Google TV making H'wd execs nervous (LAT)

By Nancy Tartaglione

The Los Angeles Times today reports that Google TV, an ambitious new technology that would marry the Internet with traditional television, has many in Hollywood worried that the advent will upend the entertainment industry just like the Internet ravaged the music and newspaper businesses.

Via Google TV, viewers would be able to watch TV shows and movies unshackled from the broadcast networks or cable channels on which they air.

And the prospect of Google getting into television frightens many.

By bringing the Web directly to the living room TV, entertainment industryites fear the technology will encourage consumers to end their cable and satellite subscriptions while others believe it will fan piracy since Google refuses to block access to bootleg movies and television shows, the LAT notes.

Perhaps most troubling to Hollywood is that Google doesn't yet know how it will make money and whether it intends to compensate the studios and networks for the content.

"It's kind of an end-run around their control of signal, and that's scary," Harold Vogel, president of media investment firm Vogel Capital Management, told the LAT of broadcasters' response to Google TV. "Because if you don't control the signal, then you can't provide your own advertising. It really destroys the legacy business model."

Lazard Capital Markets media analyst Barton Crockett predicts Internet video will be the biggest thing to happen in the living room since the DVR.

But, he told the newspaper, "I understand being scared of Google. They are big, smart, powerful and disruptive. It makes them scary from the moment they enter the room. But they also represent the future."

The team leading the Google TV effort - Dureau and Rishi Chandra - believe technological innovation can make television better and more profitable for everyone.

"We fundamentally believe the advertising mechanisms we have online will improve ad products on television, whether we do it or someone else does it," Chandra told the LAT.