Online TV Revenues Set To Increase 10-Fold Over Five Years
By David Kaplan - Mon 29 Jan 2007 07:08 AM PST
The latest report to try to nail down the future benefits of online TV projects downloads of TV shows and films will grow 10-fold in the next five years, amounting to $6.3 billion worldwide in revenues by 2012. The report from British market researcher Informa views growing broadband penetration and the trend towards legal peer-to-peer services as the main drivers advancing greater acceptance of IPTV. Despite the incredibly upbeat view of online TV profitability, Informa says there is one major obstacle: the persistence of internet piracy. Informa’s report accuses some content providers of repeating the mistakes of record companies when it comes to dealing with piracy; i.e., companies are burying their heads in the sand and hoping the issue will simply go away. While crediting some broadcasters, such as CBS, with attacking piracy head-on, Informa said too many seem either uncertain of how to address the problem. Others are unwilling to act in the belief that they might generate unwanted publicity and cause the situation to worsen.
The music industry did nothing for too long, and then tried heavy-handed legal action that proved largely ineffective, Informa notes. Having embraced online distribution, the music industry is now seeing positive results from web-based services and broadcasters and content producers can follow their successful examples. So far, Japan and South Korea are expected to lead other nations in terms of broadband penetration in 2012, with 91 percent and 81 percent of households subscribing to broadband respectively. Informa sees the UK following with 79 percent, and the US with 76 percent. Release
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