a very reasonably priced package directly from the NFL. It looks like $150 for a basic package with all the games, though that may change depending on what country you live in.

*I’m not supposed to do this, because it violates some serious ethical rules, but here goes: Go Pack Go! Except when you’re playing the Vikings. And if you think I’m the only Minnesotan with conflicted Wisconsin loyalties, well — you’re wrong.

The big media companies have all failed when it comes to digital … Hulu is the exception to that rule. It has flourished, despite ownership by the major media companies. Yet, this is the business that the media companies are looking to sell — does that make sense?

BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield, in a note urging Hulu’s owners, who have put the site on the auction block, not to go through with the sale

Prior to today, I kept hearing chatter, none of it stronger than word-of-mouth gossip, that Google really did want to make a run at the video site. That struck me as a stretch, given that Google was already facing a wide-ranging federal antitrust probe, and that adding the video site that dominated the market for “professional” content would be a giant red flag for regulators.

Now it seems like a really, really long stretch.

Google could easily afford to shell out a couple billion for the site, owned by a consortium that includes Disney, Comcast and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

At the end of June, Google had $39 billion lying around, and it makes a couple billion more in profits each quarter. And Google biz dev boss David Drummond made a point of telling investors this morning that the $12.5 billion Google wants to spend on Motorola won’t slow it from making other deals.

But Motorola makes Hulu that much more unlikely for two big reasons:

• Google could certainly argue that it wouldn’t break antitrust rules with a Hulu deal for a lot of reasons. They could note, for instance, that Hulu doesn’t have truly exclusive rights to its programming, but shares the licenses with content owners who show the stuff on their own sites (i.e. Fox.com, NBC.com, etc.). But TV is different from mobile advertising or flight search software — people have an emotional attachment to it, and regulators respond accordingly. Note that Comcast had to abdicate any control of NBC Universal’s Hulu stake as a condition to getting its merger done. It’s that much harder to imagine Washington giving Google the go-ahead to control the online output of three of the four broadcast networks at the same time it is asking for control of a giant handset-maker.
• Even if Google thought it could get the deal done, it would have to convince Hulu’s owners, too. Google says it thinks it can get Motorola approved by Washington by the end of the year, but that seems crazily optimistic — as Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney notes, both ITA and DoubleClick took 9 to 11 months for sign-off. If you’re Disney/News Corp./et al and you decide you do want to sell, you want to find a buyer who can actually make it happen.

Then again, perhaps Google could offer a 63 percent premium and a gazillion-dollar break-up fee as insurance, just like it did with Motorola today, and Hulu’s owners would be willing to take the non-risk. Goohulu may have a very, very low chance of survival, but I can’t call it DOA just yet.

Except for the part about it not working.

On Aug. 15, Fox will stop distributing its shows on Hulu and Fox.com a day after they air, and will make most Web surfers wait eight days to see them. The only legal way around this, for now, is to pay for a subscription to either the Dish Network or Hulu Plus.

Expect ABC to follow suit, and then NBC. CBS is a reasonable bet, too.

I walked through the networks’ rationale for this last month, when word first got out that Hulu’s broadcast owners — Disney, Comcast and News Corp. — were going to start requiring “authentication” in order to watch shows online the next day. You can read an excerpt at the bottom of the post if you don’t want to click through.

The problem with the networks’ logic: Sidereel.com. And Sceper.eu. And Twitter. And Google. Etc.

All those sites will lead you, quite quickly, to anything the networks air, for free, on the Web. And you don’t have to wait eight days to watch them, or even a single day. You can see them within hours, or less, of their original airtime.

Video piracy is nothing new, of course. But if you haven’t tried watching a TV show from a rogue site recently (and I’m not advocating you do so for any reason other than a professional one — I don’t want a “Wolverine” incident) you might be astonished to see just how fast, and easy, it’s become.

As BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield pointed out to Wall Street earlier this year, it’s now a cinch to download pirated copies of any movie you’d like, in very high quality, using free online storage lockers.

But it’s equally easy to grab TV shows, and you don’t have to worry about downloads if you don’t want to clog up your hard drive: Sites like Videobb.com will offer free streams, without commercials, the same night they air on TV.

Here’s a screenshot of last night’s episode of “MasterChef,” available a couple hours after it aired on Fox (which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.).

And here’s a grab of Tuesday night’s “The Daily Show,” which I was able to watch less than 30 minutes after it finished airing on Comedy Central.

Downsides? Sure. The streams aren’t HD quality — if you got it onto your 42-inch LCD, you’d be disappointed. And the sites seem to require Flash, so they won’t work on an iPhone or iPad. And you may still need a bit of trial and error to get a working version.

And they’re illegal, of course.

But again: They are free, totally serviceable, and very easy to find for anyone who’s remotely motivated.

That was the case before the Great Free TV Web Pullback of 2011, too. But back then (as in, now) if you were a middle-of-the-road TV and Web video fan, it was easy enough to head over to Hulu to watch last night’s “MasterChef.” You’d even put up with commercials.

Now Fox, and very likely the rest of the broadcast TV business, are telling non-pirates to go ahead and grab what they like, when they like. I think they’re going to find lots of takers.

—–

So why do the networks think this is a good idea? They probably don’t. But it’s a way to prop the business up in the short term, at the expense of the long run.

From my June 23 piece:

Why would Hulu’s owners push to make the service less attractive? The justification I’ve heard is that most Hulu viewers are paying for TV anyway, so this really wouldn’t be a big deal.

But the real answer is that this is meant to appease cable TV providers who are paying Hulu’s owners — via “retrans” deals — for the rights to provide the shows that Hulu is giving away on the Web. And it’s also meant to protect the value of broadcast TV advertising, since the ad business still doesn’t value a Web eyeball as much as one that watches on a TV.

Again, this is the kind of tension between business models that has been a problem for Hulu almost from the get-go. And it has been the source of many of the disagreements between Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and his owners for some time.