Everyone’s talking about Hulu’s reported move from a free to premium service … now Discovery TV affirms the free model is not sustainable.
Discovery TV’s SVP of Digital Media Distribution, Rebecca Glashow told lightreading.com the free web TV model is “going to kill all our businesses, and certainly [could] kill our ability to create high-quality programming.”
But they have a completely different model than Hulu. Their online model is simply to promote their network. I have long maintained that the only online video business model that works in this cycle is for promotion of monetizeable services: promoting a network, bringing eyeballs to your products and services, creating awareness of a local business, etc.
But you say, “John, there are many web series that have sponsorships.” True, and if you can snare web video sponsorship BEFORE you produce your content, rely on it. If not, now’s not the time to count on ad supported web video. Perhaps in the future (perhaps not!) … but definitely not now. Hulu knows that. Discovery TV knows that. And now … so do you.