TV Week: Online TV Takes Wing

Industry pub TV Week (subscriber-only, sorry) has a nice analysis today of why now is the right time for Internet TV. In short, deep broadband penetration has now combined with a strong consumer tendency toward on-demand, controllable distribution and delivery. This creates opportunity for viewers, producers, distributors, advertisers and new-school concerns such as Brightcove.

When the bottom fell out of the dot-com market a few years ago, the idea of Internet television was laughed at. Now it's no joke: Broadband penetration is climbing higher every year.

One of the players leading the new field of broadband-enabled Internet TV is year-old start-up Brightcove in Cambridge, Mass. Brightcove has been quietly aligning with both big-name cable programmers and niche content providers to test its untethered content distribution strategy.

The company provides an online service that enables content companies to deliver video content directly to consumers using the Internet, rather than through a cable, telco or satellite provider.