Cable Companies Want to Control Online TV: Now This Sounds Like a Bad Idea

Enjoy the online TV party while it lasts, because if it is up to your favorite cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner, access to TV shows might soon go behind a paywall that will be controlled by cable or satellite TV providers. Just as the newspaper industry doesn't know how to react to the new challenges posed by the Internet, the cable industry, too, is trying to remain relevant in a world where appointment TV is a thing of the past thanks to the proliferation of DVRs, and where TV networks and producers can just put their content on the web and users can watch these shows on their TVs and in their living rooms thanks to cheap hardware devices from Apple and Roku, and software like Boxee.

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Currently, only a few households have abandoned their cable TV in favor of going online only, but this number is surely growing and looking forward, the cable industry is surely seeing this as a threat, especially after analyzing the current state of the newspaper industry, which is facing a very similar situation, where free online content is driving readers away from their legacy product.

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Now, Comcast and Time Warner are about to start an trial with about 5,000 cable customers that would give these households access to TV programs on the web. Of course, the real test here is not whether the cable companies can deliver online TV over their networks, but whether they can figure out a good way to 'authenticate' households that have a cable subscription.

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