Netflix, which as gotten a lot of grief lately from consumers after the Qwikster open and close, has announced a new streaming partnership with the CW Network owned by CBS Corp. and Warner Bros.

Clearly, the latest Qwikster news hasn’t scared networks away from wanting their content in an on demand streaming format in homes everywhere.

All past seasons of all CW shows, as well as shows in its Current schedule through the 2015 season will be included in the partnership. More than likely, more partners will get involved soon, as the market is waiting to see how streaming will take off and who will be the major player.

The CW claims to have over 700 hours of past season programing, including popular shows such as “Gossip Girl” and “One Tree Hill”. Both of these shows have a heavy female demographic, so a new audience is clearly adopting Netflix streaming. It’s not just for geeks without TVs any more.

The interesting part of this deal is that Netflix is gaining access and rights to shows not even shown on CBS’ own service, Hulu. Those shows include “The Vampire Diaries” and “90210″.

Netflix is keeping its DVD and streaming business as one entity, and it will be interesting to watch what comes in the near future for the company.

This deal comes at the right time for Netflix, as the company just lost Starz as a partner on September 1st, which left a huge hole in its streaming content catalog.

Last.fm was acquired by CBS Interactive more than four years ago, and it seems that the broadcaster is now aiming to brings some of its digital products closer together.

Last.fm has been added to Radio.com, CBS’s online player, which already streams audio from hundreds of stations including CBS Radio, whilst it also hosts both Yahoo! and AOL’s music streams.

Visitors to Radio.com will now be able to create their own online stations via one-click functionality enabled through its Last.fm integration. Last.fm’s library has more than 4.m million artists and around 12 million tracks. Radio.com will give listeners an infinite number of free streams across broadcast, online and personalized radio.

How exactly will it work? Well, users click the ‘create a station’ button now available within the player, and they enter an artist’s name and hit the play button. You will also be invited to listen to related music which you can choose to love, ban or skip…depending on what mood you’re in.

David Goodman, President of CBS Interactive Music Group, said:

“Premium content from major market brands like KROQ and WXRT, for example, is in high demand and will continue to foster growth online for many years to come.  But in a world where consumers expect more and more control over their audio consumption we’re pleased to provide them with the best of both worlds.”

Last.fm was founded in the UK in 2002, and today it has over 40m listeners in almost 200 countries. Its integration with Radio.com has been a long time coming, and it should drive interest in Last.fm even further. It’s important to note, however, that the integration is entirely one-way – Radio.com won’t be featured on Last.fm.

Mobile users will have to wait too – the integration is limited to its standard website, but Radio.com’s mobile app will include the integration at a later date.

If you’ve been watching the streaming news lately, you’ll know that the major networks in the US aren’t often very happy to sign on to have their content available on demand. Netflix has held some pretty significant power in this area, and continues to do so with a recent streaming deal inked with CBS.

The deal, according to Hollywood Reporter, is non-exclusive and will allow Netflix to stream shows such as Medium and Flashpoint, as well as older hits like Cheers and Star Trek. It’s worth noting that Netflix is the only streaming provider to now offer content from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, the “big four” of US broadcasting.

It’s likely no coincidence that the deal is announced today, hot on the heels of a move from Amazon that provides streaming content for its Amazon Prime customers at no additional cost. While CBS’s president of distribution Steve Koondel does note that the network will be actively seeking out “additional non-exclusive distribution partners”, the Netflix deal is good for 2 years with the option to be re-signed at the end of its term.

You have to hand it to Apple, they really do push the mold. On the heels of their 99 cent rental announcement for the Apple TV, a firestorm of executive babble has erupted.

Some juicy tidbits:

Viacom: “The 99-cent rental is not a good price point, it doesn’t work for us… We value our content a lot… We don’t think Apple has it quite right yet.”

NBC: “We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. [... I]t would devalue our content.”

And so forth. CBS is on the fence. So far, since Apple first announced that ABC and FOX were joining the program, no one else of note has signed up. I had been expecting momentum, but what Apple has delivered is morass.

This puts Apple in a jam, where is the content for their new gadget going to come from? They have to populate the device with something, consumers are going to want to watch the promised shows. After all, you can only rent and stream from your Apple TV as Jobs noted at their last event; the content store for renting is being rebuilt from scratch.

There is a problem: if you can buy a show for $1.99, what then is the fair price for renting the same content? Surely the television bosses do not expect customers to rent content for the same price that they buy it for (that would be lunacy), so it has to be discounted. Therefore, it has to be below $1.99 and above $0.99, the price that they have rejected.

You see the problem. If say the rentals were priced at $1.50 to entice CBS, NBS, and Viacom, consumers are going to reject them. The people that were buying before at the old price would continue to do so (the price differential makes the renting tax abhorrent, why lose when for 50 cents you can own), and the people that Apple was hoping to snag at the $0.99 price point would be left out in the cold.

In short, the Apple TV is hinging its success on the ability of Apple to fill it with content for rent at the one dollar per episode price point.

What does this mean for the television gods who are not taking part? They are in trouble. I speculated before that:

I have a sneaking suspicion that 99 cents is actually the correct price point in that people would purchase so much more content at that price that it would more than make up for the lower per unit sticker listing. At $1 a shot, I would rent whole seasons one show at a time, something that I would never do at $2.

In short, lower the price and make up potential lost revenue on much higher volume. NBC, Viacom, and CBS are saying in effect that they do not think that that would in fact be the case.

Or are they? If you look at the statements that we have above, NBC and Viacom seem to be chiefly fretting about the devaluation of their content, not the actual total revenue that they could derive from the shows themselves. That is very illuminating, and it shows their inherently broken attitude.

Those networks literally never get a dollar from me. If they wanted me to rent their shows at $1 a piece, they would net $30 from me a month. My friends too, the dedicated pirates that they all are, might change their ways.

Viacom and NBC’s focus on the “value” of their content is short sighted and bad for lines, both top and bottom. What they need to do is center on how to make as much money as quickly as possible.

The consumer has spoken through music: the 99 cent price point is magical. For short, often one time use bits of digital content, one dollar is it.

If the networks want to leave money on the table, it’s their call.

What Apple will do to fill their TV box with enough content to keep its current purchasers happy and potential customers coming remains to be seen. They don’t have much time.