TV Remote Moves Over for a Mouse
Media consumers have said, loudly and repeatedly, that they want to watch what they want, when and where they want it. Last week NBC called that bluff, saying that its prime-time broadcast schedule would be there for free downloading for a week after being shown on television.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands at the end of a fast-moving September for network distribution. NBC's iTunes renewal talks with Apple collapsed earlier in the month, and within days the network announced NBC Direct, an ad-supported service offering top shows as free downloads for up to a week after broadcast — while questions circulated, unconfirmed, about what that means for its Hulu joint venture with News Corp.
The move is also not isolated: two days before this piece ran, ABC began offering free shows online through AOL, making network-direct distribution a pattern rather than an experiment. The New York Times frames it as broadcasters finally calling the audience's long-stated bluff — give us what we want, when we want it.
First-order effects
- Viewers gain a free, ad-supported way to download NBC prime-time shows for a week after airing, and Apple loses NBC content from iTunes when the expired contract lapses.
Second-order effects
- With ABC distributing free through AOL and NBC going direct, other networks face pressure to open their own download windows or keep paying intermediaries like Apple for shelf space they no longer exclusively control.
Third-order effects
- If the week-after-broadcast free download becomes standard across networks, the broadcast schedule shifts from the product itself to a marketing event that seeds on-demand viewing — and ownership of the download channel, not the license fee, becomes where networks capture value.
The trend: Broadcast networks are shifting from renting distribution through intermediaries like Apple to owning ad-supported download windows of their own, one network at a time.