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Can iTunes Resurrect Old Time TV?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Oct 29, 2005 03:42 PM
from the only-the-shadow-knows dept.
from the only-the-shadow-knows dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With iTunes selling a couple of popular TV shows now there has been significant hesitation from other television producers to follow suit and put their content on the Web. It has also sparked activity from the actors unions who want additional compensation for what appears online. But there is also existing content that stands to be revived in this new context, older television shows from the 50's and 60's that have been squeezed out of the traditional broadcast by popular shows of more recent vintage. It was suggested to a producer who is presently digitizing 27 episodes of a 1950's show called Captain Zero to offer it up on iTunes for a buck an episode. Is this an opportunity for these old shows to strike while the iron is hot and while the owners of more contemporary content are caught like deers in a headlight? As the Captain Zero article points out purveyors of old time radio programs have enjoyed a significant revival by embracing web-based technology. Why not old time TV?"
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Public domain, et al (Score:5, Informative)
You can get entire seasons of old TV for a buck....
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I've never actually been inside of a Wal-Mart.
However, even at bargain bin prices, it's not worth it. $5+ for a movie that's 20, 30, 40, 50 or even 60+ years old is not worth it.
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that is so on topic that it isn't even funny- That is why the online distro is such a good idea. You aren't paying 5$ for the movie. You are paying 50 cents for the movie, and then You are paying for the freight to get it to the store, to heat the store, pay the staff, buy shopping carts, advertise, press the DVD, the DVD case, the shrink wrap and on and on etc etc etc.... With the online distro, you cut out so much of that expense....
Parent
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:5, Insightful)
Woow. That's an impressive statement.
25+ years old: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/ [imdb.com]
30+ years old: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/ [imdb.com]
40+ years old: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0059578/ [imdb.com]
50 years old http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/ [imdb.com]
60+ years old http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0022100/ [imdb.com]
Saying that any of those movies are not worth 5$ bucks just shows the world what a moron you are.
Cheers,
--fred
Parent
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Absolutely. (Score:3, Informative)
Kurosawa, Tarkowski, Wells, Hitchcock.
Seven Samurai, Solaris, Citizen Kane, Psycho.
They are old!
Burn them!
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot out there I'd pay good money to get on DVD, like Get Smart. Unfortunately they won't make DVDs of that series (though 1 or 2 Get Smart movies are printed and some series bootlegs exist).
I wish that just about everything was available on non-VHS media. Even some shows SciFi series from around 1999 or 2000 are being held back.
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:2)
Re:Public domain, et al (Score:2)
What would tempt me is if you could buy the film for $1 on an iTunes like site and then get redirected to somewhere that would allow you to buy a better quality version in DVD form.
ipod... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ipod... (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume the overhead is low and, in an era where new, expensive HD content is raising the bandwidth bar, these old 4:3 shows would be light on the pipes and relatively easy and cheap to deliver.
I for one would happily pay to see old episodes of shows like The Saint or The Prisoner without having to pay for a whole additional tier of cable TV service just so I can get channels like BBC America (and then hope they run the shows).
Listening to Podcasts like "Soap Detectives" [soapdetectives.com] has gotten me into listening to old radio shows lately and I'm amazed by how entertaining they are.
On demand, online delivery of old TV content sounds like a sure winner to me.
Parent
Re:I think big media already owns most old content (Score:2)
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson got paid an average engineer salary to develop unix, yet only Bell Labs and now the open group make money off of every copy sold. They agreed to work for x amount a year.
Re:Well (Score:2)
Even if actors' work doesn't require more talent or hard work (which is debatable), they're not interchangable so some lucky ones end up getting rich. I don't think there's any getting around it unless computer-generated "actors" ever catch on.
Re:Well (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, in the end, actors' names do have an obvious impact on the financial success of movies (please, lets as
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
And then that changed, and actors were willing to accept less guaranteed pay for more points. And studios were happy to offer points because it mitigates their risk. This has three effects 1: more and more expensive movies get made, as the risk is artificially spread out over multiple parties, 2: the median actor salary goes down, and 3: actors take a more active role in the production.
I'm still not sure whether the points system makes movies better, like tipping makes service in resturants better, or if it just means that most actors starve. Either way, the actor's guild is just looking for the same types of income stream with shows online that they get from syndication and overseas views.
