In a recent experiment with a 7 minute online clip of "The Simpsons," Fox was very impressed with the results.
A report from Mediapost said that "In a keynote address, Levinsohn talked about Fox's recent Web play for 'The Simpsons,' which involved placing a seven-minute clip from the show online in advance of the 18th season premiere of the series. Burger King was the exclusive sponsor, running both pre- and post-roll ads." The address was at the OMMA conference in New York City.
Levinsohn said that in the three days since the Simpsons clip was offered, it was streamed 1.4 million times. News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace users, (80% of them) watched the clip for at least five minutes. Fifty percent of those who watched on the Fox.com Web site sat through the whole 7 minutes.
The major point that Levinsohn made was concerning Rupert Murdoch in reference to giving up control. He said: "If Rupert Murdoch can give up control, I think anybody can give up control, if they don't let the consumer participate in it, it's not going to go anywhere."
It still boggles the mind that the music industry and some of the movie studios are still resisting this whole disruption in the marketplace. Disney (DIS) made the right choice by partnering with Apple iTunes; and downloads exploded in the first week.
You don't hear about News Corp. fighting the Internet industry over issues. Rather they bought into it and are letting control go to the users and are now trying to get their colleagues in the industry to join in.
Many are still trying to do it and maintain control, not realizing that letting go of control is doing it. How many million dollar sales will happen before they let go and jump in?
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