Differing business models for online video

"The business model for online TV is not really nailed down and the revenue outlook is not yet attractive [which is] paradoxical because internet — social media, online video — is increasingly becoming integrated into consumers' lives," said consumer technology analyst Kaan Yigit, president of Toronto-based Solutions Research Group.
Not that businesses lack for ideas. Cable companies like Time Warner in the United States and Rogers Communications in Canada have been pushing for a business model built around a cable online video portal, where a company's cable subscribers can access broadcast content online, no matter who their internet provider is.
Broadcast networks in the United States and Canada that own the rights to their shows and those they acquire from abroad have taken the online distribution model directly to their customers, through either their own websites — as is the case here in Canada with CTV, Global and CBC — or by teaming up with an online service like Hulu, a joint venture of NBC, Fox and ABC that is currently available only in the United States.
There is also the downloadable media approach favoured by Apple's iTunes, where television episodes and movies are purchased, in much the same way you would buy a DVD at a video store. But even Apple is experimenting with streaming video through its Apple TV set-top box.
And there are some, like Bell Canada, who are dabbling in a bit of everything. Bell launched Bell TV Online in October last year as an early experiment in the portal idea Rogers has proposed, has the Bell Video Store, offering downloadable content like the iTunes store, and also offers some video through its Sympatico/MSN internet portal.
"We have three different commercial models, three different web properties in this area at the moment," Gary Smith, the president of Bell Video Group at Bell Canada, told the CRTC during the new media hearings in March.
"It will be interesting to see which ones succeed over time," he said.