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MTV Takes on P2P by Making South Park Free
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Dec 01, 2007 10:29 AM
from the oh-my-god-they-killed-viacom dept.
from the oh-my-god-they-killed-viacom dept.
thefickler writes "MTV Networks, the biggest division of Viacom Inc., has announced plans to make every South Park episode available online for free as part of a plan to make the show available to a larger audience." This is apparently largely because of the success of a similar project where they put every episode of The Daily Show on-line a few months back. This action didn't hurt ratings, and it may have actually helped them.
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Viacom Puts the Daily Show Archive Online 153 comments
tburton writes "Viacom has put the entire eight year run of the Daily Show with John Stewart online. The content is available from the official Daily Show site, and features clip rating, tags, and numerous community features. The whole thing is supported by relatively unobtrusive contextual ads. 'Viacom's decision to post its entire archive--while fighting YouTube in the courts--sets the scene for a battle between the established media players and their high profile entertainment brands against the user generated content sites, most notable YouTube. Also watching closely the Viacom experiment will be the telco IPTV industry which has seen the market place change rapidly as the quality of online video continues to improve, with at least one platform/site, Vimeo, already offering 1280X720 HD quality direct from the browser.'"
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too late (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.mrtwig.net/ [mrtwig.net]
It's never too late to advertise. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fresh news generates fresh interest and that's what this is about. Traditional broadcasters are having a hard time building new audiences because we've all gone to the greener pastures of the internet. Cable subscription rates will plummet if they don't keep the interest of young audiences. Somehow they have to convince you to pay $60/month for the advertisement saturated shows someone else chooses to broadcast.
I'm not going to cry for them when they are gone. The businesses involved have been give
Who the fuck cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Did they consult their customers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was talking about the various networks around the globe that license Southpark, often first of all having to dub it. That this takes time is a given (it's gotten better in the past years, but it's still about a season difference, give or take).
When I can watch a show online, why bother waiting for our networks to dub it? Yes, I "have to" watch it in English, but then again, usually that's the better version anyway. Anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons in German will agree.
So, any response from the networks? I mean, I don't know about the Daily Show (never heard of it, actually, and possibly not as much an export as SP is), but a show like Southpark which is being licensed widely might cause some negative reaction from the networks licensing it.
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Surely there are Germans who can't speak English that wouldn't agree ?
I know that I get completely lost when I watch a show in say, Japanese, and I have no idea what the dialogue is saying. While bi/multi-lingual people who also understand English undoubtedly feel the same w
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A lot of people say original language + subtitles is better than dubbing, though I'm not sure I agree.
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There are also subtitles, which very well may be being made anyway, for the deaf. Then you "just" need to translate them.
A lot of people say original language + subtitles is better than dubbing, though I'm not sure I agree.
That depends on the quality of the dubbing and on whether or not you mind reading your TV shows.
Some people don't like to read, they would rather watch TV. Some people can't read fast enough to follow the rhythm of the spoken word, and some people can't read at all.
Personally: "Original language (if understood)" > "original + subtitles in a language I understand" > "dubbed well" > "on mute" > "dubbed badly";
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Dubbing of foreign language shows is definitely the best! Believe it!
(That... actually did hurt to write.)
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And the age range above 40 is hardly the target group for the show.
Of course there are people who don't know enough English to follow it, and they will probably have to wait for the dub. Still, I'd guess the group of people who're able to follow the show is sizable enough to cause an outcry amongst the network
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Yes, there'll be plenty, but especially among the South Park target demographic the English language is widespread. Certainly enough for this service to have the potential to make a huge dent in DVD sales.
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DVD Sales (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DVD Sales (Score:5, Funny)
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Smoothly animated stop-motion cardboard cutouts (which IIRC, SP hasn't actually used since the second season) still beat low-framerate stop-motion cardboard cutouts with macroblocking, stream errors, buffering, and loss of audio sync.
different market segments, tradeoffs. (Score:5, Insightful)
But with South Park you can buy the DVDs, so making them available for free online would only hurt their DVD sales
I doubt it, or at best it would affect them only a little. People don't buy the DVDs because they haven't seen the show, those people will just rent it. The people who buy the DVD want to watch it over and over.
