Television Everywhere is Nowhere (Yet)

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, and, yes, even YouTube, were going to usher in an era of unprecedented choice and convenience. And if that didn't do it, the US cable industry's "TV Everywhere", or the UK's Project Canvas would - allowing (authenticated, of course!) paying subscribers to access, well, some stuff over the internet.

Rather than deliver on Television Everywhere's implicit promise - watch what you want, when you want, where you want - efforts so far have just made watching and supplying television harder and more fragmented than ever.

In Hollywood's original script, even a whiff of internet-enabled TV was bad. So bad that in Episode 1 ("Oh no you don't") once Google acquired YouTube, Viacom sued them for "massive intentional copyright infringement" to the tune of $1 billion. Studios to internet people: we own the intellectual property around here. Message received - Google has taken down tens of thousands of commercial, copyrighted video files. No more John Stewart.

As with many big budget productions, Hollywood revised the script. They realized that, having established who's in charge of content, they were in control of how quickly it flowed to new distribution channels, as we noted way back in 2005. So, in Episode 2 ("Did someone say 'revenue'?") Hollywood decided, quite rationally, to lay down a marker for future internet distribution. And so Hulu was born.

All the while, the television industry and its "linear" products and distribution channels have done better than ever. Broadcast viewership is at an all time high, CPMs nearly so if you can feel your way through the usual post-upfront fog. So-called "over-the-top" (OTT) internet viewing is still tiny - roughly 3 minutes a day per person vs. 300 minutes a day for good old TV - and, if anything, seems to complement rather than substitute for linear TV. And even without international distribution, it's studio-controlled Hulu that has become the (still-distant) number two video streaming site in the world, right after YouTube.

By some measures, the dog caught the car, so how are we doing on that other piece, you know, the "unprecedented choice and convenience" part? Not so well, actually.

One problem is that Internet TV can't seem to make up its mind what it wants to be other than being delivered via the internet. From a viewer's point of view that's not nearly enough and is largely irrelevant. What viewers and suppliers alike need is a way to unwind the insanity of brand, show, and channel fragmentation and make watching TV easy again.

So far, what we're getting is this:

• One-stop shopping that isn't: pull together links to shows you're interested in, independent of who actually provides them (Hulu, abc.com, dailyshow.com, whatever) and provide some ways to sort through lists and then view video over the web. Excellent, right? No. Unfortunately, random policies over when and how much of full-episodes vs. highlight vs. clips appear on what site from what channel how soon after broadcast make it nearly impossible to know what to expect. Combined with technical inconsistencies from site to site that defeat attempts at "integration", and still widely-scattered content, and even Hulu's efforts at one-stop shopping are marginally useful at best.

• Smart(er) EPGs: online and pocket versions of electronic program guides so you can know what's playing and perhaps take some corresponding action

• Set-top backdoor: program your TiVo or set-top box remotely (see also 'Smart(er) EPGs')

• Sharing: (or, more fashionably, adding "social features" to your TV viewing) create shareable playlists, favorites, or share media artifacts via Facebook, etc.

• Recommendations: like Netflix or Amazon, bring what is more technically known as "collaborative filtering" to television viewing and sharing

Today we have a few prototype examples of features and feature combinations, delivered by everyone from a cable company with an iPhone application, to destination sites like Hulu, to web startups. And when you're trying to help viewers solve a fragmentation problem, is having many fragmented "solutions" in turn actually going to help?

And so, for now, Television Everywhere is largely nowhere. Want to know how to fix some of this? Stay tuned...