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Can iTunes Resurrect Old Time TV?
An anonymous reader writes "With iTunes selling a couple of popular TV shows now there has been significant hesitation from other television producers to follow suit and put their content on the Web. It has also sparked activity from the actors unions who want additional compensation for what appears online. But there is also existing content that stands to be revived in this new context, older television shows from the 50's and 60's that have been squeezed out of the traditional broadcast by popular shows of more recent vintage. It was suggested to a producer who is presently digitizing 27 episodes of a 1950's show called Captain Zero to offer it up on iTunes for a buck an episode. Is this an opportunity for these old shows to strike while the iron is hot and while the owners of more contemporary content are caught like deers in a headlight? As the Captain Zero article points out purveyors of old time radio programs have enjoyed a significant revival by embracing web-based technology. Why not old time TV?"
Have you seen the bargain DVD rack at your local Wal-Mart?
You can get entire seasons of old TV for a buck....
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
I really hope they strike when the iron is hot. I would enjoy watching some old shows again, especially those from before my birth.
Programmers are not compensated for every copy of their software they develop for their employers. Actors are no different.
Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson got paid an average engineer salary to develop unix, yet only Bell Labs and now the open group make money off of every copy sold. They agreed to work for x amount a year.
http://saveie6.com/
If you want me to be a customer, you need to offer me several things:
+ I don't want to view it just on my ipod.
+ I don't want to be able to view it only with Quicktime.
+ I don't want to have severe DRM limits that hamper my ability to store and watch the content any time I want on any device I want.
+ I don't want to pay through the nose for the content.
+ If I watch it on a non-iPod device, I want higher quality downloads available.
+ You should have at least the selection that Netflix does. Even if you're just the "Netflix of television".
I'm one of those consumers who is not opposed to paying for information/entertainment/data on any real basis other than I want it to be affordable and flexible. Don't place silly restrictions on me that hamper my enjoyment and don't charge me so much that I have to seriously think if each download is worth it.
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Not in general. No TV is old enough to enter the public domain naturally. What happened with some programs and movies (even such famous movies as the original "Night of the Living Dead") is that they were never officially copyrighted or were incorrectly copywrited during the time when copyright was not automatically granted.
The interesting thing with doing this, is that the amount of bandwidth needed for these older shows is far lower than that of the modern programs, such as Lost. Many of these older television shows only need to be encoded in greyscale and given a mono soundtrack. This could be a great, yet, inexpensive way to give the itunes video store some credibility.
8==8 Bones 8==8
It will be interesting to see however, considering the grumbling of the music execs about the 99cent fixed price, whether we will see an ownership type system like iTunes (I understand the vagaries of the copy protection on iTunes- I am being general) or a subscription system like Yahoo Music. With the subscription, I would be like cable I guess, with different levels and channels available, i.e. subscribe to HBO and get to watch movies whenever (sort of like Adelphia in demand), or subscribe to TBS and get the whole Segal and Dirty Harry catolg etc....
When you stand back and think about it, we live in amazing times consumer-technologically. 5 years ago I thought burning my own CDs was awesome- now I have my iPod with thousands of songs hooked up to my car....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
They need to realize that, with those old shows, they have a very different market. The amount of people who desperately want their old shows to the point that they'll pay what they would for a recent one is very low, while the amount of people who will say, "Hey that was a kinda cool show. I'd like to have a copy of that for a couple of cents," is very high. And, since the entire show has already had its run and made its money, selling them at $0.25 or $0.50 a show instead of $1 per episode is still making a profit.
Naturally, I'd consider paying a half-dollar an episode for one of the good slightly old shows, like The Prisoner or The Six Million Dollar Man.
I see a market for this, driven by the need of someone, somewhere, who wants to see an episode of some older TV show, or even a current TV show that doesn't have mass appeal. Appeal that's in the upper 20% of overall demand that is.
iTunes is a very effective distribution medium, and has helped the careers of many a smaller label / band, and even moved significant amount of back catalog.
Currently the networks are marketing to the top 20% in terms of demand, and ignoring the remaining 80% because they don't have the broadcast capacity.
Teaming up with iTunes they do. Another example of The Long Tail .
I see this working.
