Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: Cable TV to Hit the Web?

Written by Erin Barker

Friday, February 20. 2009 at 10:50 AM EST Post a comment

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Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC) and Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) are looking into making cable network shows available online -- but only to cable subscribers.

Over the past few months, the two have been in discussions with major cable network owners Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA), Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC), and NBC Universal , The Wall Street Journal reports. Previously, cable operators have limited how much content the networks could make available online for free.

According to the WSJ's report, the cable operators' Web offerings could launch as soon as this year and will be "in a streaming format with ads, accessible in and out of the home, and without any additional charge to cable-TV subscribers."

TWC and Comcast are hoping that this service will attract new subscribers. But will they be too late to the game? Online video audiences may be already too used to getting shows for free on sites like Hulu and TV.com. And it's possible that Web users won't want to put up with both subscription fees and ads.

In other news:

"How many times have you read about a great movie on a web site and then forgotten to add it to your queue?" asks Michael Hart, Netflix Inc. director of engineering, on the company's blog. Well, problem solved, he says: The New York Times and Rotten Tomatoes have both signed on to offer the options to add the movie to your Netflix queue or watch it instantly via Netflix, on every movie review.

Meghan McCain, daughter of former presidential candidate John McCain, has written a column for The Daily Beast scolding the GOP for its lack of Web savviness. [Ed. note: Clearly she hasn't logged on to Twitter in a while.] "The Republican party isn't exactly Internet savvy. That's no secret. This has been a source of personal frustration for me for a very long time," Meghan writes. "Unless the GOP evolves as the party that can successfully utilize the Web, we'll continue to lose influence."

Tags: Business, Comcast, Hulu, Netflix, Time Warner, TV, Viacom, Video

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