At present the Intemet poses a puny threat to this commercial redoubt. ComScore, which tracks Intermet use, reckons the average American web user spends about 10 minutes a day viewing online video, from water skiing squirrels on You Tube to the latest episode of heroes" on Hulu. That compares with roughly 300 minutes spent watching life television. But the audience for online video is young and growing, the barriers that prevent people from piping it into their television are likely to fall and the broadcast networks are quickly moving online.
On April 30 ABC, which is owned by Disney, became the third large broadcaster to make many of its programs available free on Hulu. Disney will also take a stake in the fast-growing online-video site
Time Wamer does not want to row against this current. But neither does it want to be swept away. If the overriding fear a few years ago was that television might suffer the fate of the music industry.which failed to give consumers what they wanted and was ravaged by pirates, the worry now is that it will follow the newspaper industry, and give too much away, the idea that it should be free and
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