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iTunes Credited with Boosting Primetime Ratings
grandgator writes "TV Week reports on NBC's claims that iTunes downloads are boosting ratings for their primetime shows. Citing one example 'NBC's "The Office" delivered a 5.1-its highest ratings ever-last Thursday among adults 18 to 49, a bump the network credits in large part to the show's popularity as an iPod download. Such a connection between podcast success and broadcast ratings success is particularly significant because the NBC data is among the first available evidence of what network executives have been gambling on when striking their new media deals-that the new video platforms are additive because they provide more entry points into a show for consumers.'"
Well, iTunes shows also lack commercials and also go online the very next day. But these are legal and download a hell of a lot faster then they would on BT.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I suppose at its best, you could have a world where people get out of their cars, saving the air, and use the travel time on public transit to do their TV watching.
At its worst, there'll be alot of iPod video junkies strung out waiting for their next hit.
TV anywhere and everywhere, the new opiate for the masses.
I'm glad to see the success of The Office online. Overall, I suppose NBC (or whoever made the decision within NBC to iTunes-enable their primetime) should be congratulated for their forsight.
A few things I wonder about though:
1. now that NBC's taken this (presumably risky, in their minds) step in new-fangled distribution, and now that they've seen some early signs of success, will they now believe they invented this new medium and start demanding higher pricing, forced purchase of "blocks" of episodes, or -gasp- more DRM restrictions from Jobs & co?
2. Does anyone know the story behind NBC's decision to go iTunes in the first place? I'm just guessing here, but I'm thinking there was a rebel executive somewhere who had to do jump through hoops to convince management that this was a good choice. Of course, that just might be jaded old me predisposed to think the worst of labels and studios based on their traditional less-than-progressive stances on anything that challenges their conventional wisdom.
3. I wonder at what point is it financially worth it for a studio to produce a "TV" show and sell it exclusively off-air. For example, Arrested Development is one of the most brilliant shows to come on in years, but it's doing rather poorly in viewer ratings. Conceivably, if it sold on iTunes, and DVD & iTunes sales were strong enough, would a studio ever have enough balls to make a TV show that wasn't distributed on TV?
It should be obvious that distribution of a show, legal or otherwise, is going to get more people watching it. But no network exec would write a press release saying, "thanks to internet piracy, more people have heard of and are watching our show".
But now that iTunes is offering their shows (and paying them for every download) they're suddenly very keen to advertise the positive role that the internet can play in increasing exposure to their programmes.
Overall, though, it's definitely a good thing. Any press that demonstrates that internet downloads can benefit tv corporations as well as harming them increases the chance of a decent compromise between illegal file-sharing and drm'ed-to-the-gills restrictive legal downloads.
Well, I can give my testimonial. I'm in a professional school in a different country than the US, so I can't really watch US TV shows. However, I downloaded shows like Lost and The Office from iTunes and have fell in love with them. I wish Apple would put you on an auto-purchase thing where it would download the next show as soon as its ready. I don't even know what night or day of the week these shows play.
Or you can get a clue and join the real world.
I wanted to see how it was so I downloaded the free battlestar galatica season opener special. I played it on my TV just fine and it looked just like the regular shows. Other than the fact it was commercial free and I could pause it at will.
So i downloaded the season 2 and every night for 4 nights I watched 2-3 episodes to get the season i missed. Now I can watch the new episodes without having missed anything.
On my TV downstairs on the couch. I do wish HD was an option but that's okay for $2 I can watch it when i want to without interruption.
What I want to know though is is apple selling more quicktime pro licenses. It's the only way to get good fullscreen viewing of protected content. I wish mplayer would work but it doesn't.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Are you sure? I can download through bittorrent at about 1.3MBytes/s and most content servers max out at 500KBytes/s.
Saying that, I would be happy paying for TV shows/Films if the quality is high and the DRM is acceptable, but no such service exists (I pay for all my music at emusic.com which has no DRM and the bitrates are fair), until then I will download my TV shows for free.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
There are people out there that don't want to pay 50$/month for Cable TV. Or even have the TV.
.. I mean legally download .. ) without waiting 3/6 months for it to be available on DVD rental.
...
I know, I don't have a TV. Most of my friends don't have a TV. I don't care paying for digital joy 24/7, I have internet and a monthly subscription to a postal dvd service, and that's enough for me. If tomorow I get bored, I would rather take WoW than TV !
However from time to time ( like for Battlestar Galactica ) I would like to be able to download 1 specific show (
But anyway, I'm out of luck, there is no itune download here in the uk
I'm missing something here. Can someone please explain what a 5.1 is?
