Hot Internet sites Hulu, YouTube and CBS-owned TV.com have become favorite ways for viewers to watch episodes of television shows. It wasn't too long ago that the idea of people turning to their computers to catch episodes of such series as “The Office," “Wizards of Waverly Place" and “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" wasn't considered a serious threat to the broadcast and cable networks.
Allowing free viewing of marquee prime-time shows on the Internet is causing anxiety among some in the media industry, who worry that the practice mirrors the potentially fatal error newspapers made of losing subscribers by not charging for online editions.
TV program producers and distributors “are desperate not to make the same mistakes by giving away their intellectual property for free," said Craig Moffett, an analyst with Bernstein Research. “Content companies seem to be terrified."
The cable networks and studios want to preserve their current relationship, which generates significant revenue and underwrites the high cost of producing TV shows, and prevent new powerhouses Hulu and YouTube from rewriting the rules.
But individual media companies are divided over how to tame the Internet while also embracing it, with Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co., two of the biggest players in both cable networks and Hollywood, taking contrasting views.
The differences were on display Thursday at a cable TV industry trade show in Washington, D.C., where the chiefs of the two media giants outlined opposing approaches.
