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April 10, 2006
Disney and napsterizing content: not so Lost now
By the end of the month, ABC/Disney will make a number of its hit TV shows available for free (subscription req'd) on the web where they belong. It's an iTunes and TiVo bypass.
Sales of individual shows on iTunes isn't growing as quickly as the company had hoped -- among other reasons, television shows lack the evergreen and repeatable utility of songs. So now ABC will experiment with the Internet-as-network model.
Shows made available on the web, such as "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," will use ABC's web-based "theater," where content can be paused, rewound and fast-forwarded... except the ads. That's the trade-off.
One other idea with some promising interest, as the Journal discovered:
As part of an effort to engage the online community, viewers from around the country will be able to gather in "rooms" online to watch an episode of, say, "Lost" and chat about it. Disney will also promote the creation of fan sites for various shows. "We want to tie all of these fan sites closer to our brand," says Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media for the Disney-ABC Television Group.
As a proponent of creating fan communities that reside largely within a brand's online network, I'm encouraged by this tactic. It's relatively low-risk, a natural buzz-generator and will probably generate bundles of research data.
But let's hope ABC/Disney encourages the community to largely govern itself rather than imposing an omnipotent, brand-centric autocracy. ABC has given the community the keys; now it has to trust it enough not to crash it into the lake.
Technorati Tags: ABC, Disney, Advertising, iTunes, TiVo, Marketing, Social media
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Just imagine if NBC-TV had this capability back in the 1960's. The original Star Trek might still be running.-)
Since the competition for slots in network primetime schedules is so darwinian, the next step might be that some shows may lose slots in primetime but still be producing new episodes for downloads. Kind of like "straight to video" movies.
Could "straight to web" be a industry catch-phrase of the future?
The ABC shows may be free, but you have to pay to read the WSJ article. What a strange world we live in.
