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ABC To Offer Full Shows Online
vitaly.friedman writes to mention an Ars Technica story on the ABC's newest bid to stay relevant in the Information Age. As of the end of this month the network will be airing certain popular television shows on the ABC website, starting the morning after their first broadcast. From the article: "All programs will be shown in their entirety, including commercials which cannot be avoided. That's a smart move on ABC's part, as it ensures that advertisers will get another shot at hawking their wares to an audience that might otherwise change channels during commercial breaks or fast-forward through them if recorded. Aside from being unable to avoid commercials, watching the programs will be similar to watching timeshifted content in that viewers will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind."
After all the customer is always right, and with all media (google included) you have to remember that the advertiser is the customer t and you the viewer is the product being sold.
>>viewers will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind
What's this about not being able to skip commercials? Any commercials?
Say I want to watch just the final ten minutes of something, does that mean I must sit through SEVENTEEN minutes of commercials first before I'm "allowed" to view the ending?
No thanks. I (and everyone else, I suspect) will just wait for the Torrent.
In many ways, it's a no-brainer, as viewers have demonstrated by their viewing habits that they want more control over where, when, and how they watch programming. ....
All programs will be shown in their entirety, including commercials which cannot be avoided.
So, basically I should still use netflix if I don't want to see commercials.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Before we jump all over ABC here - "What?! Only 4 shows?! And they all suck!" - this is a huge step forward. I hope this program is successful, as it would mean people like myself without a clear OTA signal will be able to legally download broadcast television.
The bigger concern here is what will the laws say about my ripping the forced commercials out? Given the industry's history in developing copy protection schemes, this will likely be a trivial matter. Now, it's perfectly legal for me to do this with the OTA signal - will the DMCA be invoked against people who do this with the downloads?
Anyway, let's congratulate ABC on this leap of faith. I am appreciative of it, and may sit through a few of those awful shows just to support their new distribution model.
Like the constant ads we see in every tv show and movie? Want a COKE? It's the taste of the new generation! No Thanks, I'll just have a water,but have you seen my new Timex watch and Converse All stars? Or, do they mean little flashes of "buy crap now,buy crap now" in the fast forwarded ads. I wonder what subliminal brokerage ads or 90's style jeans ads would be like. You have this irresistable urge to go do...something or wear maybe pants? Unavoidable ads! Yeah!
Forget the morons above when they complain about "oh, it's the day after? WAH WAH WAH" or "Can't skip the commercials WAH WAH WAH".
They're trying to embrace a new delivery medium and you these idiots are fricken complaining about it. Come on, ABC should be congratulated for thinking outside the standard line that RIAA and the MPAA have been harping on. The net will make a great delivery service and they're heading out into it full steam ahead.
But no, months ago people were saying this is what they should do, and now that they're doing it, it's not enough. Give them what they want, and you get a big "fuck you" in return.
I welcome this.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I wonder if Apple will still be charging a couple bucks an episode when viewers now have the choice of getting a commercial-loaded copy for free instead.
It'd be nice if the ad-supported version were available for free through iTMS, but that would probably require ABC to actually pay APPLE per download to cover bandwidth costs and overhead, which might be problematic.
Anyway, if Apple doesn't work out SOME kind of new deal, it seems safe to say their $2 iTMS episodes aren't gonna be selling very well anymore, except among the video iPod loyalists.
This is probably ok for those whe don't get good TV signal over the air. For everyone else, there is MythTv. More functionality, no commercials.
Not a chance they'll use this method. You can still easily find where the file is located simply by sniffing your network traffic. Security through obscurity is not the way they'll go.
More than likely they'll simply use Windows Media with it's built in DRM protections. I don't believe anyone has broken the lastest DRM from Windows Media.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Hell, just put up a torrent and leave the commercials in. Most people will just download and watch the thing and then delete it. They'll pay no more and no less attention to commercials than they already do. Why make it so damn hard on people to watch a friggin TV show?
