Time Warner inks Flash DRM deal with Adobe

This is a from a blog by Paul Sweeting, Media Wonk
ContentAgenda

http://www.contentagenda.com/blog/1500000150/post/890041489.html

[A few links are in the original]

Time Warner goes all Flash - March 3, 2009

Another piece of what looks increasingly like a Grand Bargain Time Warner is seeking to strike with its various distribution partners fell into place this morning with the announcement that three Time Warner divisions--Turner Broadcasting, Warner Bros. and HBO--are partnering with Adobe Systems to develop new online and desktop video applications around Time Warner content. According to the announcement, the companies "will also collaborate to accelerate the development of digital rights management for the Web and desktop, and metadata and audience measurement solutions to improve the discovery and monetization of content." As part of the deal, Time Warner will utilize Adobe's Flash platform to create and distribute the content.

The announcement comes one day after an interview with Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes appeared in Ad Age in which he discussed Time Warner's plans to make more of its cable TV content available online, but only to those who already subscribe to a cable, satellite or telco pay-TV service. The rights-management and flexible business logic built into the Flash platform could be crucial to implementing such a business model.

More to the point, Time Warner's apparently ambitious goals for leveraging digital platforms helps explain its interest in placating pay-TV operators by limiting online access to its content to paid-up
subscribers: Without first buying off cable operators, Time Warner would likely face fierce push-back on its efforts to raise carriage fees in response to making more of its content available online.

It's an interesting and audacious approach to the problem of trying to develop new, digital business models without unduly undercutting the current model on which financing production is dependent. But it's a bit like the three-way shootout in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,"
where you really need to shoot both opponents at the same time using a single gun.

But if you have to choose, go for Lee Van Cleef first.