No Bode For Blum: Cable Content Walls Are Too High To Scale
Posted by Jonathan in INTERNET, TELEVISION on 02-20-10 No Comments
It looks like the screen on the left is as far as I — and many — cable sports fans will get as they try to watch the Olympics online.
While the otherwise forgettable NBCOlympics.com deserves some credit for posting a full library of Olympic event footage a day or so after it airs, actually seeing the skiing, curling and hockey posted there is a much grimmer — and more frustrating — event.
NBC has struck an increasingly common online video deal: It protects its local affiliates, both cable and broadcast, by putting most of its event footage behind a registration wall. Access to the content is free, but potential Web video watchers must sign in with their local cable broadcast identity. And there’s the rub. Getting a Cablevision log-in, in my case, is the usual Web sign-on thang: Go to Cablevision.com, get a name, password and identity. The problem is, Cablevision is just not set up to process administering Web passwords. Who knows what happened: Cablevision seems to know me as “Johnotha.” And somehow there’s a junk password associated with that account that nobody can seem to change. So my log ins don’t work. There’s no customer service support to help me out.
So no replays of Bode for Blum. And now we can all see the problem with controlling access to online sports: Several media and Web players are involved.
Take the Yankees streaming game service that I plan to take this season. To do so I would again have to coordinate between the Yankees TV network, Cablevision, their designated media partner, and Verizon, which hosts my FiOS Web access. Imagine what is going to go wrong there. And look at the tough spot sports is now in online: The leagues have to limit access to their content to keep its value high. But they face a major challenge in managing that access.
Clearly, getting folks into their right online seats will be no lay up.
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