Catch up TV gaining momentum

The trend :
The time has come for "On demand TV" and will definitly change traditional audiovisual industry. Catch up TV show the way.

The facts :
Catch up is evolving very fast.
Starting in the USA, it was HomeChoice (now Tiscali) in the UK the first eurpean mover to adopt it.
At that time, there were some uncertainity about it :
the business model of this new way of delivering content,
the content rights management
and the impact on advertising for channels.

Since then most of TV channels provide an on demande catalogue with their own programs or pieces of programs showing their interest in using the new distribution channel that is Internet. But this was not enough.

The first important signal came with the launch of iPlayer enhancing user content management and becoming the access point to reach them.
BBC accounted in june 2008 10 M downloads with its brand succesful new iPlayer. IPlayer was launched on December 2008.

Another evidence that something is changing came from the private beta launch of Hulu, in march 2008. Hulu has been created by NBC and Fox and provides on demand content from both TV producers such as seires, late night shows and other programs. This becomes serious as show the real interest of TV main players to keep this ground under control (even to promote this new way of content delivery). Hulu scores about 100 million downloads a month.

But what wa can consider as the most important event in this playground is the recent agreement of Google with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) (take follows another one with CBS) to feature full-length TV shows and films. TelecomTV points out that it deals with a quick reaction to Hulu launch.

The bottom line :
This is a new model of content distribution based on the availability to deliver itemised contents and real time distribution due to digital content distribution cost collapse and the improvement of broadband networks in terms of capacity and throughput.
As it happens with music, online is changing the way customers consume digital contents and the way aggregators distribute them.