Is it just what they’re showing us? A Flo TV app, that requires some kind of accessory to tune into broadcasts? That’s possible, but given how well the iPhone can stream video over 3G, it’d be a hard sell, even with Flo TV’s cable-like channel selection. It would also help if said accessory wasn’t larger than the actual iPhone.

Or is it to foster excitement over the idea of native Flo TV hardware support in the iPhone, like in the HTC Imagio? Because that will never, ever happen. So again, why? [Electric Pig]

[Lifehacker]

But don’t hold your breath on it happening yet: Peter Kafka has “yet to hear of a single programmer that has made a firm commitment”. As he points out, while networks are constantly looking for new revenue, like those arsehole aliens in Independence Day moving from world to world consuming every natural resource, they’re nervous about the idea for a lot of reasons.

A lot of it has to do with the icky, sticky relationships between networks and pay TV operators, where everybody’s worried about losing out as people start to watch more and more TV content online, not in their living rooms — where streaming video eats up bandwidth, and advertising revenues aren’t nearly as rich (which is why Hulu wants to figure out new ways to get you to pay).

While these little complications might slow the process down, the exodus is inevitable. There’s no stopping this. The internet is the new pay TV: Netflix, Hulu, BitTorrent. Apple might not get to launch it in a few months, but it will happen. Just give it time. The actually crazy part, if you ask me, is that the Apple TV might even live up to its name. [Hulu]

Warning: Clip is US-only. U-S-A! U-S-A!

At first glance I thought it was a black MacBook with a Windows logo pasted over the Apple, but that’s not it — the case is too shiny and angular, looking more like a slick Lenovo or something. The thing is, a prop computer isn’t weird at all, but usually they’re just faceless slabs of grey or black. This one has a very prominent Windows logo, even though as far as I know there’s never been a Windows computer like that (maybe you can buy them in the Windows store!). Product placement usually works better when the product being placed is, you know, something you can buy. Like on Top Chef: After watching that show, I always drive my Toyota™ Rav4™ to my local Whole Foods™ for supplies like Swanson’s™ chicken broth, and after cooking in my GE™ Monogram™ kitchen with my Calphalon™ cookware, I make sure to safely store my leftovers using the Glad™ family of products. That’s how you do product placement. [Hulu]

Hulu, the joint venture between News Corp.’s Fox, GE’s NBC Universal and Disney’s ABC, doesn’t plan on charging people to watch the stuff it’s currently airing on the site–a mix of first-run shows from broadcast TV, a limited number of cable TV shows and a smattering of movies. But Hulu is trying to figure out how to create some kind of premium offering where you’ll pay for stuff that isn’t on the site right now.

This jibes with Carey’s adjacent reassurance that “not all content on Hulu would be behind a pay wall”, which hints at the addition of some kind of subscription or pay-per-view system, that could conceivably leave current offerings untouched. This is a plausible possibility, but far from sure: Kafka’s sources says Hulu doesn’t actually have a plan yet, so anything is possible.

Plan or no plan, telling everyone what they aren’t going to do would do Hulu good — vague threats of fees for “broadcast content” are just terrifying everyone. [AllThingsD]

Here’s the money quote from NewsCorpian Chase Carey, so there’s no confusion:

It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online. I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value. Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business

An optimist might interpret this as a move toward tiered access, or even the decidedly good addition of paid premium content, like HBO and Showtime. But read carefully:

It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online

It doesn’t get any less premium than broadcast content, which is exactly what Carey says we’ll soon be paying for — sometime in 2010, he supposes. This is extra-extra-foreboding next to last week’s statements about a paid Hulu from Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, highlighted by TVBizwire: “That’s not an if,” he said “that’s a when.” It was fun while it lasted, I guess.

On a totally unrelated note, here are some neat articles, for pleasure reading! [Broadcasting Cable via TVBizwire]

• CBS Audience Network: Featuring a variety of shows from CBS Primetime, Daytime, Extras, and TV Classics, including full-length episodes of current TV shows, CBS Classics TV shows, short clips, and Web originals.
• Full Zune Video Podcast Library: Thousands of hours of entertainment with full TV episodes, webisodes, clips, and videos from providers including ABC News, CBS News, CNBC, CNET TV, Comedy Central, Current TV, The Discovery Channel, Fox, G4 TV, HBO, MSNBC, NBC, Showtime, and Revision 3, along with some of the best user-generated videos on the Web. Some video podcasts are also available in HD.
• MSN and msnbc.com: Clips as well as full length episodes from TV shows such as Arrested Development, news and weather from MSNBC, editor picks and most popular videos, five day weather forecasts, news, video playlists, music videos, movie trailers and more.

If you haven’t already noticed the upgrades in your Windows 7 Media centre menu, you can manually update by going into Tasks >>Settings >> General >> Automatic Download Options.

Again, Microsoft’s sponsorship of the show means that it will air commercial-free. Let’s hope the final version makes sitting through 30 minutes of this actually tolerable. [win741 via Ars Technica]

The show, which will have some live-action performances of the unbearable musical numbers featured in MacFarlane’s animated sitcoms, will supposedly “feature unique Windows 7-branded programming that blends seamlessly with show content.” In case you don’t remember, or are lucky enough to have repressed this memory, MacFarlane actually teamed up with a giant corporate sponsor once before, and it led to humour abortions like this:

Anyway, it’s not totally clear how Windows 7 will be integrated into the special (tentatively named “Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show”), but based on the Burger King disaster, it might not be much more than a half-hearted mention here and there and a few “this isn’t a commercial” commercials in between sketches. [Microsoft]