Cliff Edwards recently wrote an article for Business
Week which brings up some important questions about the future of
Internet TV, and how money, as always, is at the root of the sometimes
slow progress.
In it, he cites companies who “are unwilling to
let go of their
control in the way things work” so as not to jeopardize their
power and
revenues until the business of iTV is figured out. Which has missed an
important point and over-simplified the landscape.
No IPTV Governing Body
Unlike the
television standards set by the National Television System Committee
(NTSC) in the U.S. in the 1940’s, there is no specific
roadmap or
governing body for Internet television integration, let alone IPTV over
closed providers or even mobile devices.
If a CEO of an internet software or hardware company is making
money with
their product, it is naive to think they are in a position to
open their
code or share their technology in the hopes of creating an industry
standard for that market segment; only the Government under the FCC
could
mandate such a process.
After all, a company that makes a software
encoder cannot be equated with Facebook, which recently opened its
platform in hopes of creating a community standard towards mass
adoption.
In addition, no one product can “complete the
picture” as it is currently
far too diverse and fragmented an audience to know how even to tackle
the
problem.
Social and Monetary Implications
Aside from the technical challenges there are many other
social and
monetary implications which were not mentioned either. For example, in
the current writers strike, members want a share of the revenue from
programming destined for Internet delivery.
The problem, however, is
that
most of the current ventures by large media outlets have yet to make
any
money, which makes it veritably impossible to assign profits on
non-existent or future revenues.
It is questions like these that will
require a new set of definitions as to what is iTV programming, how are
people compensated, what do consumers want and on what platforms and
what
will they pay, let alone the technology challenges.
Conclusions
Those of us who have been in the business since the
mid-nineties when
postage-stamp-size streaming media was just being deployed understand
the
industry is in a time of fast-moving change, not unlike the Wild West.
That we are faced with a myriad of technical and social
questions as to
how people will use Internet television over fixed and mobile platforms
requires patience, perspective, and not misrepresentation.
[Content in whole or part adapted from IPTVe and is licensed under Creative Commons, no addition derivative works may be copied from this article without prior permission from IPTVe and Web TV Wire]
