Will Murdoch hype digital video recorders — potentially causing havoc for broadcasters and cable operators?
He has a real conflict here. As the person running DirecTV, Murdoch has incentive to continue that company’s ongoing push for subscribers to buy set-top decoders equipped with TiVo DVRs. These units enable satellite broadcasters to compete with cable’s video on demand. They easily record hours of movies or other shows on a hard drive for viewers to watch when they want, and skip backward or forward at will. But as the owner of the ad-supported Fox network, Murdoch shares the broadcast industry’s concern about DVR users using the technology to leap past ads. Last week, Murdoch’s team said it’s going with the DVRs. “We’re certainly not going to put our head in the sand with DirecTV and say, ‘We’re going to offer a weaker service because we want to protect a different side of the business,’ ” News Corp. President Peter Chernin says. DVRs “are going to be a fact of life in the broadcasting business.” If Murdoch pushes the technology as aggressively as he promoted interactive TV at BSkyB, t