Parent
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Tipping doesn't make service better. Go visit a restaurant in a country where tipping isn't done (i.e. most countries outside the US) and you'll see.
Tips are expected by the staff merely for showing up, so they're not a motivation for better service. Tipping is only insurance against getting deliberately bad service the next time you visit.
Parent
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
The average actor in the union makes $7500 a year acting, the average programmer makes several times that. This has less to do with unions and more to do with standard contract of the industry. Programmers tend to go towards salary (+ maybe stock options) which is a much safer bet than royalty based pay scales.
What I want: (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want me to be a customer, you need to offer me several things:
+ I don't want to view it just on my ipod.
+ I don't want to be able to view it only with Quicktime.
+ I don't want to have severe DRM limits that hamper my ability to store and watch the content any time I want on any device I want.
+ I don't want to pay through the nose for the content.
+ If I watch it on a non-iPod device, I want higher quality downloads available.
+ You should have at least the selection that Netflix does. Even if you're just the "Netflix of television".
I'm one of those consumers who is not opposed to paying for information/entertainment/data on any real basis other than I want it to be affordable and flexible. Don't place silly restrictions on me that hamper my enjoyment and don't charge me so much that I have to seriously think if each download is worth it.
Also, isn't most of the content they're talking about already public domain? Hell, some of it can be downloaded from the Internet Archive already.
Public Domain TV (Score:5, Informative)
Not in general. No TV is old enough to enter the public domain naturally. What happened with some programs and movies (even such famous movies as the original "Night of the Living Dead") is that they were never officially copyrighted or were incorrectly copywrited during the time when copyright was not automatically granted.
Parent
There is No "Natural" (Score:3, Informative)
Or ever will be. Despite the Consitution's insistence that IP be protected for a "limited time" (Section 8, clause 8) we keep seeing retroactive extensions of copyright. Before 1919, the "natural" expiration of copyright occurred after 28 years, with a possible 14 year extension. Since then, we've seen a series of retroactive extensions of old copyrights. Works for hire (which would cover most TV shows) were extended to 75 years in 1976 and to 95 y
Re:What I want: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want me to be a customer, you need to offer me several things:
That's great, and good points, but if 240 million boobs in the the US don't care, and 10 million educated people like who who understand the issues with DRM do care, I think the 240 million will rule the market.
Sort of like, If WalMart wants me as a customer they need to offer X Y and Z... WalMart doesn't giv
Re:What I want: (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What I want: (Score:2)
I don't know much about Ham Radio, that doesn't make me "the unwashed masses" but it does mean that I don't require much from a radio, while a Ham would...
The same way an auto tech may have opinions on cars that the average driver doesn't... (Even if the driver is doctor or something)
The same way someone who's main interest in cooking may have differing opinions/m
Re:What I want: (Score:3, Interesting)
Love that stuff (Score:2)
Bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bandwidth (Score:2)
This is true of many technologies that could be deployed if we had the infastructure.
Re:Bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm... I have a concern about that. Those old B&W shows were also noisy. Noise is the worst thing to encode. (not just video noise, but depending on the period they used film etc...) They may actually have a hard time encoding those shows at a lower data rate because of the added artifacts that the technol
Where's Nick at Nite when you need them? (Score:2)
* As long as it doesn't require Windows to do so.
I'd buy that for a dollar... (Score:2)
I Hope They Bring Back Johnny Nuance (Score:2)
Re:I Hope They Bring Back Johnny Nuance (Score:3, Funny)
80s TV shows... (Score:2)
At $1 a pop, no chance (Score:4, Insightful)
Naturally, I'd consider paying a half-dollar an episode for one of the good slightly old shows, like The Prisoner or The Six Million Dollar Man.
Another example of The Long Tail (Score:4, Interesting)
iTunes is a very effective distribution medium, and has helped the careers of many a smaller label / band, and even moved significant amount of back catalog.
Currently the networks are marketing to the top 20% in terms of demand, and ignoring the remaining 80% because they don't have the broadcast capacity.
Teaming up with iTunes they do. Another example of The Long Tail [wikipedia.org].
I see this working.
