Two suppliers of U.S. pay-TV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Communications Inc., plan to offer Internet television programs to customers payments, in an attempt to protect their revenue from subscriptions.
Time Warner Cable and Verizon announced Thursday its plans separately, that mimic those of Comcast Corp., the largest cable operator in the U.S., which said in July it would test a web TV service with some of its customers.
Pay TV companies are concerned that the subscription revenue to cable television can be undermined if the programs are widely available online.
Therefore, the cable industry, led by the chief executive of Time Warner Inc, Jeffrey Bewkes, is testing a concept called TV Everywhere as a way of paying subscribers that cable Internet access to programs through of an authentication process.
Time Warner Cable TV said its test will include the channel SyFy Everywhere, NBC Universal, TNT, HBO and Time Warner's TBS, AMC, IFC and Sundance Channel for Cablevision Systems Corp. and BBC America for the BBC.
CBS Corporation and Discovery Communications Inc. are also involved in the test.
The 80 percent of NBC Universal is owned by General Electric Co and 20 percent of France's Vivendi SA.
The tests involve Time Warner Cable to make available TV programs via the Internet for 5,000 households paid subscribers.
Can access the programs on their own websites to the chains, as well as sites owned by Time Warner Cable.
No comments:
Post a Comment