The advent of broadband and high-speed Internet access in millions of homes has introduced the use of video on those networks as a dominant digital reality and has led to the creation of phenomena like YouTube. It has also baffled the corporate powers of television and film, who cannot decide whether to sue online video sites or learn how to use them as new channels for the distribution of their products. In fact, something of each is happening.
Movie companies are much more picky about the Internet, as evidenced by Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google, now the owner of YouTube. NBC TV, on the other hand, has sought to use the Internet creatively and productively.
Perhaps the most intriguing example is the sitcom “Nobody’s Watching,” a television pilot program that was developed for WB Television and ultimately rejected. But when the pilot leaked on YouTube, his popularity skyrocketed, and he has since been viewed by a million viewers on the website. As a result of online interest, NBC chose it as a series, to be shown on YouTube.
While “Nobody’s Watching” is solely an online product, NBC has focused on trying to combine use of the Internet with its traditional broadcast format. One of the results of this approach has been his television series “Heroes”, which has a companion website with a novel that is integrated into the show, and vice versa.
Meanwhile, other online entrepreneurs have developed broadband television channels with astonishing reach. Beeline TV (www.beelinetv.com) has a channel list that includes an alphabetical lineup from Albanian to Turkish television. Among the broadcasts from those two countries are television programming from Croatia, the Netherlands, Japan, the Arabic news broadcast Al Jazeera, and dozens of other stations, including many from the US. While the broadcast may be somewhat Spotty, the concept is remarkable and seems to be offering product with little concern for copyright threats.
Internet TV Access (www.internettvaccess.com) offers a software package that supposedly makes hundreds of TV channels available for free. Its programming includes international channels and specialized national channels, such as “Classic TV”, which plays the classics that you may have missed the first time. TV4U has a similar line: 2640 television channels from almost everywhere.
As with all Internet products, where there is content there should be an online index. One of the most prominent is Find Internet TV (www.findinternettv.com). You can search this website by category, by language and by country to see what is available on online television.
All of these services claim to be freebies and all insist that you “sign up” by providing an email address and perhaps some other innocuous information. It’s unclear what the business model is for these video amalgamators, but what is obvious is their ambitious scope. It is also interesting that the video broadcasts of thousands of television channels around the world are available online. They must be satellite signals that are pulled from birds and fed into internet servers, because very few television networks are operating their own signals online at the moment.
