But when I tried to watch Part 1 of the Opening Ceremonies, up came this message, along with a sign-in screen:

“You have selected a premium video (e.g. live stream or full-event replay).”

So I played along, and selected my HOME provider as Comcast.  Unfortunately, I had audaciously canceled my cable subscription a few months back, because (a) I wasn’t watching that much TV; (b) My $10 antenna was pulling basic network channels in pristine HD; (c) I could stream Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. to my PS3 via an inexpensive add-on called PlayOn.

I still pay $100 a month for internet and phone, but that wasn’t enough for Comcast, or NBC.  “It appears you don’t have a Comcast Video Subscription” declared the passive-aggressive pop-up.  Thanks to IP blocking, I wasn’t able to watch any of the Canadian broadcast coverage online from CTV.  So I was relegated to the lame highlights reel.  As one blogger commented: “Those whom don’t pay for cable — SOL.”

I’ve been saying this for months, but now it seems to be coming true: the powers-that-be do not want the web to disrupt the lucrative world of cable fees.  Hulu is next: I predict you’re going to need a cable subscription to watch content on this still-free streaming video site.  Advertising (“digital pennies”) isn’t enough to cover the costs of big-budget broadcast’s production and distribution (“analog dollars”).  NBC owns half of Hulu, and Comcast will soon own NBC — do you see where this is going?  And what does this mean for the future of free broadcast TV, which we’ve had since the 1940′s?

Obviously, we should acknowledge that these are for-profit companies that need to monetize their content.  NBC has had a stranglehold on the Olympics for years, delaying coverage into prime time in order to maximize its massive payout to the International Olympic Committee (it’s said the network will lose $250 million on the Vancouver games).  As I write this, we’re watching NBC (on TV) as it plays up the drama of Apolo Ohno’s race for the gold in 1500m speed skating (pre-recorded), while Ohno has already declared his feelings via Twitter about how things ended:

Wow…historical night for me…I have absolutely NO REGRETS…thank you all for supporting me…I’m on cloud 9…skated a brutal hard race!

The Internet is clearly harder to control, hence a recent, increasing propensity for platform “lock-up” (NBC.com’s use of Facebook Connect), and potentially the next chapter in the story of the web with the emergence of a new order in dominant players (what is Apple’s iPad but a really sophisticated, consumption-friendly content appliance?).  The Wild West of the Internet is quickly becoming suburbanized.

Originally posted to Storyteller Uprising.

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I told Comcast, no hard feelings.  We kept their broadband and voice services.  I said, we needed more “breathing room” so I could work on my book (presently entitled Trust Me: How to Tell Stories in a Credibility-Starved World).

I was being truthful.  That said, that I’m also saving $1000 a year.  I’m ingesting content specific to my interests (streaming Hulu and Netflix through my Playstation 3).  And I’m putting the savings to media that matters most to me: public radio (KUOW, KEXP), the Seattle Times Sunday paper, and a dead-tree subscription to the Wall Street Journal.

Image from zeropaid.com

Thanks to three recent articles in that same Wall Street Journal, I now also believe there’s a higher purpose to this decentralization of my media choices.  Because once again, large institutions with a vested interest in maintaining their power aren’t too pleased that people like me are making such choices.

Fortuitously, my colleague Kathy Gill commented on two of those Journal articles in Flip The Media posts immediately preceding this one.  I’ve linked to her thoughts, and added my own here:

Rupert Murdoch’s op-ed: He had me at”the future of journalism is more promising than ever.”  I also agreed with him that advertising could no longer sustain news.  But then he called for further media deregulation that would allow for cross-ownership between broadcast and newspapers. I firmly believe that it was deregulation in the 1980′s that kick-started journalism’s sad demise, producing a wasteland of one-newspaper towns and conglomerate-controlled broadcasters (I used to work for one of those broadcasters).  That’s when Americans began to lose faith in journalism.  This would only make it worse for us as citizens, and make him richer as a media titan.

Publishers announcing that they would delay the issuance of e-books: As a Kindle owner, I found this artificial hold-back to be just a tad offensive, and yet more proof of the backwards-thinking publishing industry.  It’s clear there’s a power struggle between publishers and retailers like Amazon.  But from my vantage point, I benefit.  I read more books, because I have more access to them.  “Industry preservation” like this is akin to medieval monks transcribing even slower as if it would somehow impede the printing press revolution.  These once powerful media institutions are losing control of how they manage content, and they don’t like it.  At all.

by Alan(ator) via Creative Commons on Flickr

And then I spied this article this morning: The Rabbit-Ear Wars, which contemplates the sale of the freely available broadcast network spectrum to mobile providers.  Danger!  I’m already well aware that I’m one of a growing minority who have canceled cable to take advantage of streaming media.  This is of concern to cable companies, as well as cable providers.  And it’s one reason (in addition to the lucrative cable fees) why Comcast wants control of NBC.  At some point, they’re going to find a way to seal this loophole and start charging broadband users for access to sites such as Hulu.  Fine.  It’s their property, as owners of NBC Universal, they’re now content creators, they’re entitled.  But in a backhanded way, it also limits the use of my internet service — especially because they’re one of the few broadband providers in the country.  What if they also start arguing that my I’m using too much bandwidth by accessing other multimedia sites too often?:

[T]he move means Comcast will control every step of the system from content creation to delivery, and could easily begin preventing customers from accessing competing content or charging them more to do so than they would normally as a sort of a penalty. (Comcast-NBC Merger and Importance of Net Neutrality)

And now, extrapolating from the Rabbit Ears article, there’s now a chance that the only way to get basic network content would be through some sort of Comcast-like provider pipeline, diverting even more money and control their way.  I just paid $10 for a set of rabbit ears that pulls in 13 basic channels in pristine high-definition — for free.  I just have to sit through the commercials — as we all once did before the advent of Hulu, iTunes, Tivo, and even VCR’s.  I’ll accept that trade-off

These recent developments have me deeply concerned that the brave new world that we celebrate in our graduate communications program — of media diversity and democratization thanks to the networked age — is illusory.  Now that powerful interests have woken up to the fact that they have much to lose in this new ecosystem, they’ll pull whatever strings necessary to regain control.

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