Bewkes: 'TV Everywhere' Getting Closer to Reality
By Dylan Stableford
Time Warner held a conference call to discuss its first half financial performance this morning.
Despite lower revenues and profits, Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner’s CEO, said he is excited about TW’s future as a “pure content company.”
Part of that future appears to be “TV Everywhere,” the concept Bewkes has touted for months as entertainment industry’s answer to so-called micropayments in which cable subscribers would be allowed to watch programming on mobile and broadband devices at no additional cost.
“It is the right model for consumers,” Bewkes said during the call.
“Increasingly, consumers want to be able to watch programs when they want, where they want to watch them, and on whichever device they choose.”
More than that, Bewkes said, the concept is “right for the industry – it builds on cable programmers successful dual revenue stream business model,
helping the continued investment in high quality programming” and would allow programming “from broad appeal to niche to succeed financially.”
He said Time Warner -- which struck a trial deal with Comcast for “TV Everywhere” earlier this year -- is in “active discussions with a number of other distributors, cable and satellite distributors to do the exact same thing.”
But he wouldn’t disclose who those distributors are.
Bewkes said the success of HBO On Demand indicates that the market is ready for the concept.
(Bewkes, it’s helpful to note, truly bleeds HBO blood, moving up the ranks as its COO, CFO and eventually CEO between 1986 and 2002.)
“We think it's a very powerful and pretty obvious natural evolution of what consumers will easily embrace."
However, Bewkes admitted, most consumers will continue to watch programming on TVs “for the foreseeable future.”
DOCTOR SUFFERING FINANCIALLY WHEN HE DECIDED TO WORK FOR JACKSON: 
Dr. Conrad Murray was suffering financially with nearly $435,000 in judgments and liens against him over the past two years, according to court documents.
Then he decided to leave his practice and work for Michael Jackson, getting paid $150,000 a month.
Before working with the King of Pop, Murray spent most of his time operating clinics in both Nevada and Texas after graduating from Meharry Medical College, a historically black school in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1989.
He spent his internship and residency years in California.
At the clinics in Houston, Texas, and Las Vegas, Nevada, his patients had been surprised to learn that he would be leaving his private practice to work with Jackson.
LBN-HISTORICAL COMMENTARY By F. SCOTT FITZGERALD:
Whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.
The Great Gatsby (1925)
LBN-MUSIC INSIDER: ***Count Kid Rock out as a fan of Twitter.
"It's gay.
If one more person asks me if I have a Twitter, I'm going to tell them, 'Twitter this [bleep], mother[bleep]er,' " the shaggy-haired rocker tells Rolling Stone.
"I don't have anything to say, and what I have to say is not that relevant.
Anything that is relevant, I'm going to bottle it up and then squeeze it onto a record somewhere."
LBN-DID YOU KNOW:
***Children grow faster in the springtime.
***On average, there are 178 sesame seeds on each McDonalds BigMac Bun.
***The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after President Grover Cleveland's baby daughter Ruth, not the famed baseball player.
***The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
***Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
LBN-QUOTE:
"In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences." - Robert Greene Ingersoll.
LBN-HISTORY:
Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
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