Eric Schmidt: Google TV will prevail

In an on stage interview at Web 2.0, Schmidt said he's confident that Google TV will pull through

Google TV has not gone over as smoothly as Google would have liked, but Eric Schmidt is not worried.  At least that is what he conveyed Monday on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in an interview with Summit co-founder John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media. 

"I'm quite confident we'll get through this one because the technology is so powerful," Schmidt said on stage.

He was referring to the recent backlash from TV networks who refuse to join forces with Google TV, claiming that they see no clear way to make money off of the deal with so much television programming hitting the Web, especially when there is no real way to differentiate between legitimate programming and pirated content.

Fox Broadcasting is the most recent network to pull out of the Google TV deal, blocking its content from being accessed on Google TV some four weeks after ABC, NBC, and CBS all blocked their programs from Google TV.  This effectively cripples Google TV, considering all of the top TV programs are produced by ABC, NBC, and CBS. 

ABC’s Dancing with the Stars was the most watched show in the week ending November 7, according to Nielsen's rankings, followed by NBC’s Sunday Night Football and Sunday Night Pre-Kick, and CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Americans shell out some $70 billion each year to cable and satellite companies, and Schmidt said he was aware of how much money the networks stood to lose, but argued that by cutting themselves off from Google TV, they are cutting themselves off from greater revenue potential. 

"The way to get more revenue is to create more revenue sources, and the way to do that is through things like Google TV," Schmidt said, arguing that consumers can watch more TV programming through Google TV.

 Schmidt also added that Google TV is not looking to put TV networks in the same boat as the struggling music industry by driving their revenues down to nothing.

While Google TV has lost the major networks, it still has access to content produced by the CW network, which is jointly owned by CBS and Time Warner, as well as MTV’s Viacom, and Lifetime, which is owned by Walt Disney, Hearst, and NBC Universal. 

Image source: Latimes.com