Video on the net - TV networks try to control it, telcos try to profit
More and more video is showing up on the net - not just homebrew videos, but clips from television. Unleashed from their broadcast boundaries, short 3 minute video clips hosted on YouTube get passed around incredibly quickly on social networking sites like Myspace and get viewings way beyond what TV types are used to for local content.
All this video poses a problem though in that it's not clear who is going to profit from all of this bandwidth. CBS doesn't get an ad revenue cut of clips rebroadcast on YouTube. AT&T bless their souls don't get paid extra for the most part when their loyal subscribers download videos vs. just reading email. Some analysis below points to the current state of affairs - a good ongoing source of news is Jeff Ubois's archival.tv .
Summary: As higher bandwidth content streams to more bandwidth-hungry users quality of service can suffer. Some industry experts are wondering if the Net can scale to handle the load. Meanwhile, the rural-urban broadband penetration gap is closing in America.
PaidContent.org: February 27, 2006 Archives:
Networks Grapple With YouTube; CBS's Turn [by staci] : Updated: The response when CBS News told the story of an autistic teen's triumph on the basketball court was so extraordinary, the network ran the story again the next night. Not surprising, then, that a YouTube user would feel driven to share the experince via the video site. So far, YouTube has delivered more than 1.3 million viewings and the video is on the site's top 20 all-time list. ...
Betsy Morgan, SVP and GM of CBSNews.com, told the CBSNews blog Public Eye: "It's uncool for people to take our video without permission. It's interesting and encouraging that there's that much of an audience for our content. But this stuff should come back to the core site – otherwise it's theft."
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