CBS Moving To Syndication Across the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the new online media strategy being rolled out by CBS. Just over a year ago they rolled out their 'Innertube' service on the CBS website. The streaming video offering allowed viewers to watch sports and reruns directly on the web, but required potential consumers to view the video on CBS.com. That didn't work, even a little bit. So, they've learned their lesson: 'The company plans to pursue a drastically revised strategy that involves syndicating its entertainment, news and sports video to as much of the Web as possible. It represents a stark departure for the TV industry. Most of CBS's major competitors, including Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and News Corp.'s Fox, are to some degree all betting that they can build their own Internet video portals. Starting this week, an expanded menu of CBS's video content will be available for free to consumers on as many as 10 different Web sites ranging from Time Warner Inc.'s AOL to Joost Inc., a buzzy online video service that is just rolling out. The company calls its new venture the CBS Interactive Audience Network.' This new push is tied into a new advertising strategy, which is covered in-depth in the article."

The last horse crosses the finish line

Doesn't basically every other network already offer this?

Re:The last horse crosses the finish line

Name 1? Most networks are trying to create their own portals. Largely because, as they mention in the article, they all have huge cable channels to support as well. This is something that CBS is relatively free of since they only have one (or two) cable networks to their name.

Instead of investing potentially millions into creating their own service, they are going to offer programs for syndication to various sites on the web. It sounds to me like they are holding to a traditional idea of selling shows, but instead of selling them to cable networks, they are going to sell them to the internet media channels for distribution through the internet (probably as streaming feeds).

So actually, this is actually a first in a way and not a last. Good job with RTFA.

Some things come to mind...

A couple things come to mind when I see stuff like this... #1, Cable TV and Satellite services are going to go extinct. (Good.) #2, As more and more networks start to "broadcast" online, ISPs are going to have their hands full. The move to cap users who download too much (too combat bittorrent) is going to have to stop. Quickly.

Intertubes

Great, now I have to deal with a bunch of fat beer-drinking rednecks floating by and clogging up my interweb tubes, too!

Thanks CBS. Thanks a lot.

Broadcatching

All of these approaches are already out of date. They should recognise broadcatching, and move to it, ASAP, if they want to be ahead of the competition. As it is, the competition of small, independent producers is already far ahead of the big guys.

A BAD or Risky name choice

Innertube? COME ON! What images come to mind? There's imagry associated with water and there's the image of the flat tire. Did they think about this?

Thank you!

I hardly watch any television. The days of sitting around and waiting for your favorite show to come on are simply over, and I don't want to spend $40 a month plus $15 a month for Tivo just for the pleasure. It's simply not worth it.

Instead of litigating viewers and websites, it appears CBS may "get it." I hope they follow through with their plan without a team of lawyers getting a hold of it and ruining it entirely. CBS should be congratulated, and we should all vote with our eyes and reward them for recognizing that the Internet has changed entirely the meaning and value of media distribution.

And I must say, it's about time American companies stopped trying to sue their way to success and innovate instead. Real business leadership needs to return to our economy before there's nothing left but corporations suing each other over worthless patents and dead ideas.

Intertube is MS intellectual property

Sending TV shows through the inner tubes has been patented by MS or possibly Daryl McBride. User beware!

Youtube?

That entire article remains silent on Youtube. I would think if they're going to put it on THE video site on the web, the article would mention it. Seems a bit silly to distribute to 10+ media sites with almost zero market penetration when you can distribute to one big site.

Joost: We Pwn Your Puter

(Alternatively, "In Soviet Russia, Joost watches YOU")

The Joost EULA allows them carte blanche to install whatever they like on your machine, and makes it a contractual violation to interfere with it, its settings or its network traffic. That doesn't seem compatible with anti-virus or firewalls (which I imagine invalidates that aspect of the contract instantly, but IANAL and I digress). They swear that they anonymise all collected viewing habit information before passing it onto advertisers, but then again, they can change the EULA, TOS and PP at will. Again, probably invalid, but IANAL.

