Comments on: How Glenn Beck wants to disrupt cable

By: McBeese

McBeese — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:26:06 +0000

Jacob, Glenn Beck has stated that President Obama has a deep-seated hatred of white people (his words), and that our Obama government shares many parallels with Hitler’s Nazi regime. It is all available online if you would like to verify these points.

It is tech newsworthy that someone like Glenn Beck is pushing the boundaries of new media distribution. I find it sad, however, that anyone wants to listen to what he has to say. Please do your homework and listen with a critical ear.

By: jacob

jacob — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:01:04 +0000

I have been searching for hours to try to figure out if I could get Glenn’s new show on my parent’s Sony Bravia without having to buy another device. I have an Apple TV that gets MLB.tv so I’m hoping when the show starts I will be able to get it on that.(I wont be too disappointed if I can’t.) I had always thought that internet capable TVs would have the ability to download apps. Let me know if anyone finds out anything that might be helpful:)

By: Scott Jensen

Scott Jensen — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:41:42 +0000

While I don’t agree with his social conservatism (or evangelical religious nature), I wish him good luck. The more people that take a shot at creating a new business model for online TV, the better. I would hope that if he can interest advertisers, he take them on and start lowering his subscription price until his service can be offered free.

By: Hank

Hank — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 08:37:03 +0000

They’re doing a two tier subscription model. I thought that he would be doing shorter segments organized by subject matter. Maybe the on demand stuff (only available for 30 days per person) will be organized that way. Either way I was hoping that he would drop the scheduled, long, live, shows and start doing shorter, focused, fully on-demand content organized by subject and payed for by highly valued advertising. He isn’t taking advantage of the strengths of the internet. This might even be a worse model than what he had with FOX News. We’ll see, but for now I’m sorry that I got my hopes up. I thought his move would become a force for the good of new media but he just dragging all the weaknesses of the old media in with him.

By: DougS

DougS — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 07:32:50 +0000

Mandi the thing you are missing here is that if Beck is successful, you are potentially seeing a paradigm shift where TV stars are giving up lucrative TV deals to create their own franchise online with direct distribution. Of course, Leo has been doing this, but in some respect he had to do it out of necessity as TechTV basically went away and it was hard to find a home for his niche the way he wanted to do it. Beck has millions of viewers each day and millions more on the radio, so him choosing the online distribution model over TV is a big deal and anyone looking to do the same will be hoping he is successful. Maybe Keith Olbermann should have gone that route.

By: McBeese

McBeese — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:44:25 +0000

I’m always happy to see newcomers migrating to the new media models, but it saddens me to think that Beck might have an interested audience.

By: Ryan Lawler

Ryan Lawler — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 23:17:58 +0000

@Dan Agostino – MLBAM already powers live video streams for a number of third parties, including (I believe) the NBA and March Madness on Demand. So providing white-label outsourced services is nothing really new from MLBAM — although this is the first time I’ve heard of them providing those services for a non-sports organization.

By: Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:19:04 +0000

Mandi, Rev3 and Twit are ad-supported. Beck is doing subscription. Big difference.

By: Dan Agostino

Dan Agostino — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:06:41 +0000

Janko: I was looking for more on what the New York Times story on this topic revealed: specifically, that MLB Advanced Media will be powering this from an Internet video standpoint. Could you dig into whether this means that MLBAM will be offering this type of service to others? Or if Major League Baseball just has a sweet spot for Glenn Beck?

By: Mandi

Mandi — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:54:20 +0000

I kind of feel like this is the same thing Revision3 and Leo Laporte’s TWiT network have been doing for years, and it’s not particularly innovative. The only difference being Beck is someone “the masses” know about (rather than REV3 or TWiT which are more niche). I’ll be extremely sad if Beck gets any sort of credit for this “innovation”.