Devoted to show business and the entertainment industry

Jeffrey Bewkes

Jeffrey Bewkes, COO of Time Warner Inc. adomonished his colleagues to begin to offer all their shows for cable video-on-demand. He added that it would be an extremely consumer-friendly service.

The model would be based upon advertising supported and free for the viewers. It is looked at one way that they could compete against the Internet and other new technologies that are entering the competitive mix. They have been taking away market share from the companies because of the ability to watch it when they want.

In a panel discussion at the annual cable show Bewkes said "Maybe I have a dream. We should take all the networks...a day, a week...and put it on video on demand for free."

His thought would be to offer the entire programming schedule on demand in contrast to only letting a few here and there be allowed to be on-demand. He said that this would allow the viewers to watch what they want when they want. 

He encouraged the industry to begin to do this by next year at the latest. He took note of the fact that it would be a huge undertaking to deal with the licensing issues involved. The major hurdle being that the networks don't own all of the shows and so would have to go through other parties for licensing approval.

Bewkes also asked the industry to consider the need for creating new business models that would take into account compensation for all the people involved.
 
To me, the continuing call for an advertising supported model, has nothing new at all to it. What it will do is look for ways to thwart customers who don't want the ads to interfere with the flow of what they are watching.

Time Warner Cable is unfortunately already testing this concept out by disabling the ability of its viewers to fast forward ads on its Start Over Service, which allows the viewer to restart the show from the beginnning while they are watching it.

As I listen to the ideas here, I think that it's still way too little, and if they wait too long, it will be too late. This obsession with going against the will of their consumers is still eating away at them.

But with the major idea of trying to take away the DVR ability of the viewer as the "innovation" falls way short of an answer. They do need new models. The question is: Will they really have the guts to create them?