The New Way to Think Television on the Web

Television is attracting an enormous amount of attention from both researchers and managers, due to profound changes that are taking place thanks to the diffusion of digital technology. The Internet and the Web, affecting the overall landscape, the consumer habits, the strategies of the players, are playing a key role in the TV revolution. This paper, based on 26 case studies, a survey involving over 200 players and a complete census of all the channels provided via Web in Italy, aims at defining the current state of the Web TV (we call it Desktop-TV) in Italy and identifying the main business models and the strategies adopted by the players, thus allowing us to give a few predictions on the possible future changes in the industry. Although the analyses have been carried out in Italy, the results will have a general applicability, since the Web is not country specific by definition and the majority of players included in this research have international relevance.