Business Week
The battle lines already are forming over TV shows on the Internet. Cable companies, led by giant operator Comcast (CMCSA), are pressing to limit online watching of TV shows only to those who already pay subscriptions to them. TV networks Fox (NWS), NBC (GE), and ABC (DIS) have allied behind Hulu, their own online service that offers advertiser-supported content to all comers for free.
But according to media mogul Barry Diller, broadcasters eventually will be getting more money from cable operators to stream those shows online through cable-owned networks. “TV was free until sometime in the ’70s and then cable started to need content and began to pay for it,” said Diller, who famously started the era of fragmented TV watching when he launched Fox TV as the fourth broadcast network in 1987. More…