Media Titans Won't Give Away What They Can Sell - Page 2

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"I think there's a middle ground," said Philippe Dauman, Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) president and CEO. "We put out a lot of content online. We do follow various windowing principles, which has always been a part of the entertainment industry," he added, referring to the gaps between a maiden broadcast and a rerun. In the case of the Daily Show, which airs on Viacom's Comedy Central, Dauman said his company opted for a short window when it decided to put the program on Hulu to keep it timely.

Dauman said that the Daily Show is one of the programs in Viacom's lineup viewed most often online, yet its revenues continue to rise sharply. "You do get incremental monetization if you do it right," he said.

It is worth noting that Dauman's company is embroiled in the granddaddy of the new-media litigation battles -- Viacom's $1 billion copyright-infringement suit against Google and its video-sharing site YouTube.

Still, the panelists generally agreed with Dauman that online video has not sapped people's appetite for watching TV the old-fashioned way.

"American people are in love with their television," Murdoch said. "Broadband only adds to that if we do it properly."

A model like Hulu might make sense for basic cable channels and shows on the networks, but what about premium channels?

"It wouldn't make a lot of sense to give away a pay channel and try to make it up with advertising," said Jeffery Bewkes, chairman and CEO of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX).

Bewkes took the opportunity to plug his company's HBO on demand service, which allows any paying subscriber to the TV channel to view its content online.

"We don't have to charge people extra," Bewkes said. "We're not trying to make the Internet not free. We're just trying to say if you use it for free, you ought to get what you've got in your home."

He added, "Put if on the Hulus and YouTubes if you need to, but only if people are subscribing to the video."

The cable kingpins gave the impression that they are warming up to the idea of seeding their content on the Web, with the important caveat that under no calculus should online content by necessity be free content. Today's speakers also seemed on board with Dauman's idea of the window, delaying the appearance of a program online to ensure that the television broadcast still had a unique value.

Except, perhaps, for Rupert Murdoch.

When Bewkes asked whether he would be willing to put Bill O'Reilly's program online the same day it aired on Fox News' cable station, Murdoch grinned and replied, "We've got a pretty deep bench. We've got other people."