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"The rise of premium content on the web has been a great boon for online TV, with Hulu and Boxee being shining examples of what innovations the web can bring to television.  Of course, there are some that are unsettled by this trend.\nEnter two of the major cable companies, Comcast and Time Warner.  Earlier today, they unveiled a program called \"TV Everywhere, a set of guidelines for bringing TV shows online, starting with programs from TNT and TBS.  Sounds good, right?  Of course, with every good thing comes a catch.  This one: you can only access it if you pay for Comcast or Time Warner cable TV.\nThe Problem Facing the Cable Companies\nTime Warner and Comcast do face a real problem: people are increasingly turning towards the web for their content.  This means less eyeballs on television screens and more on the Internet.  This also presents a bandwidth problem: as HD video becomes more accessible online, the cable companies have to pay more for the cost of transferring that data.  That's partially why Comcast set up a monthly bandwidth cap.\nTheir solution to this problem is their TV Everywhere initiative.  It's essentially a set of guidelines that say the companies want to bring more TV content online, starting with a trial run with TNT and TBS at no additional charge.  Here are the key tenets, word-for-word:\n\n- Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms.\n- Video subscribers can watch programming from their favorite TV networks online for no additional charge. \n- Video subscribers can access this content using any broadband connection.\n- Programmers should make their best and highest-rated programming available online.\n- Both networks and video distributors should provide high-quality, consumer-friendly sites for viewing broadband content with easy authentication.\n- A new process should be created to measure ratings for online viewing. The goal should be to extend the current viewer measurement system to include advertiser ratings for TV content viewed on all platforms.\n- TV Everywhere is open and non-exclusive; cable, satellite or telco video distributors can enter into similar agreements with other programmers\n\nAuthentication is the key word in these guidelines, something that Comcast and Time Warner spoke more in-depth about this morning in a conference call.  Essentially, to access any of their TV content on the web, you must be authenticated.  Primarily, this means that you have to be paying for cable television.  If you're not, this content is blocked.\nMaking TV Accessible to All\n\n\n\n\n\nSome of TNT is already online.  How will it be affected?\n\nPlain and simple: Comcast and Time Warner are losing money to the web.  Cable television channels are bypassing the cable distributors by placing their content on the web and running ads.  Shows on Hulu or MTV.com are starting to eat at revenues from cable companies.  Combine this with increased bandwidth usage and less eyeballs on TV sets, and you can understand why the cable companies are responding.\nThe Comcast and Time Warner initiative is similar to what Paramount, Lions Gate, MGM and doing with movies.  They have created a \"Hulu for movies,\" EpixHD, that is only accessible to cable subscribers as well.  \nOur thoughts on EpixHD are the same for the TV Everywhere initiative: bringing content online is the right thing to do, but offering more options for access is better.  Having an ad-supported or subscription version of TV Everywhere content could not only prove to be an additional source of revenue, but it will help prevent disgruntled users finding workarounds to your content.\nLet's be clear: Comcast and Time Warner have a right to make money off of their content and their distribution network.  But they should do more to make TV Everywhere live up to its name."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/06/24/tv-everywhere/>