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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
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.
Could not agree more with the premise. In a world where content is king, it continually amazes me that the vast piles of old TV programming out there can't find a market. Online delivery at low prices strikes me as the perfect delivery channel.
I assume the overhead is low and, in an era where new, expensive HD content is raising the bandwidth bar, these old 4:3 shows would be light on the pipes and relatively easy and cheap to deliver.
I for one would happily pay to see old episodes of shows like The Saint or The Prisoner without having to pay for a whole additional tier of cable TV service just so I can get channels like BBC America (and then hope they run the shows).
Listening to Podcasts like "Soap Detectives" has gotten me into listening to old radio shows lately and I'm amazed by how entertaining they are.
On demand, online delivery of old TV content sounds like a sure winner to me.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
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
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."
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.