• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 20, 2015

To be frank, TV Everywhere  may be just TV Somewhere.

In any event, it isn’t ubiquitous; not what traditional TV executives want to see right now. And -- despite what many have said -- why do you see major media companies looking to strike out on their own with their own stand-alone cloud-based TV service? Protection for the future, seems to be the quiet answer.

During his earnings phone call, David Zaslav, president/chief executive officer of Discovery Communications said:  “If TV Everywhere doesn’t develop as it should, it will require all of us to go direct to consumer because the cable guys just aren’t getting it done.” 

Ooooh. And I thought those stand-alone services were targeting only niche consumers who haven’t bought into traditional pay TV providers’ all-you-can-eat packages of up to 200 channels?

That said, Discovery doesn’t have specific plans to start a stand-alone service in the U.S. -- though it is already testing one in Norway.

You can sense there might be a panic among traditional TV companies over TV Everywhere --- for a number of reasons, including an almost industry-wide slowdown in advertising revenues for television.

If there is a business play for getting money directly from TV consumers -- as CBS All Access is doing with its stand-alone service -- not just from TV distributors through carriage/retransmission fees, then that is a pot of money few want to turn down.

What’s the time frame of this business panic? Three years, which isn’t very long in TV terms.

Zaslav: “The question is, what happens four, five or six years from now? Will there be a peel off of the direct to consumer business?” Zaslav doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of this business in any event.

Mind you, there are other companies who continue to tout their growing TV Everywhere expansion -- Time Warner and NBCUniversal among them.

Imagine there’s a big obstacle when it comes to inputting one’s log-in/password multiple times to get through all  frequently visited TV apps/areas. Perhaps a few TV platforms get signed on, but other TV apps might get left out of the mix. For consumers, this activity seem too tedious at the minimum -- and too onerous when it comes to “trust” of your traditional TV provider. 

An easier, more universal interaction -- “authentication,” perhaps  -- with TV Everywhere is needed, as well as a friendly (or any) national marketing campaign.

But what about getting everyone on the same page -- as an industry?