Google TV Growing Pains: Networks Block Web TV Shows

Google’s throwing a party, but network TV is snubbing the invitation.

Three major broadcast networks are blocking Google TV’s access to their online programs. That’s not a good first sign for a product whose main purpose is to make internet content as easy to watch as your local station, whether you’re looking at a TV screen or your computer.

To be clear, ABC, NBC and CBS are not stopping their over-the-air programming from being viewed through 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 from 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 that makes it unnecessary for you tie up your computer, figure out all the cabling and use as many different interfaces as there are services.