TV's Evolution Brings New Profit Squabbles

[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Meg James]
Beginning this month, many Comcast Corp. cable subscribers who miss an episode of the CBS hit "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" can pay to see it later. Next month, they will be able to use the same video-on-demand service to watch previous installments of the network's reality game show "The Amazing Race." But when consumers fork over their 99 cents to see forensic investigators or globe-trotting contestants, who gets the money? And who controls the so-called VOD window? That's what CBS and Walt Disney Co.'s Touchstone Television have been squabbling over lately. Ever since November, when CBS and Comcast announced their video-on-demand partnership, Touchstone has been crying foul, say several executives on both sides of the deal. The reason: Touchstone, which co-owns "The Amazing Race" with CBS, wasn't consulted before the deal was struck. The Touchstone-CBS spat is hardly unique. As television executives scramble to exploit new technologies and make their shows available in as many formats as possible, they are facing scrutiny from many quarters -- retailers, advertisers, TV producers, actors and writers -- that fear their interests are being ignored. Because existing licensing agreements signed as little as two years ago do not address how to split revenues from video-on-demand or video iPod downloads, every new deal -- however small -- is being closely watched. Hollywood's guilds are particularly concerned. Labor leaders fear a repeat of the early 1980s, when movie executives convinced them that revenue from videocassette tapes would never amount to much. The guilds accepted a much smaller cut of the profits from home entertainment, then watched as VHS and, later, DVDs mushroomed into a multibillion-dollar-a-year business and the studios' biggest moneymaker.
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-tv17jan17,1,2126169.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business
(requires registration)