According to Dish Network's VP of Online Content Development and Strategy Bruce Eisen, Hulu and sites like it, are hurting the TV industry. He feels that you should pay for your TV service rather than get the content online for free.
Eisen spoke as part of a panel about cord cutting at the Streaming Media West conference and said:
If I can watch Glee tomorrow morning and I don’t have to pay a pay TV service –- I think that’s bad. The model of sites like Hulu that make catchup content available immediately isn’t benefiting the industry. Broadcasters should instead reserve catchup episodes for authenticated TV Everywhere services, and only make them available freely after 30 days. If people decide that they don’t have to pay for pay TV, then one of the pillars (of the TV industry) starts crumbling.
Also on the panel was Greg Kampanis, SVP of Content Strategy and Operations for South Park Digital Studios who countered Eisen's comments saying that South Park's online venture is a pretty successful online advertising business and when they started the venture they felt the the industry was too slow to roll out online content so they needed to do something on their own to allow users to view their content in whatever manner is most convenient to them.
Moderating the panel, according to GigaOm, was Jonathan Hurd from Altman Vilandrie & Company, who shared research data on the subject of cutting the cord. He said that based on research his company did back in June found that 3.9% of 25 to 34 year olds have already cut the cord and use the Internet to watch all of their content. They also found that more than 20% of the same age group are considering cutting the cord in the near future.
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