Last month, ABC started showing advertising-sponsored streams of its primetime TV shows online. It seems that the results have been pretty impressive: not only did they have more than 11 million viewers, but according to surveys taken after the episode, up to 87% of the viewers actually remembered what advertisers they watched, compared to approximately 40% for traditional broadcasts. I don’t find that particularly surprising, given that the streams had only three or four commercials, as opposed to the dozens that you’re bombarded with during a normal network broadcast.
Though the current site will close at the end of June, the project will continue, though different shows will be available online this fall. ABC’s numbers also found that the free streams did not detract from traditional broadcasts of the shows, which is also not terribly amazing; I feel like they’re more likely to pick up the people who were watching via DVR or via pirated videos on the Internet, i.e. people who were already technologically savvy enough to eschew conventional broadcasts.
In addition, Disney claimed that the one month of streaming “outperformed” the nine-months that their shows had been available on iTunes. This seems to me a ridiculous comparison: you mean people would rather sit through 30-seconds worth of commercials than pay $1.99. I’m shocked. Shocked! I think this also plays into my pet theory (which I’m going to continue repeating until you’re sick of it): people do not want to own all of their content. Many would rather watch an hourlong episode of Lost and be done with it, rather than ending up with a file that they may never watch again. And those who do want to own it will probably still opt for the tangible nature of a DVD set.
What good is owning it when it cannot be watched on my DVD player and TV? Well maybe it feels good to say "I own it."