Whither Television Programming?
As a follow up to our previous post on TV network activity on the Internet and through iTunes, we've further explored television programming and how it's playing out on the web beyond the major networks. — I will steer clear of yahoo, google, youtube …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is TechCrunch's second pass at internet-delivered TV in under a year: CNET framed the Internet and the future of TV back in October 2005, and TechCrunch's own earlier post tracked the networks moving programs onto the web and iTunes. What is new here is the widening lens — confirmed network distribution through iTunes is now the baseline, and the interesting action is programming playing out on the web from sources beyond the major networks.
The piece deliberately brackets Google, Yahoo and YouTube to isolate that question, which matters because it treats web TV as a programming-supply story rather than a video-platform story — who makes shows, not where clips get hosted.
First-order effects
- Producers outside the major networks gain a route to viewers through web distribution and iTunes, bypassing the networks' gatekeeping over what reaches a television audience.
- The networks' own confirmed iTunes and web distribution now coexists with a growing supply of non-network programming aimed at the same viewers.
Second-order effects
- As web-distributed programming competes for the same viewing time, the networks' hold on prime-time attention — and the advertising sold against it — faces pressure from suppliers they do not commission.
- Distribution intermediaries like iTunes become positionally stronger: whoever aggregates programming, network-made or otherwise, sits between producers and viewers.
Third-order effects
- If non-network web programming keeps growing, television separates from the broadcast schedule itself, with the bundle of channels-as-gatekeepers giving way to on-demand supply — a structural erosion whose pace depends on rights and platform choices still being contested.
The trend: Television distribution is drifting from network-controlled broadcasting toward direct web delivery, with aggregators rather than networks deciding what reaches viewers.