NEW YORK and PHILADELPHIA – Time Warner is partnering with Comcast to offer its television content on-line in a free, on-demand platform.
The companies also unveiled ‘TV Everywhere’, a framework designed to bring more television content to customers on-line in a "consumer-friendly, pro-competitive and non-exclusive” manner.
“TV Everywhere is no longer just a concept, but a working model to deliver consumers more television content over broadband than ever before”, said Time Warner chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes in the announcement. “We consistently look to make our popular, branded content more accessible to consumers in order to grow our business. This progressive approach to delivering television content on-line will enable the continued vibrancy and growth of distribution outlets, their content partners and advertising clients.”
The set of principles for the ‘TV Everywhere’ model was designed to be simple and attractive for any programmer and any video distributor to elect to adopt, the announcement detailed, and includes the following principles:
– Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms;
– Video subscribers can watch programming from their favorite TV networks online for no additional charge;
– Video subscribers can access this content using any broadband connection;
– Programmers should make their best and highest-rated programming available on-line;
– Both networks and video distributors should provide high-quality, consumer-friendly sites for viewing broadband content with easy authentication;
– A new process should be created to measure ratings for online viewing. The goal should be to extend the current viewer measurement system to include advertiser ratings for TV content viewed on all platforms;
– TV Everywhere is open and non-exclusive; cable, satellite or telco video distributors can enter into similar agreements with other programmers.
One assumes that the folks at Rogers will be paying close attention to this concept as it prepars to launch its own broadband video portal later this year.
US cable giant Comcast said that it will begin technical trials of its ‘On Demand On-line’ service next month which will offer “premium long-form content” from Time Warner’s Turner networks TNT and TBS to approximately 5,000 customers nationwide.
“Today’s announcement is all about giving our customers exponentially more free content, more choice and more HD programming on-line as well as on TV”, said Comcast chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts in the announcement. “We have been working for a year to bring more TV and movie content to our customers on-line and we are thrilled that Time Warner is joining us in our national technical trial. Ultimately, our goal is to make TV content available to our customers on all platforms.”
Comcast said that it expects other programmers to participate in its trial as it expands. Time Warner said that it expects to announce similar trials with other distributors.