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I don't care if it's Quicktime only. I don't care if I can't make a "backup" copy to give to my friends. I don't really even care about the quality all that much because the quality of 50's and 60's tv shows was generally pretty bad over the air anyway. As long as the price is right (under a dollar) and I can get a wide variety of old shows such as Ripcord, The Man From Uncle, Fireball XL5, or even old kids shows such as The Junior Forest Rangers or Razzle Dazzle, I will buy them. Package sets would also be nice.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
I can download all of the Wile E. Coyote episodes uncensored. It kills me that they see a need to hack the shit out of the classic looney tunes cartoons to protect kids from viewing violence. It was okay for a whole generation of children and adults alike and now suddenly it's not okay, so they need to censor them.
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The big problem is getting the rights from the copyright holder (and finding the copyright holder!). These old shows were made in a time when broadcast on TV was the only distribution option, and the only thing covered in the contract. To sell by another method you need to get the rights & make a new contract, otherwise you're opening yourself up to a big fat lawsuit.
Even today, to release recent (1970s) TV shows on DVD, the hardest part is getting the rights to the music used in the TV show.
Since everyone in the entertainment business is aware of the fiction of "net profits" they want to have a share of the gross.
Just like with the music store, the big money is in the back-catalog sales. There are hundreds of thousands of TV shows from the 20th century, and only a few of them live on in syndication the way that the Andy Griffith Show or I Love Lucy have. There's only so much room in broadcast and even satellite TV schedules, so most of those old shows just sit on a shelf, making no money at all for their owners.
I know there are hundreds of episodes of old cartoons I'd love to get, for a start.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
if I could buy the whole seriese sands canned laugh.
Having the seasons 1-8 (9 will be released in Dec, IIRC) on DVD behind me on the shelf:
you can have that right now.
I don't know about the RC1 release, but for the RC2s (1 or 2 seasons of mine are the German DVDs, most are from the UK) I can assure you that they all contain a "laughless" audio track.
Each RC2- season box contains 3 discs with 8 episodes each (sadly, no bonus materials) and sell (at amazon) around 25 pounds(UK) or 20-27 Euro (German, also cotaining laughterless English track).
Judging from the comments at amazon.com (20$ a season) you can turn off the laughter on the RC1s too; at least on the early ones (I checked season 1,2 and 7; BUT 7 didn't list two english tracks so you might want to take a closer look).
So you can get them already for 0.85$-2$ per episode,.
For what it's worth, my local library (Arlington, VA) has complete collections of the old Avengers, Secret Agent, and I Spy (the one with Bill Cosby) on DVD, plus a lot of other BBC stuff -- Poirot Mysteries, Monty Python, various mini-series, etc -- some HBO series, and quite a few old (and not so old) films. My point is that it's worth checking out libraries in your area before looking into cosmetic dentistry.
Sure, there's been a great resurgence of old-time radio. I love the stuff and I have a bunch of it. But let's be fair here: most of it is bootlegged. The original creators are not the ones posting it online, streaming it online, selling it online. It's other people either giving it away or making money only for themselves, with no licensing fees at all being paid to or by anyone. The original creators or performers aren't seeing a dime. So to paint that as the ideal model for old-time television isn't quite right, although it's a great example of what *will* happen if the TV people don't starting putting up a lot of content, and quick, on services like iTunes. The bootleg market for online OTTV (to coin an acronym for old-time television) will soon be so huge there will be no room for legitimate producers--just like happened with today's television, too.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
If the current term stands, we'll start to see 50s TV shows enter the public domain 40 years from now. But of course it won't. Not unless Congress magically finds the backbone to stand up to the media monopolies. Or until the Supreme Court realizes that allowing retroactive extensions makes a joke of clause 8 and reserves itself on this issue.
Looney Tunes. They're old, and I don't think they are regularly broadcast anywhere. Furthermore, they are short, so you can toss a bunch on your iPod due to smaller file sizes, and actually watch a big number of them before your battery runs out due to their short run time.
We all know that the best movies evar have all been made the last 10 years.
Kurosawa, Tarkowski, Wells, Hitchcock.
Seven Samurai, Solaris, Citizen Kane, Psycho.
They are old!
Burn them!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They don't care because they are in business to make money, not to meet every billeted list of everyone in the "me" generation. Several items on your unreasonable list are direct impediments to making money, such as having files without DRM, or making them playable on anything other than Mac's, iPods or PC's.
And as far as viewing the files goes, if you have a computer capable of running iTunes, you have a computer capable of playing these videos.
Looney Tunes. They're old, and I don't think they are regularly broadcast anywhere.
Funny thing about Looney Tunes, they have been available for years on DVD. So it was a simple job over the last few years to rip them to a video Archos and enjoy them, Or on a Treo. Or a phone. Or a PSP. I'm sorry for so many people that it's taken the iPod so long to finally get some kind of video playback. Portable cartoons rule. It's nice having complete runs of Simpsons and Futurama ready to go at the click of a button...
Da Blog
honestly, the lack of resolution is one of the few things that i think will coax the [entertainment] industry into licensing it's content. i'm a filmmaker, and we are currently negotiating a distribution deal for our latest film. we were approached by a large company (as recognizable as, say, "disney") and one of this company's pitches was an online distribution model (video ringtones, ipod style downloads, etc). my business partner had a lot of hesitance about selling our film online in an ipod-style format at such a large discount, especially when it might be easily pirated. then i told him it was 320x240 .. which was mostly greeted by silence on the other end of the line. then i explained that 320x240 is "webcam" quality, and he was all for the idea. zero real cost to us, lots of potential profit. when you look at the fact that the final retailer (i.e. Best Buy, etc) actually gets the largest slice of the sale price, there isn't actually that much difference in my profitshare of a $2 download online, and a $19.99 DVD, assuming the online download has fewer "middle-men" taking percentage points. and, with the online download being "inferior" to our DVD product, it won't hurt DVD sales with buyers that actually care about content.. hell, some buyers may buy both (look at guys like George Lucas.. the friggin' master of getting nerds to buy the same 3 movies several times over in different 'box set' form).
so, if you WANT to actually see good content available at a reasonable price online.. don't push for VGA+ resolution so quickly haha. let the mainstream content start appearing, and then let the indie producers eventually start offering a VGA+ resolution option, and ultimately the mainstream content will follow suit. expecting mainstream studios to immediately offer up DVD quality downloads of their movies at a reasonable price without some VERY strict piracy safegaurds in place.. is unreasonable, imo. no way the bean-counters will do it, heh.
my $.02*
*disclaimer: i didn't proof read.. i hope this was semi-coherent.
I think ultimately what we need for IPTV is for the internet to become everyone's video collection, everyone's DVR timeshifter. The technology is ripe for that.
There are many shows that are so voluminous that the only practical way to consume them is with an all-in-one jukebox with a beefy search engine behind it (think google video indexing closed captioning).
Think of these long-running shows:
The Simpsons
Married with Children
Bonanza
Gunsmoke
Doctor Who
Cheers
Imagine also being able to dig into old news shows, like every episode of 60 Minutes, 20/20, or Nightline.
Imagine being able to watch any old airing of the Tonight Show back to the earliest B&W days based on a search for a celebrity guest. For instance, you could line up all of Tom Hanks' appearances and watch his fro shrink and his hairline recede.
DVD is fine, but it is just not practical to reserve the shelfspace to own it all. And DVDs do little to help you get from "gee, I wish I could see the episode where Ricardo Montalban guested on Gunsmoke" to it actually playing on the screen. You have to go figure out the episode number online, then find the right disc, pop it in, wait through the ads, navigate through the menus, and go. The convenience at the macro level is not there, just as maintaining a large audio CD collection is a drag.
So much of our content viewing habits these days is a result of search results. That's the whole idea of web surfing. So the ideal video viewing experience, to me, is to sit down casually and just improvise search terms until you come up with interesting enough results. You won't know what you want to watch until you see what comes up. Or you have the preference engine (ala Amazon) do it for you.
Instead of using the web to index information about media, it could index the media directly and let you jump right into it.
For instance, let's say you typed in a particular line or phrase like "Do'h" and every instance where Homer says "Do'h" pops up with the timecode right in there. You might even be able to set up in/out playlists for custom highlights reels.
Really, this stuff is all doable technically. Google video is a good proof of concept. It's purely a matter of working out the DRM and the business side of things.