To be clear, ABC, NBC and CBS are not stopping their over-the-air programming from being accessed via Google TV, which is only now just going on sale. Watching programs that come from your cable or satellite feed are unaffected. But online versions of network programming — on the sites of the broadcasters, which are ordinarily accessible from any computer — are not available via Google TV, the Wall Street Journal first reported Friday.

And the reason is clearly to further postpone the time when you can cut the cord.

Convergence has been a hot topic for more than a decade but Google TV is the first serious attempt to combine the internet and broadcast television in sort of simple “one-click” way. It’s not about web surfing or e-mailing from your couch, but rather getting easy access to programs off the web as easily as you’d change channels. And, thanks to the broadcasters themselves, a lot of professional content already lives online.

In Google’s perfect world you pick up your remote and search for Star Trek and get it, whether it’s on Netflix, your media library or your cable company’s on-demand list. Google gets into your living room with a new way to provide search, and all the ways it has to make money off that.

With Google TV, it is selling convergence for dummies. There are already a myriad of other ways to patch your computer into your home entertainment system so that (say) you can watch online versions of programs hosted by Hulu Plus on your big screen TV. But Google TV provides a neat system and interface which makes it unnecessary for you tie up your computer, figure out all the cabling and use as many different interfaces as there are services.

And it comes at a time of dizzying, overlapping options so numerous it’s difficult to assess what you “need.” There are a plethora of boxes which deliver content from Netflix and Amazon and web sources. With Tivo, you can search for videos on Google-owned YouTube. As screens get larger they are also getting smaller; TV on your smart phone or iPad are here now and you can use them to watch online programming in your living room just as easily as on your commute.

So it’s far from a certainty that the convenience of Google TV is enough to break through anyway — but it’s a very tough sell when so much potential content is out of bounds and it’s hard to explain what you have left without it.

Make no mistake: IP-delivered programming will be huge. The networks know it, and even though they put much of their own content online the business models of broadcasting the internet are miles apart.

As Michael Learnmonth writes in AdAge, online version of prime-time programs are part of a marketing scheme carefully devised so as not to kill the broadcast revenue stream.

“The networks aren’t blocking Google TV because it’s Google. They are blocking Google TV because it is putting a web TV show, with web TV show economics, on a TV, which would be incredibly disruptive to their business,” Learnmonth writes. “The reason the networks are blocking Google TV and Boxee (and Hulu is still PC-only) is about ad revenue: they don’t get enough of it from the web. And letting you watch “Glee” on your TV, but via the web and Google TV, means substituting high broadcast revenue for lower digital revenue.”

Google went into this eyes open. And while it has tried to come to  terms with the networks, it freely admits that it actually has no say in the matter of what you get to watch using Google TV.

“Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC,” Google said in a statement. “But it is ultimately the content owner’s choice to restrict their fans from accessing their content on the platform.”

Follow us for disruptive tech news: John C. Abell and Epicenter on Twitter.

See Also:

• Why You (Still) Can’t Cut the TV Cord: It’s Not Technical, It’s Business
• Networks Proving A Tough Sell for Google TV (Surprise)
• Google TV Revealed: One Screen to Rule Them All
• 7 Ways to Watch Web Video Without Google TV
• Cable Worries About Web Video As Fee Disputes Grow
• Logitech Google TV Box Embarrasses Apple TV
• Boxee CEO: Google TV Could Boost or Crush Us
• Google TV: Google, Sony, Intel Team-Up to Make Television
• Google TV Announces Network and App Partners, New Website
• Sony Announces Details, Prices of Google TV Lineup
• Hulu’s Reported Subscription Plans Portend Cable Showdown …

Authors: John C Abell

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