News > Geek > CBS Dumps Subscription Model, Will Offer Programming Online For Free

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TUESDAY MARCH 14 2006 11:32 AM

CBS Dumps Subscription Model, Will Offer Programming Online For Free

Submitted by WilWheaton

Edited by s5

CBS wil bring programming to the Internets for free, according to Techdirt:

Even though TV networks have realized that there's money to be made from the internet, they're still trying to figure out the best way forward. There are two main schools of thought: sell access to shows, either downloads or streams, through subscriptions or individual sales; or to put your content online and sell ads around it. We've held for a while now that broadcasters have more to gain from taking the ad-supported route, and CBS' experience with its online broadcast of the NCAA basketball tournament illustrates the point nicely. In years past, CBS has sold out-of-town tournament games on a pay-per-view basis on DirecTV and online, but this year they'll stream them on the Web for free, and the company says they've already booked ads worth more than the subscriber revenues from last year.

CBS says that they've already registered 200,000 users for the ad-supported broadcasts, compared to just 115,000 subscriptions last year.

This announcement is exciting, especially when the head of NBC/Universal calling for "'Net Savvy pitches" for new programming. After years of fighting it, it seems like some of the vertically-integrated media dinosaurs are taking some steps to embrace the world we've all be living in for the last several years. For creative types, this means that our programming will be on an equal footing (ish) with some established entertainment, sort of the way blogs are now on an equal footing (ish) with newspapers and magazines. For consumers, this means that we'll have access to more and more types of entertainment which we can enjoy on a variety of devices.

The next step is to convince these people in the tall glass towers of Hollywood that they need to embrace technology the way they are apparently embracing distribution, and stop pushing things like the broadcast flag, which could cripple our ability to timeshift and enjoy their programming on our own terms.

Comments

MrDaft

Vancouver, BC

January 2005

MAR 14, 2006 11:55 AM

What's Scubscription?

lafurdefa

Los Angeles, CA

March 2006

MAR 14, 2006 12:04 PM

yeah, not to be an ass, but i was going to ask that too. i thought it was some new piece of vocab that i had missed out on.

polverso

Kansas City, MO

December 2005

MAR 14, 2006 01:01 PM

Spell check

[Edited on Mar 14, 2006 4:02PM]

skeptik

New Orleans, LA

February 2004

MAR 14, 2006 06:45 PM

^^ Unfortunately, though you can edit a post or a story to correct a typo, the title itself can't be corrected once it's posted.

But anyway.

This is really cool. Sounds like if they run this the way they should, then I won't need a DVR to catch that episode of CSI that I missed (this being about CBS, and all). And sitting through a couple of internet commercials to do it can't be any worse than all the popups and sidebar ads we live with already.

Go, new media!!

MrDaft

Vancouver, BC

January 2005

MAR 14, 2006 08:52 PM

skeptik said:
^^ Unfortunately, though you can edit a post or a story to correct a typo, the title itself can't be corrected once it's posted.

But anyway.

This is really cool. Sounds like if they run this the way they should, then I won't need a DVR to catch that episode of CSI that I missed (this being about CBS, and all). And sitting through a couple of internet commercials to do it can't be any worse than all the popups and sidebar ads we live with already.

Go, new media!!

Apparently the title can be changed