Disney warns cable on restrictive Web TV

By Yinka Adegoke

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger warned the cable TV industry not to alienate consumers by restricting cable programing on the Web to paying TV subscribers because it could provoke a consumer backlash.

"The consumer is king, not us the content provider and not you the distributor," he said on Thursday at an industry event, The Cable Show.

Cable executives are working on plans to extend popular cable programing to the Web to paying subscribers as a way to retain cable TV customers who might prefer to watch programs online at their convenience.

Cable operator Comcast Corp calls its plan Online On Demand; Time Warner Inc calls its plan TV Everywhere.

But Iger sounded skeptical about the early plans and urged caution in execution.

"Preventing people from watching any shows online, unless they subscribe to some multichannel service, could be viewed as both anti-consumer and anti-technology, and would be something we would find difficult to embrace," he said.

One of the challenges facing cable operators and programmers alike is how to verify and authenticate customers who have already paid for individual programs.

Iger said solving the authentication problem will be key to extending the value of programing. Disney has been one of the early major programmers to make some of its programing and movies available on the Web with services such as Apple's iTunes.