On HULU you can watch television shows like the Honeymooners or I Love Lucy, or you can catch last week's episode of House. The other services deliver shows and movies made for television as well as feature length films. However, these sites have not carried this kind of original content, until now.
In 2012 Netflix plans to produce at least 26 episodes of a political thriller called "House of Cards."Google also announced it is planning to produce original content on its YouTube site. Like Apple, Google makes a television viewing appliance to deliver entertainment content. It makes sense they would branch out and begin to deliver original shows in addition to syndicated, licensed or contributed content.
We were once limited to a few major networks and the specific time slots in which they chose to air their shows. The video recording device liberated us from time constraints and the cable channels expanded our choices a hundred fold. The internet made it possible to watch shows from the past and first run movies in our living room or on our desktops.We may be on the cusp of a new revolution in entertainment where our next new favorite series may be served up via an internet channel and viewed on any digital driven display when and where we choose to watch.
Here is yet another industry like retail and telecommunications about to undergo a fundamental shift as the internet becomes both the source and delivery of its products.
Captain Joe
Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC
It's worth noting how shows get made on Network vs. Cable. The monetization, studio costs, ROI all works differently. Major networks still receive significantly higher ad revenue than say FX, and HBO will dump millions and millions into its giant shows that basic cable and the networks just can't afford to compete with. The models are important to predict how services like Netflix and Hulu will court, fund, and produce original programming beyond their fledgling offerings.
ReplyDeleteInteresting ideas, Joe, and I think that we all have thought that this was going to happen.
ReplyDeleteNow, what's the impact? The first one that I can think of is the advertising model and since that's where Arrested Development and such get their revenue, and the advertisers only have a finite amount of $$, how soon will it be that Arrested D goes belly up?
If you were Colgate Palmolive, where would you put your money. Google has refined the advertising model to the n-th degree, so maybe they're the ones who will win. Or does this mean that the idea of "free" entertainment is going away. All we had to do in the past was put up with the Toyota commercial, and we could watch Friends. Now we have to pay the cable guy, but he gives us a box that allows us to skip the commercials.
Except for Monday Night Football, of course, which is still an advertiser's dream because you can't watch it the next day when the sports pages are blasting the winners.
On Facebook (where I also post a link to the daily column) someone pointed out there has been original content published on the web for some time. Japanese anime and mini-episodes being two examples. But it hasn't hit the majors yet.
ReplyDeleteIronically, we pay the cable guy and somehow still suffer through commercials.
Companies may be willing to pay higher cost per thousand in such a tightly targeted market. This show appeals to a certain demographic and there could be a lot of tie ins for the right sponsor.
Finally, ESPN are, in fact, tinkering with the model, finding ways to deliver their real time content through other digital channels. We may see come changes there as well.