Internet TV is on a roll today! For starters, the day began with Apple sending out emails to their Season Pass subscribers, offering them credits for missed episodes. Later on, there was breaking news from the OMMA Global Hollywood conference, an industry event dedicated to online media, marketing, and advertising - it seems that CBS wants to change the game and have online video consumption contribute to a show's ratings. Well, it's about time!
For some, today's big Apple news may be the release of Safari 3.1, but for others it's going to be the email from Apple that showed up in their inboxes this morning. The email informs Apple Season Pass subscribers that they will receive credit for the episodes they missed due to the Hollywood writer's strike.
According to the email, Apple will provide for the following:
So, not only will customers receive partial credits for their losses, they're also receiving bonus credits just because of the inconvenience caused by the strike, something which wasn't even Apple's fault. That's great customer service and sure to please Apple's customers.
Big media has been somewhat slow to change, but today's CBS news shows a promising shift for the television industry. Patrick Keane, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for CBS Interactive, proposed a move to an aggregate ratings system, which would combine TV viewing with online video consumption. These combined ratings could then provide advertisers with a cross-platform option that is more detailed in terms of data, thanks to online metrics.
Keane cited internet darling "Jericho" as an example: the online viewers of one episode boosted the ratings from 4.2 to 5.1 - nearly a whole percentage point. Although Keane didn't mention the online campaign that did, in fact, save Jericho from cancellation, had these online ratings been taken into account from the beginning, desperate measures by hardcore fans would never have been needed.
Internet fans save Jericho
Another example Keane used was this year's Grammys. TV viewers accounted for 16.9 million of the viewers for the annual music awards show - down 15% from the previous year. But taking into account the web viewers, an additional 7.9 video streams could be added to that number, as well as 4.9 million page views, making the decline in viewership not as bad as previously thought.
As a correlation to yesterday's article (reading isn't down, it just moved online), it goes to reason that other activities have made the move online, too. More people are watching both TV and movies online as well as on portable devices. And while shows may suffer a little in number of live "real-time" viewers, why wouldn't the networks count all of a show's viewers towards the popularity of that program?
This shift has been a long time in the making; it was late fall of 2006 that should have been the wake-up call for TV broadcasters when a struggling new show called "The Office" was saved from cancellation after being put on iTunes. The show, which quickly became the number one downloaded show, surprised the NBC execs who realized that there actually was an audience for the program - they just happened to be online.
NBC's save of "The Office" may have been a turning point which prompted the networks to begin offering their content on iTunes, and on their own web sites as well. Unfortunately, it appears that even now, in 2008, the networks are still trying to figure out how to make the online viewings count for something.
"The Office" on iTunes
However, with today's news, not to mention the launch of sophisticated and well-executed sites like NBC/Universal's Hulu.com, it seems the networks are finally starting to figure what the pirates have known for years: the internet was made for content and it's what the people want. No matter what, the move to online media will change the television industry forever, so it's promising to see them headed in the right direction.
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It was my good day for Net TV too. I discovered that Veoh videos can indeed be embedded in my free WordPress blog despite WordPress itself not permitting it. WordPress does, however, allow the vodpod Firefox plug-in to do the deed! Now I can select from *thousands* of sites for embedding, just not the handful WordPress permitted! This is Big!
Posted by: Mike Cane | March 18, 2008 6:30 PMI am so happy to see that people are taking note that The Neilsen's cannot be the litmus test for a series popularity, they online viewers, the OnDemand watchers, the iTunes dowloads all need to be taken into consideration. Jericho is the perfect example of that. The Neilsen numbers may not be showing a large viewership, but check out the CBS message boards after any show, they are buzzing. All these things need to be taken into consideration and counted. Time for the networks to move into the internet era.
Posted by: Nadine Larsen | March 18, 2008 9:57 PMThis is great for Internet TV!
Posted by: Alex | March 18, 2008 11:03 PMI also heard that http://www.videopodcasts.tv will launch some new features this week.
I'm using a free tv search engine called http://videolala.com
Posted by: Movie Links | March 19, 2008 1:37 AMGreat way to find tv links online.
The big challenge with rating is incorporating VOD with live broadcast. Internet TV is mostly VOD and indeed should contribute to the ratings, but I still think commercials are more effective during live broadcast. At this point in time the two different use cases need to be measured separately.
Posted by: Aner Ravon | March 19, 2008 4:20 AMI agree. It's about time. Why shouldn't online views count toward ratings? It's a no-brainer.
Posted by: Matthew Griffin | March 19, 2008 4:59 AMI was watching shows through Hulu over the weekend. I was very impressed, and have actually been forwarding links to it to friends. The process was even better than the OnDemand functionality from cable. Now I think it's time to actually connect a PC to the TV.
Posted by: WD | March 19, 2008 6:51 AMSarah, isn't a good day for TV? As in: It's not Internet TV. There shouldn't be any difference between Internet TV and something we call "class TV". It's just that: TV. And CBS did indeed a great job not only for them, but for the hole world. They stood up to for something very important. Good for them and it's certainly good for the consumer. Fact is, they aren't making any difference between "classic TV" and "internet TV", neither should you. :-)
Posted by: Igor | March 19, 2008 7:16 AMWe should note that the iTunes credits are not precendent setting - I've gotten them from them before when a television season was cut short. But yes, a good thing for users and internet television in general.
Posted by: John Whiteside | March 19, 2008 10:07 AMIn related news, it was perhaps an even bigger day for Internet TV up here in Canada today. Our national broadcaster, the CBC, announced that one of its major primetime shows ("Canada's Next Great Prime Minister") will be made available as a BitTorrent.
No - I'm not making this up. Here's the story on the CBC site: http://snipurl.com/226k8
According to a report at CNet: Guinevere Orvis, one of the interactive producers on the show said they want it "to be as accessible as possible, to as many Canadians as possible, in the format that they want it in."
The torrents will be completely DRM free too. Orvis said: "I think DRM is dead, even if a lot of broadcasters don't realize it ... if it's bad for the consumers, it's bad for the company."
I am so incredibly glad I'm living in Canada these days.
Posted by: Michael O'Connor Clarke | March 19, 2008 7:09 PMFinally. It's about time, the internet should become the default method of transport for all kinds of entertainment. From movies to music to games to any kind of consumable electronic data, it excels primarily because it is digital itself, and its centered around the user.
And as an online viewer of Jericho myself, I'm glad someone's finally paying attention.
Posted by: Mani Gandham | March 22, 2008 11:11 PMWhat is Internet TV and How to View It
Posted by: mario | March 26, 2008 8:19 AMAs the name aptly suggests, Internet TV is the delivery of streaming
or real-time audio and video television programs over the Web.
It is different from video sites that deliver downloadable video
content because Internet TV sites stream content in real-time.
Which means a person sitting in London can stream an episode of
Oprah which a housewife in New York can watch live over her Internet
TV as and when it is being broadcast. See internet tv
in action on www.rtvchannel.tv