Jeff Bewkes Thinks He Knows How to Keep the Paid Model Alive

By far the most interesting story in this Monday morning’s dump of media news was one in Advertising Age, in which Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes explains something called “TV Everywhere.” The initiative, which involves many major media players, would both let consumers view video on any platform they wanted, and keep alive something that’s been sorely lacking as other media have migrated to digital platforms — a way to keep consumers paying for content.

According to Bewkes, “This is not just for the cable industry. It’s about keeping the health of all these fantastic networks while making them available at no extra charge on the online platform.”

So, how would this work? By asking online users to verify they subscribe to some form of pay TV before they get to watch content on other platforms. Whether consumers pay through their cable company, the telephone company or a satellite provider doesn’t matter. This, Bewkes says, will preserve a robust environment for video by making sure that no matter where it is watched, it continues to benefit from a dual-revenue stream of subscriptions and advertising. (The story is a little murky on the direct benefits to network TV, but since many cable networks are ultimately owned by the major broadcast nets, what benefits cable should, in this case, benefit broadcast.)

According to the Ad Age story, “TV Everywhere” aims to run across the big names in online video, including Hulu, MySpace TV, and, as the article says “even YouTube.” (If Google can forget its aspirations to make content free to the user, that is.)

Leave it to the cable guy to try to figure the content conundrum out — he’s got a major revenue stream to preserve. By and large, the cable networks have been more wary of posting their content online for free than network TV; it’s actually alarming to see how cavalier the broadcast nets are about giving away their content online, and, yes, I say that even though their content is entirely ad-supported when it airs on TV. The giving away of video content makes it seem as though nothing has been learned from the experiences of the newspaper business and the music industry once the digital era arrived. If you think the monetization model for professionally-produced online video is worked out, next time you start streaming a full episode of “House” on Hulu ask if it makes sense — or money — for Fox to offer the series online with limited commercial interruption at no cost to the consumer. Does such catering to the user experience, with the user providing nothing in return, have the possibility to destroy the broadcast model? You betcha.

If “TV Everywhere” takes off, it would be a good thing, and maybe not just for the online video market. What if it was the first step toward consumers believing that if content has value to them, it’s worth paying for?