NBC Forms Separate Company To Keep Its Affiliates Happy

Culture

from the a-plan-for-keeping-the-channel-happy dept

While Disney/ABC has said that ABC television affiliates need to learn to suck it up and deal with the fact that video content is moving online, it appears that others TV networks are taking a different approach. Just last week, the news came out that Fox was going to cut its affiliates in on any profits from online activities, and now NBC has stepped up to the plate — forming a separate joint venture between itself and its affiliates to split up the spoils of online content. However, this appears to be a slightly different beast than what we were talking about with Disney and Fox. Instead of covering the use of prime time NBC programming (which isn’t included in the deal), this is more about taking the content from the affiliates, such as news programs, and helping put it online in a unified manner. This way they can sell advertising across the entire thing and everyone gets a piece of it. Other than that, it seems pretty vague. What may be most interesting as the networks figure out how to deal with all of their affiliates in this new era, is whether or not they start to feel that the affiliate model no longer makes sense. It could quickly become a legacy issue that the networks have to “deal with,” rather than a better model for handling local programming.