Question about Internet TV

Factual Questions
1

I have always wondered, why are no Network Television stations, or in other words, any other ad-based television stations putting up Internet streams? I have seen quite a few that do so for their original programing (mostly local news), but why nothing else? It would seem to me that if it’s free then why is there some sort of encumbrance to allowing it on the intenet?

Lets think of an example. What if someone were to put up a stream on the internet of a local NBC affiliate. I would certainly imagine that they would get shut down. I don’t see why, though because as long as all of their ads are in there, wouldn’t their advertisers be happier?

There must be some kind of law involved in this, but why would the individual TV stations care?

I suppose what’ I’m trying to ask is why can’t we watch on the internet, television that we could normally watch for free? It could become a new way of advertising. If you were in Japan, but would like to watch American free television, you could do so, but would watch Japanese ads instead of American ones. Who wouldn’t like to be able to watch TV from all around the world? Cable TV is another issue, but with the internet, distribution doesn’t have so much to do with the concentration of viewers. If you have 10,000 subscribers all around the world, you don’t really care as long as they pay.

Why doesn’t HBO let people watch their programming on the Internet? Why wouldn’t it be possible to pay HBO and be able to watch the programming on the internet? I can’t imagine how many people would like to have it if they could. Okay I know that movies may have certain agreements with the rights to certain movies, but doesn’t HBO own all of its programing ( Curb your Enthusiasm, Sex in the city, etc.)?

2

Two big issues: bandwidth and content control. To feed video to even 1% of the populace would be an unbelievable load on any server system. HBO (or the studios, actually) don’t want people downloading movies, etc. to their computers where than can be stored, watched over and over, copied, etc.

For commercial networks, providing a free feed is an even worse idea if people can store the show and watch it later- skipping over commericials. So NBC can’t charge a reasonable amount for what most people consider “free” programming nor can they assure advertisers that their ads are going to be seen.

But there are special purpose video feeds that aren’t such a problem. Nearly all viewers are only interested in real time viewing. So MLB isn’t too worried about people redistributing games after they are over (as long as it’s not for commercial purposes), they charge a lot of $ so the number of subscribers is small, and they don’t provide that good quality of a feed which also helps with the bandwidth.

Yes, it will happen. But the economics and infrastructure aren’t there yet.