Burnett: Video On Demand Will Have To Cost Money
By Whitney Phaneuf
On July 26, 2012
Rob Burnett breaks it down for the audience at tonight’s PandoMonthly in New York City, telling Sarah Lacy that content, specifically video on demand (VOD), will need to be paid for and distributed differently.
A TiVo user himself, Burnett doesn’t see the digital video recorder (DVR) as the future of content consumption.
“TiVo will not be around in 10 years,” says Burnett. “Where this is all going has to be Video On Demand. It has to be that you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want it.”
It’s this transition, from DVRs where Burnett says the average viewer still watches 45 percent of commercials, to VOD that comes with a Web-philosophy of free content sans advertising, that presents a complicated problem. He says Hollywood is catching on to new technology and is changing the ratings and advertising rules based on playback.
Because of its distribution first to theaters, Burnett thinks movies will be fine. “That experience isn’t going anywhere,” he says.
The definition of cable TV and VOD is changing. In February, Google first petitioned the FCC for the right to sell TV service. Today, it announced its Google Fiber broadband Internet will deliver HD quality content to TVs, iPads, and Android tablets at 100 times faster than the standard cable modem.
No matter who provides and controls the content, Burnett says someone will have to pay.
“At the end of the day, it’s content that has to be paid for that has to be distributed. That’s it, you know?”
Whitney is an SF-based journalist who has written about tech, arts, and culture for a decade. She has a weakness for cat memes, which you'll discover if you follow her on Twitter.
