Series and Movies distributed intelligently

TV programs and movies are set to be distributed in an intelligent manner, in other words, unlike the MP3 fiasco that the music industry put itself in. I often felt bewildered by the way the music industry seemed to be playing the ostrich about the electronic distribution of music over the Net. Thinking of new interesting ways to distribute music tailored to the new systems available wasn't an option. Instead the music industry went for a remake of the rocky horror picture show (minus the underlying humour). In the end the targeted online population downloading music illegally didn't get scared out of their wits, as planned, by the threats. It also turned out to be a bit of a public relations disaster for the them. I'm guessing that it was only the lawyers involved that profited from this !

It seems that the companies behind successful TV series like 'Lost' and '24' are learning from the music industry's errors. They are not only providing their series to download legally but are also looking into other new ways of online distribution. You can see on TV.com that both Lost and 24 are available for download through iTunes. It's TV series like these that are really pushing novel and extremely interesting marketing ideas. Lost fans, for example, have seen a 'season pass' subscription system made available to them via iTunes ! The perfect solution to guarantee people will be coming back and they can choose to download the episodes whenever they want. The New York Times article explains that "Warner Brothers announced it would make hundreds of its hit films and shows available this summer for paid download via the file-sharing site BitTorrent".




The article echoes a post from my blog in that it recognizes these moves on video-content deals are to avoid the issues that brought such bad press and to the music industry and the little effect obtained wasn't really worth all the hassle.
Several issues are discussed in the New York Times article, like the capacity of the Internet to technically offer 100s of channels without forgetting the physical impact on the Internet of such a project. But so many of these projects do not embrace the Internet for what it is, a medium that is capable of distributing content all over the world. Many people won't realise when viewing many of these projects that they nearly all use geographic Internet technology (IP based checking) that stops people that are not in the US, or not in the UK from downloading content.

I also previously touched here on how so many companies whether they are distributors of books (even electronic versions) or video continue to do everything they can to ensure the distribution of their content in a geographic based manner. Going against Internet in its natural flow in this will become more and more difficult to sustain when the Internet represents the larger part of their overall sales. There are obvious economies of scale possible in distributing a global version of a book, TV program or film.
There are very minor differences in the way a product is broadcast in the UK and in the US for example when you look at TV series like 'Lost' and '24' quoted above.

Video content with subtitles like in some episodes of 'Lost', or video with several audio channels, could easily be made available over the Internet. Formats exist that allow for multi-audio and multi-subtitle channels in one same file. People are used to this concept through having used DVDs that allows for languages and subtitles.
The series, Lost, each week, has people from the shows that are about to air, coming to speak in a 'podcast' (basically an audio file you can download). This helps keep the hype going and the fans happy. Even though I still have my doubts about podcasting it is the 'in' thing to do at the moment. I recently tested a divx plug-in for web browsers that allowed me to view a few minutes of a blockbuster film in High Definition...

So hopefully in the quest to get it right, some of the new video-content projects will look closer at solutions that aim at giving the best service to users. Building an online copy of the present distribution system, that requires barriers against the natural flow of the Internet and what new technologies can offer would be such a shame !