Why Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and on the web streaming are threatening cable
Posted by: admin in Oline Networking NewsComedy Central said last week that it will stream the comedy triumvirate of “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and “South Park,” in their entirety, on Fancast.com. (Silly name, but whatever.) Beyond the “wow, neat” reaction, there’s something else going on here that we already hinted at a few days ago: what if people, seeing […]
Comedy Central stated last week that it will stream the comedy triumvirate of “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and “South Park,” in their entirety, on Fancast.com. (Silly name, but whatever.) Beyond the “wow, neat” reaction, there’s something else going on here that we already hinted at a few days ago: what if people, seeing all there favorite shows move online—”The Daily Show” was required viewing in my college—refuse to pay for cable Television? Looking closer, you see that some cable companies might be hurt more than others.
Take Comcast, the ISP everyone on the internet hates. It won’t be hurt too much, especially by this particular Comedy Central deal, because it owns Fancast.com. Either it will make money from dealing with Viacom (which owns Comedy Central) and showing its programming on Television, or from Fancast.com. Comcast gets paid either way.
Not so with Time Warner, my cable company. Once viewers realize that they can watch Stephen Colbert state “truthiness” 500 times a week and still laugh for free on the web, what sense does it make to subscribe to Time Warner? And from TW’s perspective, what sense does it make for it to pay full price—”top dollar,” as the kids might say—for Stewart, Colbert and Cartman when not as many eyeballs will be watching?
States Time Warner:
They can’t have it both ways. If they put content they ask cable companies to pay for on the web for free, they’re making it less valuable and we should be expected to pay less for it
Or, more succinctly:
Guess what? We do mind [that more and more content is going online].
Keep in mind that I’m not even speaking about pirated content, since that’s a while different topic, and one that I know a thing or two about. We’re speaking legitimately free TV content on the internet possibly being at the expense of the cable companies.
Isn’t the World wide web exciting?
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