I see a huge backlash from companies when they start catching their employees watching these shows at work.
....and see Slashdot headlines of "Study claims Billions of lost revenue weekly from staff watching streaming TV at work"
An easy to use access system (a web page) will mean anyone will be able to find and watch them with no software install (p2p etc.). This could be hard for IT administrators to stamp out.
I gaze into my crystal ball....
I don't know how many times I have heard people complaining about iTunes selling television shows. How many people are in an uproar because ABC is making money first from commericals aired during their shows on television AND by selling the show on iTMS. Guess what, they also sell their shows on DVD AND make money off syndication.
What is the purpose of your complaining?
First, you don't have to buy the shows on iTMS, most of you complaining probably don't even own an iPod let alone the iPod that works with this service.
Second, many people actually enjoy the shows that are being sold on iTMS, that is, they want to watch it more then once. I would jump on the bandwagon with you if iTMS sold shows for $1.99 per view, but you are buying a video file you can watch over again. It may not be within the same month, or year, but many people do enjoy watching a full season of TV over a few days or weeks.
Why is it that some people are so jealous or fanatical about companies that make money? Why bother to complain. If a company or entity forced you to contribute to their profit, then that is reason for complaining (i.e. the government and taxes or gas companies). But some corporation that sells television shows is really no target for the kind of criticism and whining people are doing. Your just wasting your breath and straining your fingers.
When someone complains about a product or service they have no intention of buying or participating in, then that is just moronic. It is a classic definition of an idiot.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Maybe if advertisers stopped making commercials that are crap, they wouldn't need to lock us out of fast forward during commercials.
You whiny bastard. Seriously. These companies can't do anything right, can they?
All I see here is people complaining and getting modded up for it. As far as I'm concerned this is a great step in a great direction.
I think what it boils down to is that most people here just want shit for free, and will say anything to pretend that they have some valid objection with the system and that it warrants theft (or "copyright infringement" for the pedants).
Free/opensource software falls victim to the same tripe -- people pretend that they stand by the ideologies but really just want stuff for free -- and use the ideology as a guise to pirate non-free software like photoshop or Windows.
bleh.
Honestly, as with all security, this needs a cost benifit analysis. I suspect that if ABC were to offer all of their shows WITH commercials in an unrestricted free fashion, the majority of people would not bother spending the time and effort to look for illegal copies of shows on p2p networks. I suspect that most people would not even bother to keep a copy of the shows if they knew that they could always go get it again directly from the source. You also would see very few people downloading and cutting commercials themselves, as that would be a bigger inconveniance than just watching the commercials.
There will always be a certain percentage of people that will download and strip commercials, but as illicit demand drops, p2p becomes less effective. This means more ads watched, and more revenue. The Media Barons have been tripping over dollars to pick up dimes for a long time now. They will never stop copyright violation, but they could probably reduce it by removing the primary motivators.
As for what is being offered ABC...we will see how it turns out, but it sounds like a good step.
For example, I won't even consider touching the video on commercial web sites (except google). Why? Well, it's not because I'm morally opposed to downloading a video from ABC or CNN. No... it's because their video always sucks to an unbelievable degree, to the point where watching it is a nightmare. Let's consider:
... etc. The point is, the reason Bittorrent is so incredibly popular isn't because people are so excited that they can get an episode of Lost without commercials for free. They could already do that -- VCRs are old hat. The great thing about Bittorrent is that it's incredibly convenient compared to any of these pile-of-garbage corporate offerings.
And that's the problem with this ABC thing. It, like all the garbage before it, sucks. The network that created the show is going to offer a vastly inferior experience, with more hassle, than some random guys using bittorrent.
If they wanted to do something innovative, and better, they would simply have placed MPEG4 files (or torrents to keep their costs down) on their web site, with the commercials. This would have been much cheaper and easier to develop for them, and would be a better experience for their users. But of course, they never will do this, because the industry is insane.