The other thing is, the episodes are still going to contain ads. Ads which you can't easily skip over. Comedy Central is going to make direct profits from those ads. The people who buy DVDs buy them partially because they don't contain ads. Even if it does make a small dent in DVD sales, the profits from selling ads will likely make up for that.
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torrents (Score:2, Interesting)
but more likely, they will just make it an embedded player, so we can't FF through the commercials.
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This is the internet, remember?
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Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
No advertising, no residual payments... not fair?
Re:Incidentally... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you hear the one about the crack dealer who went on strike? Where all his clients cleaned themselves up and the market disappeared?
No, me neither. Guess crack dealers are smarter than the Writers Guild.
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No, me neither. Guess crack dealers are smarter than the Writers Guild.
I guess you don't consider that the producers have a lot more to lose than the writers guild. The writers can always find some other medium to write for, or if worse comes to worse, become truck drivers, or whatever. If the producers lose the audience, they're quite screwed.
Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both of my parents were writers and editors at one point, for the newspaper industry. Neither of them got any residuals, either. I don't suppose you continue to write residual checks to the artists that designed your car, or your sofa, or you house, either?
No advertising, no residual payments... not fair?
Go on strike and get a better contract. The law allows you to do that. But in no way do most of the working world consider this "unfair" to the special subset of people who feel that they need to be paid for the rest of their life for one momentary spark years ago. And when the time comes around that we can finally change copyright back to 50 years, thereby cutting off residuals for thousands of older writers or their descendants, you won't find me or most other people on Slashdot complaining.
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Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the issue is that, unlike you, writers aren't paid up front what the distributors believe their work to be worth. To avoid the risk of paying for scripts and shows that bomb, they pay only a small amount, then pay for further showings. That way, if a show does extremely well, the writer is rewarded, and if a show bombs, the distributor didn't waste a lot of money.
A better analogy to your situation: imagine if you developed a product, but were only paid a small amount, and told that you would be paid well later on if the product sells well. Then, you find out that the distributor is selling your product but not holding up their end of the bargain by giving you payments. I dare say you wouldn't be as sanguine as you are now about the whole thing.
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Re:Incidentally... (Score:5, Informative)
Script-writers have a project to work on, then may go 6 months to a year without another project being available; since they do get paid so little to start with (as the parent post notes), many writers do rely on their residuals to still pay rent and so on. Unlike newspaper reporters and editors, they do not have a guaranteed job.
A better example would be novel writers, I think; if you end up in a 2-3 year dry spell without another novel published, you darn well still want royalty payments on any copies of the last one that are still being sold! If you were a novelist and your publisher somehow decided to sell the book as an eBook and went 'oh, but we're not going to pay you for that,' there would be outcry, dismay and rage. (This is why novel/story rights get laid out pretty clearly in a given contract!)
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Re:Incidentally... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apples and oranges. First, South Park isn't a union show, so the WGA has no impact on it. (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are, because Jon Stewart was in a superior negotiation position a few years ago, and that was one of his demands.)
Second, if there's no advertising, and the episode isn't paid for by the viewer... the WGA's current demands would still mean they get nothing in this case. It would be "promoational," and, unlike what the major networks are doing, truly seems to be.
The problem th
Cool (Score:2)
Daily Show (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that putting them online wouldn't noticably hurt ratings (or perhaps could even increase them), but I don't think that you can evidence much from those two weeks.
Credit where credit is due (Score:2, Informative)
How does the WGA strike factor in? (Score:2)
From the networkhead's perspective, P2P is screwing them over because they aren't getting any money for it. But from a show creator's perspective, having the company put it up for free online (wi
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SOXMAS.MPG (Score:2)
(SOXMAS.MPG, The Spirit of Christmas was a widely distributed copy of the original 5 minute South Park short, well technically second short)
Of course it would help them. Did TV hurt them? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing different now is they sell TV shows on DVD more than they ever sold TV series on VHS. This is mainly because of the storage capacity increases and size factor of the storage... but people watch those shows for free... and even go to the lengths of buying them on DVD. Thats a pretty dam good base of consumers to treat fairly, because they like your shows, and have already seen them for free for which they could easily record themselves... AND they still want to buy them.
