Zucker: No Guarantee Online TV Will Stay Free

NBC could eventually start charging for online streams of its TV shows, according to CEO Jeff Zucker in an extensive interview published by The Wall Street Journal. One of the first issues brought up was the question of how much content should be available for free online, to which Zucker responded by lamenting that broadcasters can’t make money by running repeats of existing content on their networks anymore, adding:

“We have to figure out how we are going to pay for this quality content… I do not think that it is a foregone conclusion that content should be free on the Internet.”

It’s worth noting that NBC Universal does not only offer full episodes of its shows on its own site for free, but that the company also owns 32 percent of Hulu. NBC Universal announced a joint venture with Comcast last December, to merge with the cable company’s programming assets — a deal that is currently under review by the FCC.

Excerpt from NewTeeVee.com. Read the full article here.