Two of the “Qs and As” with Boxee CEO Avner Rosen that Boxee distributed this week are very relevant to current and future trends in the industry. One relates to content producers selling direct to consumers without the involvement of broadcasters and pay-TV companies. The other is about whether a pay-TV company should be able to distribute content nationwide via the Net.
The following is taken directly from Boxee:
Q: Roku recently cut a deal with Wealth TV, which has faced challenges getting distribution on pay-TV operators. Is Boxee looking to do something similar? Could you build applications for TV networks that can’t get wide pay-TV distribution?
A: Yes, I think so. We’re talking with many of the media companies who are already offering their content on pay-TV. It’s a world where it’s harder and harder to penetrate and get those deals done, and renew some of those deals, especially if you’re a small niche content provider. Between what Apple TV and Microsoft are doing, and Sony and Roku and Boxee, there’s a critical mass of over-the-top distribution into people’s living rooms, and I expect more and more content providers to want to have their content available on those platforms, and probably a lot of it is going to be behind pay walls.
Q: Do you think the industry should move to a dumb pipe model where Comcast could distribute its Xfinity programming to homes nationwide, and other service providers would profit by selling broadband?
A: I think so. The separation between access and content aggregation is already happening. You have 20 million Netflix subscribers, and Hulu Plus subscribers are going strong. People are already paying the cableco or telco for access and then paying for content to somebody else. If you’re a pay-TV company and paying in some cases billions of dollars per year for content rights, you ought to be able to leverage that and grow your subscriber base beyond your footprint. If the pay-TV companies are going to come to the conclusion that embracing over-the-top is important for them, I think they could become great partners for us and maybe we can be in a position where we can run our software on their devices.
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