Giving away the shows for free online is not going to hurt them one bit. In a day with so many online distractions, so may cable tv stations... It is better to capture a wider audience anyway possible, rather than try to clamp down on consumers that would rather just go to youtube, or find something else to do. There are just too many options out there... and options have always been a good thing.
someone @ riaa.. (Score:5, Funny)
Idea is Comcastic (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, so assuming Viacom, as a content producer and an ISP, prefers BitTorrent, where does that put Comcast? I wonder if this will also encourage competition?
A bold move, but not as bold as The Music Business (Score:5, Informative)
"It'll be low quality" - No - both sites deliver CD quality audio
"It'll be some crappy indie bands that nobody has heard of" - No both sites have signed deals with most of the major labels - Sony, BMG, Warner, EMI and Universal - this is on top of all the indie labels who sign on
"It'll be only a few free tracks - everythign else witll cost" - nope it's all free with a few exceptions (like the beatles) imeem even played host to the first legal Led Zeppelin video on the internet
"It won't be on demand - you won't be able to control what you listen to" - nope it's entirely on demand, I think the only restriction I see is the slow downloads from spiralfrog that force you to watch advertising
"It'll have tonnes of spyware/DRM/evil" - well no spyware as far as I can tell, imeem.com is streaming only and provides everything via a neat little flash player that works on any flash enabled browser. Spiralfrog however uses and active X control and windows DRM, so that's Windows/IE only
OK so why is this a bolder move than this story? Well TV shows primary channel is still considered to be broadcast, a TV show has to make money on its TV run otherwise it's not considered viable. However, music revenue has primarily been generated through sales of the media, radio broadcast earns the record labels nothing, in fact it may be costing them to get this free advertising.
In my mind the celestial jukebox that's offered by imeem is a hugely radical move by the record business, imeem has become the youtube for music that the tech bloggers keep talking about - except nobody in the tech blogging world has noticed it.
It is funny in fact (Score:3, Interesting)
They could even make money if they licensed the Vuze (Azureus) engine and put couple of animated gifs/flash while downloading with virtually zero cost to them.
I am sure the hosts, even if they are Akamai will choke and people will end up hitting Pirate bay to download them. See that happened on Radiohead, people downloaded their paid content from P2P.
Re:I wouldn't watch the shit even if I were paid (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I wouldn't watch the shit even if I were paid (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot to say 'Screw you guys, I'm going home'.
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Re:I wouldn't watch the shit even if I were paid (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Fap, fap, fap...
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And don't forget about all the people who are still on dial-up. Not everyone has the fortune of having a 100MB fiber connection at home.
Downloadable videos provides the most freedom to watch video when someone wants to. (which is the reason VCRs were invented, remember?)
Re:if it's not available off-line (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not the original AC, but I think you missed his point.
He doesn't want to stream it, he wants to download it so that he can watch it offline, that is, without TCP/IP connectivity.
Streamed video is not merely inelegantly wasteful of bandwidth (why re-download something just to watch it next week?), it's highly vulnerable to factors outside of your control, such as the performance of the network between your PC (or your friend's PC when you want to show him something).
Worst of all - and this is the dealbreaker - it's entirely dependent on the whim of the content provider to keep hosting it. That's an implicit form of DRM: When MTV decides it's not making enough money, the content disappears forever, or worse -- when MTV decides that it doesn't want to risk being sued by the Cult of $cientology for Season 9, Episode 12 (The OT III story) or bombed for Season 10, Episode 4 ("Remember the time I got a salmon helmet from Mohammed while wearing a toga?"), the episodes get censored server-side, and you never get to know that the originals existed.
Ever watch Warner Bros. cartoons on broadcast TV these days, as opposed to the remastered and uncensored originals being released on the annual 4-disc DVD collections?
In the case of Looney Toons, I've "downloaded" (by containershipnet, trucknet, and sneakernet) that content, and I can archive that content to a RAID array should the DVDs eventually fall victim to scratches) and enjoy it forever. The "streamed video" equivalent was called "network TV", and it had been censored to the point of unwatchability as far back as the 1980s.
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