Laura Martin: ‘Hammer' Networks Over Web Freebies
Analyst Tells Small Operators Free Internent Programming Is Hurting Margins
Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 2/27/2009 1:37:31 PM
Laura Martin, the longtime media analyst and former fixture at finance panels at cable conventions, appeared this week at such a forum: the National Cable Television Cooperative winter education conference.
The Media Metrics and Soleil Securities entertainment, cable and Internet analyst got big applause for what she said after a fellow panelist encouraged cablers to "embrace" and "leverage" online video sources like Hulu.
"My view is a little different," she said. "I think Hulu doesn't work in the end. Because I think everyone in this room should be hammering away at your programmers to stop giving the Internet free programming. They are destroying your business by hurting your margins."
Cable has been lucky in that top network-backed sites Hulu (NBC and Fox), TV.com (CBS) and ABC.com aren't sharing content and making it more convenient for consumers to find the shows they want online. And while Time Warner Cable's Glenn Britt and other operators are pressing programmers, NBC and Fox are in turn squeezing Hulu for "more economics" to help them offset the risk of upsetting their cable-operator affiliates, she said.
"Eventually the programming guys are going to have to make a decision, and you want to really put pressure on them so they decide that, even though the consumer wants everything for free, you actually want to run a business model, and you need their programming to do that," Martin said.
The current recession's impact on consumers has implications for cable, she also said.
"The consumer is stymied," Martin said, can't make purchasing decisions and has to pay down debt. "No consumer product is immune" from that.
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