I never thought I would see this post. I actually also watches NRK, its quite impressive how well it works. But its still in Norwegian, so its probably no great use for English speakers, even though its just as an example.
You keep talking about how TV-channels should offer their content for free.
The two largest Norwegian TV stations have been offering all their content for free for about 3 years now.
One, which is the state run channel NRK, offers everything they own the rights to for free. No need to register, just go to the website and start playing all their shows. Some are backed up for 3-4 years!
Here's the NRK player:
http://www7.nrk.no/nrkplayer/avspiller.aspx?Hovedkategori_id=2&Prosjekt_id=0&Kategori_id=0&Klipp_id=0&Indeks_id=0&Oppgave_id=0&Sok=&Artikkel_Id=
You probably won't understand it but you will get an idea of how it works and how simple it is to use! The log in button is there since they sometimes offer premium live content such as sports events (which they do not own the rights to) as well.
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The other channel is TV2, which is commercially run, offers all their content for a small fee of around $10 per month or $80 for a year. Quite cheap if you ask me.
They can be found here:
http://webtv.tv2.no/webtv/?
I'm from Norway but live in the UK. I can catch up on all the news, entertainment without much hassle. It's great and guess what....TV2 (commercial station), has been doing this for years and they are making loads of money from it. Adverts are still being shown and I rarely skip them since i hook it up to my TV and can't be bothered to go to the pc and click the skip button.
Possible downside is that you can't download the contents easily (can always use VWrecorder, SDP or similar but its a hassle) but since it's free, archived for a long time it's not really a problem for me.

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