Around six months ago, ABC started the first foray into commercial-free TV episodes online. Now the rush is on to offer a whole array of options from individual programming to subscriptions to a whole season.
Of course now they are trying their old model of advertising-based shows as they transer them to the web for free.
In that time, ABC has sold over 4 million downloads, but in their view this isn't a great success yet. There is still a lot of experimentation going on to see what works best.
Still, one of the great strengths of marketing online is that you can experiment with very low-cost marketing strategies.
The networks, among others, have no choice in this but to try different things as viewers are continually embracing the new technology that allows them to watch what they want whenever they want. The result has been a declining viewership for fixed programming.
The other side of it is that with this type of demand there is the illegal alternatives that people will take up if they are not given the options they want. It is already happening at the online video sites like YouTube, where people are uploading copyrighted material for anybody to watch. The networks must offer alternatives if they want to attract these consumers.
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