“Adam-12” is just sitting there. So are “Kojak” and “Lou Grant” and “WKRP in Cincinnati” and “McHale’s Navy.” They’re all free (sort of). Just waiting for you to click on them and play.
That’s right — click on them. For all of you who haven’t worked up the nerve — or the interest — to watch network television on your computer (and that’s the vast majority of people in this country), you should know a few important things:
*It’s easier than you think.
*It has a lot of drawbacks.
*You’d be surprised what’s out there — for free.
The Luddite inside you may scoff now, but soon going to Apple’s iTunes store or Amazon’s Unbox might be second nature. You will then officially be part of the next generation of people who have contributed to a revenue stream that networks and cable channels hope will one day be so lucrative that it will offset production costs or pad the company’s bottom line and result in some executive profit participation packages.
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Once iTunes helped revolutionize the music business and began to make inroads in the television business, the media conglomerates that own TV networks and channels began to hatch a plan to compete (or, more accurately, they panicked).
Of the broadcast networks, only NBC refuses to do business with iTunes. Instead NBC joined with Fox to create Hulu.com. Both CBS and the CW (from the same corporate family) are there, as is ABC. But the idea is that everyone wants his own empire and will seek it in his back yard (though none of the other companies are as bitter as NBC and willing to walk away from potential profits on iTunes).
And yet having each network going it alone has yielded a mixed bag of results for the online watcher. Nearly every network and cable channel has a Web site touting “free” clips and full episodes (with commercial interruptions, of course). On the plus side, these commercials — usually between three and four per show — are short. The downside is that they’re generally one ad from one company repeated over and over. It makes you think — oh, about three or four times per episode — that it might be worth $1.99 to download it without commercials from iTunes.
And yet for many people the idea of paying for something they can get free is a non-starter. So if the networks want to change more than 50 years of habit and history by creating a second online viewing option, they need to make it free. They also need to make the experience drastically better.
Here’s a brief rundown of the network sites:
ABC (abc.go.com): The best player of the bunch (some shows can be streamed in high definition) but not nearly enough variety and nothing from the vault.
CBS (cbs.com/innertube): Ugh. The worst. Called “Innertube” (or not, depending on how you access the site), a lot of the touted full episodes are not actually there.
NBC (nbc.com): A balky player that inserts ads at awkward moments, NBC at least has some of what it calls “vintage” shows for free.
Fox (fox.com/fod): There’s a beta-testing “on-demand” feature for full episodes, but the spinning wheel you need to click on to choose shows never seems to want to stop. There are also about four ads per show and too small a selection of vault material.
Many cable channels are equally inept on their Web sites, though some, such as Sci Fi (scifi.com), end up having what you’re looking for (“Battlestar Galactica”), while other, bigger channels such as Discovery (dsc.discovery.com) have surprisingly limited options.
The best “free” site ends up being Hulu.com, the collaborative effort between NBC and Fox. It has a good library of shows with an eclectic mix (“Astro Boy,” “Barney Miller,” “Flipper,” “What’s Happening!) from within the vast corporate expanse of Fox and NBC Universal, which helps but ultimately falls short.