Don't Care (Score:2, Interesting)
Let me know when (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Let me know when (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let me know when (Score:3, Insightful)
Boy, howdie, you said it. Huckleberry Finn, the Revised Expurgated Edition is so much better than the original. And Harriet Bowdler did such a fantastic job of cleaning up Shakespeare. I also limit my movie-viewing to trans-continental airline flights, because they boil down the movie to the good parts and I don't have to watch the "director's vision" filth.
I'm sorry I d
Where the money is. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know there are hundreds of episodes of old cartoons I'd love to get, for a start.
-jcr
You mean a bootleg OTR revival, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Looney Tunes DVDs (Score:3, Informative)
Funny thing about Looney Tunes, they have been available for years on DVD [amazon.com]. So it was a simple job over the last few years to rip them to a video Archos and enjoy them, Or on a Treo. Or a phone. Or a PSP. I'm sorry for so many people that it's taken the iPod so long to finally get some kind of video playback. Portable cartoons rule. It's nice having complete runs of Simpsons and Futurama ready to go at the click of a button...
IPTV (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many shows that are so voluminous that the only practical way to consume them is with an all-in-one jukebox with a beefy search engine behind it (think google video indexing closed captioning).
Think of these long-running shows:
The Simpsons
Married with Children
Bonanza
Gunsmoke
Doctor Who
Cheers
Imagine also being able to dig into old news shows, like every episode of 60 Minutes, 20/20, or Nightline.
Imagine being able to watch any old airing of the Tonight Show back to the earliest B&W days based on a search for a celebrity guest. For instance, you could line up all of Tom Hanks' appearances and watch his fro shrink and his hairline recede.
DVD is fine, but it is just not practical to reserve the shelfspace to own it all. And DVDs do little to help you get from "gee, I wish I could see the episode where Ricardo Montalban guested on Gunsmoke" to it actually playing on the screen. You have to go figure out the episode number online, then find the right disc, pop it in, wait through the ads, navigate through the menus, and go. The convenience at the macro level is not there, just as maintaining a large audio CD collection is a drag.
So much of our content viewing habits these days is a result of search results. That's the whole idea of web surfing. So the ideal video viewing experience, to me, is to sit down casually and just improvise search terms until you come up with interesting enough results. You won't know what you want to watch until you see what comes up. Or you have the preference engine (ala Amazon) do it for you.
Instead of using the web to index information about media, it could index the media directly and let you jump right into it.
For instance, let's say you typed in a particular line or phrase like "Do'h" and every instance where Homer says "Do'h" pops up with the timecode right in there. You might even be able to set up in/out playlists for custom highlights reels.
Really, this stuff is all doable technically. Google video is a good proof of concept. It's purely a matter of working out the DRM and the business side of things.
Re:I'm down- (Score:2)
Imagine Apple releasing a set-top box iTunes... think of TiVO + iTunes...
This could really be a big hit.... only time will tell
Re:I'm down- (Score:5, Informative)
When you stand back and think about it, we live in amazing times consumer-technologically. 5 years ago I thought burning my own CDs was awesome- now I have my iPod with thousands of songs hooked up to my car....
Parent
Re:I'm down- (Score:2)
I am sure I will get made fun of for this, but I actually subscribed to the Hallmark channel to get Walker Texas Ranger.
I'd laugh, but I kind of like that show too. Used to be on USA a lot back-to-back with Highlander. Good times.
Re:M*A*S*H (Score:4, Interesting)
Having the seasons 1-8 (9 will be released in Dec, IIRC) on DVD behind me on the shelf:
you can have that right now.
I don't know about the RC1 release, but for the RC2s (1 or 2 seasons of mine are the German DVDs, most are from the UK) I can assure you that they all contain a "laughless" audio track.
Each RC2- season box contains 3 discs with 8 episodes each (sadly, no bonus materials) and sell (at amazon) around 25 pounds(UK) or 20-27 Euro (German, also cotaining laughterless English track).
Judging from the comments at amazon.com (20$ a season) you can turn off the laughter on the RC1s too; at least on the early ones (I checked season 1,2 and 7; BUT 7 didn't list two english tracks so you might want to take a closer look).
So you can get them already for 0.85$-2$ per episode,.
Parent
Re:eyeteeth (Score:5, Informative)
Parent