begin offering certain top prime-time network TV shows and cable shows
as video-on-demand. Both will charge 99 cents per show but the DirecTV
feeds will have the commercials edited out. On-demand programming has
been a big hit with Comcast, whose cable subscribers have ordered over
a billion such programs already. A cable analyst observed that this is
“the beginning of the end of the TV schedule.”
Grokster Closed Down – File-swapping pioneer web site Grokster
has agreed to shut down operations and pay up to $50 million in damages
to the record industry for encouraging its users to trade in copyright
music and movie files. The lawsuit, which has gone on for four years,
averts further legal wrangling for Grokster, but its codefendant in the
case, Streamcast Networks, who are behind the Morpheus file-sharing
network, plans to keep fighting the record labels and movie studios in
the courts. The success of Apple’s iTunes and others has deterred
some of the biggest file-sharing networks, reducing digital piracy to
being a tolerable nuisance instead of a huge drain. The major
record labels have long complained that copyright violation is
responsible for their current lowered profits.
Adults More Accepting of New Technolog – A survey of 1174 U.S.
adults by Harris Interactive shows that 14% of those surveyed feel that
new technology is usually better, and many say that they have in the
past year become much more accepting of new technology. The director of
the survey says the results may suggest that the number of early
adopters is on the rise. Of likely purchases during the next six
months, after home computers and printers the top choices were 11% for
TV and home theater and 9% for a TV content provider. The major factors
impacting consumers purchasing decisions were ease of use, customer
service and “no hassle installation.”
Classical Programming Moving to Satellite and Internet – The
number of classical radio stations in the U.S. has fallen from 70 in
November of 2001 to only 31 today, about evenly divided between
commercial and public radio stations. No NPR stations in major cities
such as San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit and Philadelphia air the
classics anymore. (This may change somewhat with the advent of
terrestrial digital broadcasting, since stations will often have two
separate services and all-talk stations can run classical programming
on one of theirs.) Both satellite radio services are expanding their
classical program offerings as a result and the expansion of Internet
music stations has included a number of classical options – both Net
feeds of existing stations and Net-only broadcasters.
