Reporter Chris Gaither does a creditable job of summarizing the fitful, sometimes confounding, generally unpredictable path U.S. television shops have taken when it comes to putting their content on
the Web. In the early days, as he points out, the networks reflexively relied on the big portal sites--Yahoo, MSN, and others--to handle the job, since they knew how to stream video better than
anyone else did. In the months since, the networks have sometimes tried selling their content via Apple's iPod software or simply making it available on their own Web sites. These sites have matured
considerably, Gaither says. And this has led to uncertainty about the best delivery and business models for big TV. "I think the portals have been somewhat surprised at the efforts underway of TV
content companies to go directly to consumers, and circumvent them as gatekeepers," says Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner. "It probably leaves the people at Google, Yahoo, etc., scratching their head
as to where they're going to fit in."
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