Thoughts about subscription TV

I’m trying to formulate my thoughts on subscription TV in the wake of the cancelation of my favorite show ‘Pushing Daisies’. There are two online companies that’s are using voluntary subscriptions to subsidize their ad revenue and they seem to be very successful at it. And not only does it subsidize their income, but it also provides them with a listener engagement figure that they can show to advertisers.  Sure, ‘Pushing Daisies’ had 100k people sign an online petition, but imagine having 50k people subscribe to the show for $2 a week, now that’s a solid measure to sell to an advertiser.

The two companies that are using this model are Revision3 and TWiT.TV.  They are both online ‘broadcasters (or more specifically ‘netcasters’).  Both companies have created successful models that involve both paid advertising and voluntary subscriptions.  In the past I might have felt this model as repugnant but when you view something like H.B.O. you can clearly see that the best programming is created when money is not an object and money is not controlled by advertisers.

Those are just some preliminary and completely incomplete opinions.  What are you thoughts?

-Josh