No, it isn't for morons. It is for people who don't steal and (far more importantly) people who don't have time to waste looking for a bit torrent link that works and is offering something of quality.
The other Friday I missed Battlestar Galactica. Sure, I could have done what I used to do was the fuck around with BT to get it. Instead though, I just threw them 2 bucks, which for a guy with a job is nothing, and got a good quality version without any hassle.
Hell, the reason why I will pay for a TV show is the same reason why I will pay for a videogame. First, I don't want to be a douche and not give the people who made it their due. Second, it is just a hell of a lot easier to simply buy what you want then to screw around trying to download it.
At this point, the only thing I am waiting for now is for all TV programming to be offered free, any time, but with commercials. It is down right archaic that I need to be in front of the television at a certain time to watch a show. I should be able to watch it whenever I damn well please with commercials. Just disable the fastforward function while viewing commercials and you have something as good as normal TV.
Lopata.
P.S. The major problem of the iTunes Store (and any subscription service for that matter) is that you have to have good internet connection. And still, video of good enough quality takes lots of space. (Think DivX or MPEG4/AVC: 10 minutes ~ 100MB or more). Even if Apple would start selling h.264 full size movie downloads - who would want to pay money for ability to kill connection for a whole day or more? With all the DRMing stuff that would be too burdensome to customer. So for now Apple decided to go with something they can fit into appropriate download size.
But on other side, this is the only option at moment. Quality streaming had proven to be undoable on internet: average (read: cheap) home connection (infamous last mile) has way too high latencies.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
"What I want to know though is is apple selling more quicktime pro licenses. It's the only way to get good fullscreen viewing of protected content."
:-)
Actually iTunes has a feature that will play the protected content in full screen WITHOUT QTPro.
Its in the preferences...I found it just recently...it might be under Videos or Advanced. I can say I was 'midly' miffed that after two months of paying for QTPro6 an automatic update grabbed QT7 and disabled the standard full screen option (Yeah I know I can disable the mac updates -- but I like the idea that its there more often than not -- probably because I administer a few dozen PCs and servers at work and its a force of habit
Well I can give my example why and maybe shed some light. I have an ipod video, got in not too long ago. I got it because I ride a train for about 3 hours every day total. Reading and music are fine, video is good too though. So I bought Lost season 1 from Itunes and liked it, now that I could actually tell wtf was going on. I don't watch much TV, maybe a few hours a week not including the video on the ipod. But now that I'm caught up and can understand it I watch it when it comes on. Most of my show watching happens on my ipod, but If I can watch it at home I will. So the ipod pretty much brought me to the show.
But there is one side they may not like, I love TV without commercials. So now I want a PVR to watch those shows later ad-free.
The message top content providers is clear, people will pay for ad free shows with good content. I think this is a good thing for geeks.
ABC has done "catch up" episodes for Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost. These should be free downloads on iTunes to snag more viewers.
I kicked myself for a year because I never started watching Lost. When I subscribed to NetFlix, the first thing I got was Lost season 1. I finished around Christmas, got a video iPod for Christmas, then the first thing I bought on iTunes was all of the season 2 episodes so far ($18?). I actually watched them all on my 42" HDTV with my iPod. Quality wasn't much worse than my analog TV channels (a little artifacting in dark scenes). I finally caught up, so now I can watch the first run episodes in HD, so I won't be buying them on iTunes (unless I forget to DVR them).
ABC (and Disney and ESPN) and NBC are aligned with Apple/iTunes. CBS has gone with Google. Fox is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Where is 24, Arrested Development, etc.?
I DVR everything I watch (dual tuner Motorola HDTV DVR box with Comcast digital cable). I also have a TV tuner on my computer and the software where I can record TV shows then convert them to iPod video format. I haven't tried the DVD rippers/re-encoders yet.
I don't have a problem with $2 per episode because I don't intend to ever use iTunes as my primary way of watching a TV series -- I see using it to (a) catch up with shows I haven't been watching, (b) try out new shows by picking popular episodes, (c) be able to buy a show that I missed for some reason.
IMO, iTunes would be selling movies if it wasn't for the fact that an iPod will only show about 2 hours of video on a fresh charge. People would be pissed if they bought a movie that they couldn't watch on a single charge. Unfortunately, this just means my 30GB video iPod will be obsolete when they release one with a longer battery life.
You can use a $10 camcorder video cable to watch iPod videos on TV, but you have to ignore the cable's color coding.
For $300, Apple should include a video cable and a wall charger.
Kudos for Google to support iPod downloads on Google Video (the free ones at least).
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness