LOS ANGELES – One of the rewards of watching TV online is not having to sit through as many commercials. Now the networks are chipping away at that little luxury.

CBS shows twice as many ads per show on its website as it did last year. The CW network shows four times as many. Dozens of shows from major cable networks now carry as many ads online as they do on TV. More shows will follow soon.

The online audience is still small compared with television, but it's growing. Networks hope that by showing more ads, they can make about as much money per viewer online as they do on the tube.

It's a change from the early days of online video. When ABC started putting full episodes of its shows online in 2006, fans could zip through the hour-long dramas "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" in about 45 minutes. One short ad played a few times per show.

Limiting commercials kept people from going to unauthorized websites to watch pirated copies of shows. It also helped networks reach new audiences in college dorms and teenage bedrooms.

Now, as online audiences grow, networks see an opportunity to make more money. A recent episode of "Hawaii Five-O" carried six and a half minutes of ads online. That's less than the 16 minutes on TV but double what an hour-long show carried on CBS.com a year ago.

Online video has improved in recent years with faster Internet connections and better technology. The advances have led some people to give up on regular TV — and hefty cable bills that come with it — and watch only online.

The websites of ABC and NBC and some cable channels offer a range of recent episodes online, as does Hulu, a site owned by the parent companies of ABC, NBC and Fox.

Other networks offer live sports online. ESPN puts events on ESPN3.com for viewers who get Internet service through certain providers. And NBC put hundreds of hours of live competition online during the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. NBC agreed Tuesday to pay $4.4 billion for the rights to televise the Olympics through 2020.

Watching your shows on a computer, of course, means being forced to watch the ads. On the tube, digital video recorders allow you to fast-forward through them. For many people, the convenience of watching whenever, wherever makes going online worth it.

Kate Hooper, a 24-year-old nanny from Los Angeles, often travels for work. On a recent trip to Hawaii, booting up her laptop was the only way to catch her favorite CW show, "Gossip Girl."

"I usually just put up with it and I'll take a break or go get food or something while the commercials are playing," Hooper said.

CBS now shows about two or three ads per break online, up from one a year ago. CBS can charge higher rates than TV partly because online ads can do more — allow viewers to click to a website for more information, for instance.

"We've got a model today where we're comfortable whether that viewership happens on the Web or TV," said Zander Lurie, CBS' senior vice president of strategic development. The company doesn't give a breakdown of how much revenue it makes from each format.

The CW, a broadcast network owned by CBS and Time Warner, now shows four commercials in a typical break instead of one — as many as there are on regular TV.

For both networks, viewership online grew anyway, a sign that viewers don't seem to mind.

The CBS and CW examples show that for big-budget TV productions, at least, it's possible to make enough money from the Internet to pay for shows if audiences suddenly shift entirely online. Newspapers and music companies have struggled with similar dilemmas as their audiences have moved online.

Networks still make far more money from TV than from the Internet, largely because online audiences are still comparatively small. Networks also get a piece of the monthly bills that viewers pay to satellite or cable companies for TV subscriptions.

Americans on average spent about 160 hours a month in front of the tube in early 2010 and only seven watching video on a computer or phone, according to the latest data available from Nielsen Co.

But online video is growing fast. According to online ad firm FreeWheel Media Inc., people watched 9 billion online videos from clients such as Fox, CBS and Turner in the last three months of 2010, an increase of about 50 percent from the previous quarter.

ZenithOptimedia expects online video ad revenue in the U.S. to grow 22 percent this year to $3.3 billion, compared with just 5 percent growth for all TV ads to $59.4 billion.

For the networks, there's a side benefit to the growth of online ads. If Internet viewers watch shows with exactly the same ads as their TV counterparts, they will be counted in Nielsen's regular TV audience ratings.

That means that when networks approach advertisers every spring to sell commercial time for their upcoming fall lineups, they can add online audiences to their total count and bring in more money.

Until April, the online audience didn't count at all in the advance sales season.

"It's recapturing those eyeballs," said Jeremy Legg, a senior vice president at Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System. "From a monetization standpoint, it's the most effective for us."

By Diane Bartz and Jim Finkle

WASHINGTON/BOSTON |
Wed May 4, 2011 3:44pm EDT

BOSTON – When the camera switches on in one of the busiest courtrooms in Massachusetts, murder arraignments, traffic and drug cases heard there will become fodder for a new experiment: how bloggers and other citizen journalists can cover courts using new media and social media.

Starting Monday, most of what happens in a bustling courtroom in Quincy District Court will be streamed live over the Web for anyone to see. The courtroom, which usually does not allow reporters to use even computers, will now welcome laptops, iPads and smartphones, and will encourage live blogging, Tweeting and Facebooking.

It's all part of an experiment court officials around the country hope will help establish suggested guidelines for courts as they grapple with how to use digital technology and how to accommodate citizen journalists and bloggers.

The pilot project in Quincy, just south of Boston, is believed to be one of the broadest experiments in the country for using new media in the courts. While many states allow cameras in the courtroom and some stream supreme court arguments online, the Quincy project is unusual because it will continuously stream live, unedited court proceedings all day. The courtroom will be unusually welcoming to bloggers and citizen journalists with a special seating section and Wi-Fi connection.

"In the past, reporters were the connection to the nation's courts, but with the changes in the media landscape, there are just less and less journalists who are that bridge to the public," said John Davidow, executive producer of the "OpenCourt" project. "At the same time, there's been the proliferation of reporting tools that are in the hands of all citizens, including iPhones and other smartphones that can record. People can Tweet, blog, report. The idea is to bring the courts and what goes on in the courts closer to the people so they understand how the law and the justice system work in this country," he said.

These new modern tools are not widely embraced by the nation's courts, where judges, jurors and lawyers are restricted in their use of digital technology and social media.

In some publicized cases, jurors using portable electronic devices in other courtrooms have caused mistrials and overturned convictions. A judge in San Francisco dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case they were called to consider. A federal judge in Florida declared a mistrial after eight jurors admitted Web surfing about a drug case.

And last year, "Twitter instructions" were issued to federal judges to read to jurors, barring them from visiting Internet chat rooms, blogs or social websites and from using electronic devices in connection with their cases.

The Quincy project is funded by a $250,000 grant through Knight News Challenge, a contest that encourages media innovation, to Boston's National Public Radio affiliate WBUR, where Davidow works as executive editor for new media.

Davidow and others met regularly for months with court staff and lawyers to work out rules for the project. The idea has not been embraced by some defense attorneys and prosecutors in Massachusetts.

The court has had training sessions for lawyers to show them dead zones in the courtroom where they can have conversations that won't be picked up by microphones, but some are still concerned that their private talks with clients could be recorded and come back to haunt them.

"I'm not overly fond of the idea," said Richard Sweeney, a Quincy defense attorney who regularly defends criminal clients in the courtroom, now newly wired.

"I think there are a lot of pitfalls. I understand and respect the concept — they want an open court. In this era of everyone having cellphones and videos, I can understand that, but it's fraught with perils for attorneys with conversations that can be picked up."

Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey said he is concerned that the cameras could discourage victims of domestic violence or stalking from going to court to seek protections and that information about gang investigations, including witness identifications, could become public.

"In certain delicate cases, the court is going to have to exercise the appropriate discretion and balance that with the public's right to know," Morrissey said.

Judge Mark Coven, Quincy District Court's presiding judge, said he has ultimate control over the camera and could decide to shut it off at certain times, such as when sexual assault or domestic violence cases are being heard, or could move those hearings to another courtroom.

"We wanted to shape the project in a way that balances the public's right to know with the right to privacy and the right to a fair hearing for anyone who comes before the court," Coven said.

Court officials from around the country are watching the Quincy experiment as they try to come up with policies on dealing with live streaming, citizen journalists and bloggers.

"There's no firm national standard on how to do this," said Gregory Hurley, an analyst for the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va.

"I do think this is the wave of the future. More courts are going to want to experiment with this and see if they want to make this available to the public."

John Bracken, director of digital media for the Knight Foundation, which awarded the grant for the project, said that with the news industry struggling and many news organizations laying off staff reporters, there are fewer mainstream journalists available to cover the courts. He said giving citizen journalists greater access to courts and allowing them to use communications devices in court could help fill that void.

"In every courtroom, every day, there are everyday citizens walking in with little miniature communications devices in their pockets. If those people were unleashed and exercised responsibility, they provide a great opportunity to pick up the storytelling and the important information that we may lose otherwise," Bracken said.

Davidow and other supporters say they hope making the everyday workings of the court available online will promote a better understanding of the judicial system.

"Historically, courtrooms were built in the center of town, where people could come and go, but as life has become more complicated people have become more and more removed from the courts," Davidow said.

"The goal is really to come up with the best practices of how to use digital technology to bring the courts closer to the public."

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Online:

http://www.opencourt.us