Opinion: TV Everywhere Requires Less Complications, More Consistency
By Rob Scott
November 26, 2012
November 26, 2012
- “The TV Everywhere pitch is straightforward: If you pay for cable TV, you can watch cable TV wherever you want — on your iPad, in your bedroom, on your phone, in the airport,” writes Peter Kafka for AllThingsD.
- “The reality is a lot more complicated, for a lot of reasons, but the upshot is that right now you can only watch a bit of what’s on cable on devices that aren’t your TV,” he notes. “And if the cable guys are going to convince people not to cut the cord, or to sign up for the cord in the first place, that’s going to have to get better.”
- Kafka cites ESPN’s “great WatchESPN app” as an example of this model that really enables consumers to watch content everywhere on demand. However, the app let Kafka down when he tried to watch Monday Night Football on his phone.
- “The problem, says ESPN PR, is that Verizon has an exclusive on NFL mobile rights, so ESPN can’t deliver the game to me on my iPhone, even when I’m at home, on a Wi-Fi connection (which is the way that lots of mobile video gets consumed),” he writes.
- While this may make sense from a business development perspective, what is the reaction of average sports fans who expect to watch what they want, when they want?
- Even more confusing: while the game was not available on the iPhone, it was available on the iPad.
- “Again, trying to argue that some rights apply to a 9.5-inch screen but not a 3.5-inch screen is the sort of thing that makes sense to lawyers and deal-makers, and no sense at all to normal people,” concludes Kafka. “You know, the people you want to keep paying for cable.”
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