Fox erects a paywall
around its TV shows
Walling off shows for a week after they air on broadcast
By Bill Cromwell
Jul 27, 2011
When the broadcast networks began streaming their TV shows online five years ago, the move was widely derided by local network affiliates, who worried about losing viewers to the internet.
All these years later, the networks are having their own concerns about streaming.
Yesterday Fox became the first network to effectively put its shows behind a paywall.
Up until now, the network had posted episodes of popular shows such as "Glee" and "Family Guy" on its web site 24 hours after they aired on television, free to anyone who wanted to watch.
No longer.
Starting Aug. 15, Fox will make those shows available to stream the next day only to paying subscribers of a cable or satellite provider that carries Fox or to subscribers to Hulu Plus, the video streaming site's premium service.
They will only become free again, available to all on the web, eight days after the original episode airs.
Dish Network has already agreed to partner with Fox on the deal, and the network indicated that a number of other pay TV services seem likely to follow.
It's a bold move on the part of Fox as free TV content on the web becomes a hotter and hotter issue.
Cable and satellite providers have long been frustrated by the availability of free shows online, arguing that it undermines their ability to attract and retain subscribers if the content they charge for is available elsewhere at no cost.
Cable networks, which reap huge carriage fees from cable and satellite providers, have lagged well behind the broadcast networks in offering their shows for free, and some of the major cable providers have debuted services that allow paying customers to watch those shows on the web.
But Fox is the first broadcast network to wall off its shows, after years of the networks posting practically everything online for free.
The move is mainly aimed at thwarting cord cutting.
Millions of people are expected to cut or drastically reduce their cable or satellite subscriptions in the coming years, lured by the increasing amount of video content that's available for free over the web.
The Fox paywall comes as little surprise.
Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of Fox parent company News Corp., has been one of the major proponents for media paywalls, which he has initiated on a number of News Corp.-owned publications.
Fox's other aim, in addition to keeping cable and satellite companies happy, is to preserve ratings of its original TV broadcasts, which is where the broadcast networks make most of their money.
The thought is that viewers probably won't be willing to wait more than a week to catch their favorite shows online and will instead tune into the TV broadcast when it airs.
|
|
|
