Bewkes Offers Up a Free-VOD Challenge
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 4/11/2006 7:12:00 PM
Atlanta -- Time Warner Inc. chief operating officer Jeff Bewkes offered a challenge to cable operators at the closing session of the National Show Tuesday: Offer all networks, cable and broadcast, on free video-on-demand and do it by the end of next year.
“I think that the cable industry should put VOD on all networks into place in the next year,” Bewkes said at the show. “I think that the record is clear for 20 years on pay-per-view that that is not the way to maximize usage. It’s not really what consumers want.
“All of the things you read in the press about this or that announcement are about some kind of pay-per-view or download per unit, one-off consumption on the Web,” Bewkes continued. “It’s all fine, but the cable industry has an infrastructure advantage and a timing advantage. We should take all of the networks, take a day or a week of every network and put it on cable VOD and offer it for free with ad support.”
Bewkes said that cable operators could gain the VOD rights to the programming by simply agreeing to keep the commercials with that programming or by only allowing consumers to fast-forward through programming.
“Everyone would share in the economics,” Bewkes said. “That would preserve the vitality of the production community and the audience would like it [if] they don’t have to worry about what it is costing them. And there would be natural extensions on the Web and on mobile of exactly the sort that you’re hearing here [at the show].”
Bewkes, whose company owns cable networks like TNT, Cartoon Network and CNN, said that Time Warner is already making moves in that direction with its Start Over service, which allows viewers to restart a program within a certain time window.
“We have a thing called Start Over, the networks cable systems have to license that right from the network and preserve the network environment. It’s challenging to do it, but you’ll see our company trying to put that template in place.”
Comcast Corp. chief operating officer Steve Burke, who was on the same panel with Bewkes, seemed intrigued by the idea.
“I think it’s a gutsy move,” Burke said. “If Time Warner starts, my bet is that other people would look at it and say it must have made sense for Time Warner, they’re thoughtful people. But I have no doubt in my mind that it would be god for Disney, good for Viacom, good for every single owner of content and very good for cable.”
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