The Jeff Pulver Blog: When will American Idol move from FOX to the Internet?

« TechCrunch on FeedColectors: | Main | Andy Asks: More M&A's Coming? »

May 27, 2006

When will American Idol move from FOX to the Internet?

The success of AOL Music’s internet broadcast of Live8 last July was a transformational event, and marked the advent of the “Disrupted Broadcasting” space, a space ten years in the making. While some media companies are still formulating their Internet broadcasting/distribution strategies, companies like: AOL, BBC, CBS (Viacom) Disney/ABC, NBC Universal and others have come forward and have distributed their own business and their own industry from the top down.

While we will continue to see Television series and Independent Films premiere on the Internet and then make their way back to broadcast TV and to Cable, what I’m waiting to see is for the owners of a major brand like American Idol to have the courage to take their show, move it away from Fox and put it exclusively on the Internet and oh by-the-day keep all of the advertising revenue for themselves. Something that would be parallel to the move Howard Stern did by moving from Commercial FM Radio to Satellite radio. A move by American Idol to an Internet that knows no boundaries and an Internet that offers the producers of the show the innate ability to take advantage of one-to-one marketing on a massive scale. Broadband viewers of American Idol could place their votes in real-time and engage in all sorts of rich-media supported communication sessions. In time, the producers of American Idol on the Net would be able to offer their viewers a higher fidelity audio experience than they are experiencing today on broadcast TV.

Of course in real life the folks at FOX most likely have tied down the rights to American Idol all for themselves. But, if the owners of American Idol could make the move from FOX to the Net, and if they did make the move, it would create a tidal wave of epic proportions for other shows to follow. American Idol is a strong enough brand to withstand the backlash it would incur by making such a move. Lesser brands most likely couldn’t pull this off and survive. But then again, maybe they could…

Another trend to look for is for cancelled TV series to consider going directly to the Internet in addition to and/or instead of going into syndication.

And the opportunity exists for an enterprising team to get together and develop their own American Idol clone and market it exclusively on the Internet. Now that is a start-up I would be interested in learning more about.

Tags: Broadcast 2.0, American Idol, disruptive broadcasting, FOX, Jeff Pulver,

Posted by jeff on May 27, 2006 01:26 PM | Permalink

Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos

Comments

Posted by: cheap-ugg at March 4, 2010 05:37 AM

The first place to look for this to happen is a show that producers have targeted at the MySpace demographic -- 16-20 year olds with computers and cell phones of their own (so relatively well off).

Posted by: Ted Shelton at May 31, 2006 01:35 AM

May 27, 2006

When will American Idol move from FOX to the Internet?

Comments

Post a comment