So there is a TV broadband site called Zattoo.com, which is based in Switzerland and aims to have 450,000 registered users in the UK by the end of the year.
Zattoo’s UK site, which launched last December, streams live TV content from the BBC, Channel 4 and Five, as well as other English-, French- and German-language TV channels.
Broadcasters are taking a huge dump in their Pampers over this as they are have been incensed by what they describe as the complete lack of commercial return they have been offered (in other words they want a cut in on the action — like pronto!)
Apparently these broadcasters have missed out on what has happened both in the technology realm and their music brethren over the past 10 years.
TV is now just following the screwed up path that music companies did years ago (during the Napster period and prior to the invasion of iTunes) when they were getting their arses handed to them and Metallica were crying like the little bitches that they are.
Broadcasters have been slow to adopt the distribution model that the internet provides [aside from episodes of “Gossip Girl” (*sweet* — although now it is too popular and they aren’t going to stream them anymore) and various iTunes downloads that is.]
There are issues of how to measure who is watching online so that they can show advertisers and include them in the metrics to charge more coin from their clients.
Zattoo gets the programming, which it retransmits simultaneously and in full, via feeds directly from the broadcasters’ satellites.
Do you think it comes down to broadcasters being lazy/behind the curve — or what is the solution going forward?