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The Future of International TV

by allen85255 | April 13, 2008 at 12:00 pm | 250 views | 2 comments

One of the points I tried to make will my ill-fated Hulu post is that there is a great future in these IP/Internet-driven TV services, such as Hulu, to cross International boundaries. I have played with the iPlayer while I was in the UK, and you would be surprised (perhaps not) that many of our U.S. shows are ripoffs of (better) shows from the UK. Right now, because of rights issues, services such as Hulu and the BBC's iPlayer are restricted to local shores. Kangaroo, a new UK service comparable to Hulu, will bring together the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in one place. Who wouldn't like to see Gordon Ramsay unedited unleashing a stream of epithets to local chefs and restaurant owners? I believe, by the end of this year, or early next, IP or Internet-based TV will be global in nature. It's a force that's unstoppable.

Wii becomes home of online video

Darren Waters

9 Apr 08, 19:09 GMT

How ironic that it is the Nintendo Wii, and not the Playstation 3 nor Xbox 360, that becomes the first of the current generation of consoles to have a truly dynamic range of online video content.

The BBC's announcement of a deal with Nintendo to put the iPlayer's streaming service on the console makes something of a mockery claims by Sony and Microsoft that their consoles are the true multimedia machines.

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jordan

at 12:05 on April 13th, 2008

At the moment, territorial agreements continue to hamstring online broadcast (at least by major networks): there's no incentive for viewers to avoid P2P networks, unless they feel like waiting for the DVDs.

allen85255

at 12:35 on April 13th, 2008

I agree to an extent. Many UK media companies, such as The Guardian, are setting their sites on US consumers. The Guardian says it gets more Web traffic from the US than it does from its own shores. For UK broadcasters, many who have their content syndicated to US audiences via syndicators, it makes sense for them to go direct just as the US networks have in the last 18 months. Alas, there is the question of "business model" but I believe you put it out there and the right model emerges.