Monday, February 16, 2009

Will We All Pay to Watch Commercials?

No, that headline's no fish-hook, it's a real question.

There's a lot of ways we get content to our various screens. See the New York Times Magazine issue on "Screens." (Come back for the link tomorrow.)

It probably started with YouTube - whose videos grow longer and more professional as time goes by. And last September, Amazon joined Hulu, iTunes and Netflix in streaming significant media.

But today's MediaPost OnlineVideoInsider takes on the topic of your ISP charging you for watching content online if you go over a monthly "limit" of bandwidth. And what if that content carries ads? Will consumers revolt? After all, we watch commercials before movies. And cable TV has ads, even though we pay for the extra channels on our TV service. And, accually, we already pay a fee to our ISP to have Hulu deliver an episode of 30 Rock. Should they charge you more for delivering more, or should you be rewarded for being a loyal customer?