They state quite clearly that they will be using your bandwidth to communicate with other computers running their software. Obviously, because it's a P2P app. But this isn't Skype, with a relatively small amount of traffic. This is video, distributed P2P. That's going to eat my bandwidth, and probably be dog slow to boot.

This isn't what I want. I'm not sure this is what anyone wants, at least in their target early-adopter group. Who wants ad-supported content, for which I'm paying a variable, uncontrollable amount? Give me ad-free, DRM-free, fairly priced content that I can download direct, thanks. Too much bandwidth? Well, invest in a content distribution network, or keep poking ISPs in the side until they sort out multicast.

Meh.

Finally!

One of the networks is starting to get it.

All CBS has to do to make money off this is have advertising in a corner of the screen or just have regular commercial interruptions as usual. Some people will skip the commercials, just like how they do it with VCR tapes, but if the commercials are engaging enough, people will forget. Having a scrolling line of text commercials at the bottom of the screen works as well (remember, since this is not a TV screen, the video can still be 16:9 or 4:3 and still have a small bar at the bottom of the screen with the text commercials without impeding on the video.)

Outside the US?

I have a mild Letterman habit. Will I be able to watch last night's show on Joost, or will I get a message saying that my IP address is outside the US and I am therefore unable to watch due to copyright and licensing restrictions? I know which one my money's on.

Drop the streaming all together and...

Hey CBS and others,

Drop the streaming all together and post your current line up and the good shows that you keep replacing with crap reality and game shows at the iTunes store. Yes, I know that you are doing this for some already; just post the rest. Streaming quality is never going to be as good an experience as is watching a show on my TV by way of my iPod. Streaming playback is even worse for those of us without a well equipped computer, and there are a lot of people in my boat.

Also for CBS... I'd like to watch the second half of that Super Bowl episode of Criminal Minds, and this series is on iTunes and wasn't available on Innertube at the time.

Later,
-Slashdot Junky

But will it run on Linux?

All joking aside - and quite seriously - will it run in a web browser on Linux? I'd rather not have a TV and be able to get to video clips (like the President's State of the Union address) over the Internet. Last I checked, the major networks (CBS, ABC, AOL, etc.) were using tech that relied on Windows Media Puke to play, thus I couldn't watch it from my Linux PC. (Even Yahoo! does that with their YouTube/GoogleVideo equivalent, so I stay away from it.) Really that is probably part of the success behind YouTube and GoogleVideo - it runs on any platform without a problem. Running Mac? No problem. Running Linux? No problem. Running Windows? No problem.

So, will CBS's new syndication system run on Linux? If so, great - I'll be there to watch it. If not, too bad; guess I'll have to wait.

What won't change

One thing i'm sure will not change... As soon as a CBS video ends up on a website not of their choosing (youtube) BAM!, DMCA take-down notice. I can just about guarantee it.

CBS is learning what the RIAA/MPAA didn't get

The relatively recent explosion of P2P filesharing and user content sites like Youtube created a new and (mostly) unregulated means of delivering media to the masses. This is a threat to the technologically antiquated business models of the big traditional media conglomerates and it scared them senseless. The difference I see here is that CBS is trying to adjust their business model around the new "paradigm" (sorry, I couldn't come up with a better word), while the RIAA/MPAA is trying to fight it to save their own apparently outdated business models. I'm not saying that CBS's methods are going to be without fault, but I will give hem credit for at least trying to adapt to the new enviroment. If the RIAA/MPAA would stop their bitching and try to adapt their own businesses to this new enviroment then they might not have as many problems as they do now (of course, putting out music and movies that people actually WANT to see badly enough to pay for would help a great deal).

Series of Tubes

I guess the Internet really is a series of tubes:

• YouTube
  
• InnerTube
  
• BoobTube
  
• iTubes
  

etc.

Slashdot Demographics

It's pretty easy to see that there aren't a lot of Slashdot users who care about television programming - check out the number of people commenting here vs. the teachers putting the students through a gun scare debate. Personally I don't watch TV, I use one as a graphical output for my DVD player. Judging by the response to this article, I'd be willing to say that I'm not alone.