Since this move has been brewing for a while it doesn't really come as much of a surprise, but this morning's announcements regarding a partnership between TWC and Comcast on the initiative put it officially back on the table for ridicule. Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts held a joint media conference to promote what Bewkes calls "TV Everywhere," a plan to make some programming not currently offered online available for web streaming — only to authenticated users who subscribe to existing cable service already. In an ironic PR-speak doublethink moment, Bewkes referred to this plan as “taking the TV industry to a new era” ... a new era in which one must continue to be subscribed to the old era.

Much like the whole metered broadband brouhaha before it, TV Everywhere is a thinly veiled attempt to wedge some anti-competitive policy against the coming onslaught of internet video, which could potentially disintermediate the cable companies as the monopolistic content delivery pipes they have been for the past several decades. Commensurate with that cozy monopoly were comfy monopoly-inflated prices to consumers, which cable operators enjoyed and kicked back some of the wealth to media companies — making them strange bedfellows despite being quasi-enemies on paper.

Neither the cable companies nor the media companies want to see this hugely inflated cash cow dry up. Their strategy, much like the music, print and film industries before them, seems to be waging an expensive war to stave off the future as long as impossible instead of embracing it. Instead of engaging creatively with the beneficial aspects of the internet to develop new services that meet new consumer demands in a world of Everything On Demand, Bewkes and Roberts want to make sure that consumer enjoyment of video over the internet is irrevocably attached to a vestigial link to its old business model.

What would have been a refreshing revelation is a service tier for consumers who don't already subscribe to cable. Those are the customers cable companies are going to need to pick up if they hope to stay relevant over the next 5 years as the IPTV industry continues to heat up and scorch the old filler model of a cable subscription which, much like the filler album model of the music industry before it was disintermediated by iTunes per track purchasing, tries to force customers into buying a package that includes mostly what they don't want just to get the few things they do.

Here's what cable companies should be doing instead:

• offering an online-only service tier to attract folks who have cancelled their cable subscriptions in anger or are young enough to have never thought about subscribing 
• offering a la carte channel pricing instead of arbitrary program bundles designed to make you pay for the crap you don't want
• partnering with fresh new media applications like Boxee to deliver freemium levels of programming
• partnering with fresh new online content creators to sponsor and distribute innovative programming that adds diversity to the typical Hollywood schlock-fest
• sack up, lay down some optical fiber and invest in needed infrastructure upgrades to deliver the level of service they've offered and yet disingenuously tried to welch on in a misguided attempt to prevent competition from online video

Thoughts?

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