ESPN360 as a New Model?

No ESPN360 for Cincinnati

Here's the rundown: Almost every online subscription service on the internet works with one basic mechanism. If you want the extra or platinum or gold or fancypants content, you get out your credit card and pay some sort of structured fee to access that content. It works that way with streaming video, radio archives, Ancestry.com, and porn. So I hear.

Well, ESPN360 is going by a different route. They are charging the ISP to access the content. For example: I connect through Time Warner's Roadrunner internet service. If Time Warner doesn't want to pay ESPN360, I can't see that content. If they do decide to pay for it and pass the buck as a jump in my internet bill, I pay whether or not I access ESPN360. It's basically the Cable TV model.

So is this a gimmick? A fad? A threat? The end of the internet?

Let me know what you think.

(Much more at Wired Epicenter)