Convention Streaming Feud Brewing

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, a dispute has broken out between the five national television networks that have traditionally pooled resources to provide live video from key political events and the online news publishers who rely on that signal for their streaming platforms.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the networks – ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News -- recently informed news outlets that aren’t members of the “pool” they will have to begin paying significant new fees in return for access to live coverage, not just at the conventions but debates, presidential press conferences, and many other events.

Media organizations are pushing back. A dozen publishers, from traditional players like The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, to digital specialists like BuzzFeed and Vox.com, protested the changes in a July 13 letter to the executive committee of the White House Correspondents’ Association. They said the fees are exorbitant, and pushed for a new digital pool to be set up.

The media organizations called the recent changes “an unexpected disruption of long-established practices” that will “harm readers and subscribers.” The letter said the new policy lays bare “the need to rethink how the video pool functions in the digital age.”

The rise of digital threatens to eat into the audience for TV news, just as much as TV entertainment.

Read More Now (Paywall)