Aussie Online TV Channels

posted by sacah on May 31, 2010 online tv,

So the main networks have had time to get their online offerings together, I've always been excited about the prospects of online on-demand TV, and like many viewers would be more than happy to watch TV shows on-demand with Ads rather than download them illegally. But Nine, TEN and Seven have all been slow to provide access, and still have extremely limited offerings, often only the last few episodes are available and only for a week or two before being pulled.

I see online TV being a massive part of the networks marketing strategy, and an extremely cost effective one. When people start watching a TV show, but they miss an episode or two, they will often never start watching it again, especially continual series type shows, which majority of todays shows are. And this is the only market TEN and Seven are looking to target, offering a handfull of episodes for a short time, TEN even go as far as breaking an episode up into 6 annoying pieces. Now I'm greatful they have adopted this much of a technology most in their industry are fearful of, citing it as the cause of loss of ratings, but there is so much more they could be targeting, and I was extremly excited when I saw Nines offering.

Just say you have been offered a new TV series, it's done quite well in USA or UK, but you're not sure how it will do here, why not offer the first few episodes online first, it's an amazingly cheap alternative to see how it fairs in our market place, and if it goes well you also have free advertising and an already established fan base for it's TV launch, not to mention the great ability of the internet to generate word of mouth advertising.

What if I hear about a show that's really funny, but it's half way through the season, if you're like me and must see a show start to finish, I'll wait for it to come out on DVD to watch it, and usually by the time it does, I've forgotten about it and never end up seeing it. That's a lot of commercial time the station has lost by not allowing me to watch the whole series, sure I'm probably not going to buy the DVDs once they come out, but truth be told, thinking back I've completely forgotten about so many shows by the time they actually come out on DVD, and I usually don't remember till I'm flicking through the discount bin at a shop.
Nine have multiple seasons and every episode for each season available, and I have watched more ads via their online channels in a few days than I have watched on all free-to-air stations combine over the last month.

http://fixplay.ninemsn.com.au/catalogue
http://ten.com.au/watch-tv-episodes-online.htm
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/plus7/browse/