AOL offers free TV downloads
From Hackingnetflix:
Wow. The cost to download a tv show went from $1.99 to 99 cents, and now to free — in about a month. The Washington Post is reporting that AOL will have 4,800 reruns available for free:
Company officials, scheduled to announce the service today, said the shows will be available on demand, meaning computer users who search six new Web-based television channels on AOL.com will be able to choose when they watch the shows and which episodes to view. The companies, both part of media giant Time Warner Inc., will profit by sharing revenue from advertising, including banner ads and four 15-second streaming video ads per 30-minute episode.
Sure, the first shows to be available will be reruns of programs like “Welcome Back Kotter,” but this is a huge step in the right direction towards Internet TV and movie downloads.
I guess that since Nick at Night updated their format to include “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” those “F-Troop” reruns had to go somewhere. This is a huge step in the right direction. As far as I’m concerned, reruns are one of the only things I would download, that is, specific episodes of specific shows. The bigger the catalogue becomes, the more appealing it becomes. In a perfect world, all shows would be back-catalogued ad infinitum and ready for download.
In other news (same article, other news) AOL/Time Warner are also flirting with both Microsoft and Google as advertising partners. The free TV content is part of AOL’s new business model of generating more ad revenue, and MS and GOOG want to be on the cutting edge of online advertisement. It looks like Google is winning AOL’s heart so far, being already integrated into AOL’s search engine. Maybe Google will launch a new service soon, GoolgeTV that let’s you search synopsis of huge rerun catalogues to find a specific episode? Simpsons +Krusty -Rabbi -Camp? or Happy +Days +Fonzie +Shark +Motorcycle?