Google Video and CBS.com both charge a $1.99 Day Pass (ie, rental fee) for viewing the debut episode of yet another series of Survivor, via the World Wide Web.
Some brief confusion about whether or not CBS would distribute the new Survivor: Panama through other distributors arose after a Reuters report suggested CBS’ latest plans cut out distributors in favor of doing that itself. I followed along that thread and heard from representatives from both esteemed companies that the assertion was incorrect. One uploaded correction later, all was well.
Reuters provided an updated version of its original story later that day. Today, as promised, Survivor did arrive on Google Video, dropped into the front page of the site between NCIS and MacGyver.
The new Reuters piece said CBS’ venture into online video download sales from its site gave the network the “option” to distribute videos itself rather than rely on Google Video or the dominant iTunes Store.
That’s a logical assessment to make. CBS can combine its efforts with distributors or keep some content in-house and handle sales by itself. But not everyone received the message. A couple of hardcore tech sites, Anandtech and Ars Technica, both went ahead with the “CBS punts Google” theme, but based it on the later Reuters article, not the original one.
Oh well. Don’t be too mad, CBS and Google. Just pretend we had immunity when we wrote our articles.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
