Posted by Brian McCullough
If you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, then you know we love nothing more than to find new ways to watch tv at work in your web browser.
Today the news is that CBS has done a classic TV dump and you can now watch vintage episodes of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone easily and free online.
Our favorite TV on the web site is still Hulu.
Pop quiz: after all this time dragging their feet, why are the tv networks suddenly rushing to put their shows on the web instead of going the route of the record companies and making their own customers into enemies?
Part of the reason for the rush to online video may be that advertising in online shows works better than on broadcast TV. Research from a media consultancy firm shows that web video viewers are 47 percent more engaged by advertising than traditional TV views. That may be due to the fact that it’s nearly impossible to avoid commercials embedded in online episodes, but whatever the reason, the finding demonstrates that streamed programming could become a cash cow for the networks.
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