Will viewers pay to watch Glenn Beck? The conservative firebrand will find out soon. Beck, who is leaving Fox News at the end of the month, announced Tuesday that he'll be moving his daily show online, as part of a subscription-based site called GBTV. Viewers who pay $4.95 a month, or $49.95 a year, will be able to watch Beck's two-hour live show, which will air weekday evenings starting Sept. 12. Premium subscribers who shell out $9.95 a month, or $99.95 a year, will also get access to live video of Beck's three-hour radio show and other content. Beck and his company, Mercury Radio Arts, are betting that viewers will increasingly subscribe "directly to their favorite brands," rather than to cable providers, says Brian Stelter in The New York Times. But this "first-of-its-kind" move is a "huge risk." Will it pay off for Beck?
The GBTV model may be "revolutionary": Beck says he wants to be "leading the pack" into the digital future, and he just might do it, says Jon Bershad at Mediaite. We may have reached the point "when television viewers subscribe to networks themselves," instead of paying for cable packages "with hundreds of channels they don't want." If we've reached that tipping point, Beck's new network "may actually be as forward-thinking and revolutionary as all the marketing talk makes it sound."
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