Bewkes Lays VOD Challenge on Table
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 4/16/2006 8:00:00 PM
Atlanta — Atlanta— Time Warner Inc. chief operating officer Jeff Bewkes offered a challenge to cable operators: offer all networks, cable and broadcast, on demand for free on cable 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 during the last general session at the National Show (on April 11). “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,” Bewkes said. “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 operators could gain on-demand rights to the programming by simply agreeing to keep the commercials with that fare or by allowing consumers to only fast-forward through the shows.
Bewkes — whose company owns cable networks including Turner Network Television, Cartoon Network and Cable News Network — said Time Warner Cable already is 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 cable systems have to license that right from the networks and preserve the network environment. It’s challenging to do it, but you’ll see our company trying to put that template in place.”
Time Warner Cable, which is testing Start Over in Columbia, S.C., also is negotiating with programmers to extend the windows of each program to 24-to- 48 hours.
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