[The Environment Is Changing for Online Movie ]
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More TV Premieres End Up Online
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To garner more exposure for new programs and test the viability of online promotion, broadcast networks this season have been selectively making premiere episodes of prime time shows available online. Last week, Google Video streamed UPN’s Everybody Hates Chris, one of the most buzzed-about shows of the new season, from Monday through Thursday, leading up to the show‘s second episode last Thursday night.
“This was the perfect show to try this on for lots of reasons,” says Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, which incorporates the online product of both of the Viacom-owned broadcast networks, CBS and UPN. “Everybody Hates Chris already had a lot of talk around it. And it’s a good show for when you are searching because people already know who [show creator and comedian] Chris Rock is and he generates a lot of searches.”
Google Video, from the country’s largest Internet search engine, still is in beta mode, which also proved appealing to UPN. “We liked the idea of being the first network to do something like this with them,” because it gave the effort a little more promotional punch.
Kramer also thought focusing on a search-driven portal, of which Google is by far the largest, would drive more traffic to the show and to its site at http:// www.upn.com/shows/everybody_hates_chris.
In securing the Google deal, Kramer also liked that the search engine would link to the show’s home page, something other search engines and portals won’t necessarily do. UPN’s show web site offers custom content, interviews with Rock, and other DVD-like extras, says Kramer.
“Other portals are less willing to direct traffic to you as well in this process,” Kramer says. “They monetize this stuff through traffic to their own sites, but Google doesn’t do display advertising. It’s not an editorial package that they put together so it’s less of a duplication between what we do and what they do.”
In recent months, CBS has accelerated its digital media plans with Kramer, founder of Marketwatch.com, as the new head of CBS’ Digital Media group, all of which falls under the purview of Viacom Co-CEO Leslie Moonves. Last week, Kramer also confirmed that he is negotiating with the producers of CBS’ popular CSI franchise to create eight-minute short episodes of the show that would run exclusively online and on mobile devices.
Streaming TV premieres is becoming a more common practice. Last year, The WB was the only network to do it, streaming family drama Jack and Bobby on AOL. This season, the network made a sneak preview of its scary new thriller Supernatural available on Yahoo! before the show even aired on television. And Fox presented Warner Bros.-produced Reunion on AOL from Sept, 12-14, after the show‘s Sept. 8 network premiere. That marks the first time Fox has made an entire episode of one of its shows available on a non-Fox-owned web site.
“This is the latest effort in a long and innovative partnership with AOL to bring our television programming to the Web," said Lisa Gregorian, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Television Creative Services. "We're confident in Reunion’s potential to become one of the season's breakout hits, and we believe this collaboration with AOL will prove to be an ideal way to generate buzz and awareness for the show.”
Thus far, Reunion hasn’t proven to be too popular among viewers, but AOL is doing all it can to promote its sister company’s show, putting episodes, clips and music videos online.
While providing on-demand access to TV shows may seem like a great idea to the consumer and to online services, it’s not as easily embraced by copyright owners and network station affiliates.
Negotiating online rights to a TV show is complicated, because so many different parties -- such as the show’s producers, production company and music producers -- all are invested. Putting a show online is a risky proposition, as far as producers are concerned, with unclear financial repercussions.
“Rights do what they are supposed to do, which is protect the interests of the people who have invested in the show,” Kramer says. “As we can demonstrate that there’s money to made on the web for programming, we’ll find more ways to take advantage of that. We have to prove that people will look at these shows on the web, which I think we will prove, and then we have to prove that there’s a financial model that can work.
“Experiments like this are great, but in the end they aren’t the model. That’s what we are doing now at CBS. We are investing a lot of money in creating great content, and then trying to figure out as best we can how to monetize that content.”
Another hurdle for networks that want to stream entire TV shows online are their local TV station affiliates. Historically, TV stations have maintained tight control over local exclusivity rights, keeping all their shows and the advertising they carry limited to that market.
But as broadband becomes more widespread, streaming television nationwide and on-demand is becoming more and more feasible. That threatens the business model of local TV stations, who depend on local advertising to survive.
Thus far, only The WB has been able to convince their affiliates, many of whom are Tribune-owned stations and thus investors in The WB, to allow a show to stream online before it aired on the network. But the fact that UPN and Fox both put entire episodes online this season demonstrates that the environment is changing. |
