Did Showtime Benefit By Giving Away Free Content?
from the apparently dept
Here is yet another example of how "free" can co-exist with paid content, even when the content is basically identical.
Recently, Showtime made the season premiers of their hit shows DEXTER and CALIFORNICATION on YouTube for anyone to watch for free. So, did this gut their numbers when the shows aired on their subscription-only, kind of expensive if you ask me, premium cable network?
Both Dexter and Californication scored some huge opening numbers last Sunday with Dexter setting a new opening record for the cable network.More than 1.5 million sets of eyeballs tuned to the season four opener for Dexter and 821,000 stayed to watch the opener for Californication. That's 3 million single eyeballs for Dexter and more than 1.6 million for Californication.
Guess not.
Crossposted from MyMediaMusings
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: californication, content, dexter, free, showtime, tv
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
SINGLE eyeballs?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stream more shows!
So I guess I "steal" shows (chuckle). Except... I would happily watch commercials during all the shows I watch, if someone wanted to put them there. I hate digging through TV link sites looking for a stream that hasn't been DMCA'd and isn't slow as hell - so much so that I would probably put up with the full 8:22 minute ratio of commercials if it meant I could get all my shows reliably from a couple of legal sources.
Of course, some places try, but they make no effort to give me a good user experience. On the CTV website shows are broken up into tiny parts, with a single commercial in between each. Now, I could cope with this - but then, it exits fullscreen mode at every single break. I know it's just one simple backend switch to make their player stay in fullscreen so I don't have to get up 6 times during a 40 minute show, but they won't bother to flip it, because they apparently have no interest in actually attracting me as a customer.
So I guess what I'm saying is, until Hulu works in Canada, I'm probably going to stream the new Office every Thursday night, and I'm not going to feel guilty about it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Get a bluetooth remote and mouse
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just one question....
What's the statistical point of single eyeballs? :p
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Just one question....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I love how you're so quick to shoot down any opposition with "Correlation does not imply causation" and then completely ignore it with your own posts. Nice work on giving yourself a politician's out by making the headline a question, though. That way you can imply whatever you want and then when someone calls you on your bullshit you can just shrug and say you were asking the community for their opinion and didn't mean to imply anything. Clever.
More than 1.5 million sets of eyeballs tuned to the season four opener for Dexter
What ISN'T mentioned is that Dexter's season three finale ALSO had "more than 1.5 million sets of eyeballs tuned in".
What ISN'T mentioned is that Californication was moved to follow Dexter hoping for carry over viewership which they received in spades.
What ISN'T mentioned is that DirectTV has been running a Showtime promotion meant to directly coincide with the Dexter and Califnornication premieres.
What ISN'T mentioned is that the Dexter Season DVD's have been outselling all other TV DVDs by a wide, wide, margin.
But suuuuuuuuuure, it was Youtube. It's the power of free! You're absolutely right...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Oh, and you missed the whole point of the post. Idiot. He is saying that offering an online option did not reduce viewers of the traditional medium.
LTR noob.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lucky Louie
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whether he wrote it or not is inconsequential. He put it up on his blog without additional comment. I think it's safe to say he vouches for it.
Oh, and you missed the whole point of the post. Idiot. He is saying that offering an online option did not reduce viewers of the traditional medium.
Maybe you should read the TITLE of the post again. Idiot.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gratz on being a sheep!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TrollByDayTrollByNightTrollInSight
Well actually, he did. The actual posting wasn't criticized, online an imagined understanding of the text, i.e. not the point, and to top it of the wrong author is criticized.
Then comes trying-to-save-face-time, by actually showing a lack of understanding about causality and correlation.
Who wrote the text is very clear.
The point of the text is pretty clear, even the head line.
And the only assumption one can make of what Mr Masnick vouch for, is that the author follows the basic guidelines and rules to get published on this here site.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dexter
I do not subscribe to Showtime due to too few shows that I like being aired there (and movies can come from Many places). However, I have bought every single season on release date since season 2 (and I bought season one that same day, only cause for delay was I did not know about the show until then). I still download the seasons as soon as they are done so I can watch them all in a row. Its too addicted with this show to watch it not in a row.
This is easily my second favorite live action series, but it still trails behind Firefly.
Oh wait.
I forgot, I am not supposed to admit that I buy the DVDs because I download. I still support the downfall of all major copyright organizations though to be replaced by better more efficient systems. This show is just too good to pass up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Content was made available for free, and non-free TV viewership was not harmed because of it.
Whether you agree with Mike's views on free content or not, it doesn't matter. Your opinion of Mike does not magically change the facts that in this case; sales were not harmed. It is also irrelevant, since 'Dave' wrote this article, not mike.
Please, Trolls, go back to slashdot, where you can be modded down appropriately.
I am another Canadian who regularly watches unauthorized content. Hulu does not work in Canada, and all the legitimate video sources are horrible, difficult to navigate, slow, low-quality, and sometimes require plug-ins that are not compatible with linux. *curses people who use silverlight*
Its frustrating to go to a show's website, navigate their unique and unintuitive interface, then, upon finding the content and waiting for it to load, be told that as a Canadian, I have to watch it on a different website, so I go through the whole process a second time, just to watch a postal-stamp sized window that gives me about 5 seconds of video before stopping and buffering. Or, I can download it and watch it without hassle, or catch it on YouTube before the take-down requests are sent out.
Its nice to see some networks using a familiar service like YouTube, rather than re-inventing the wheel (poorly) to distribute free content to viewers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The drama about this post
The fact we can all agree on is that providing some content for free will most likely earn new viewers. This will obviously mean potentially LESS viewers of the same content; if you show the premiere for free, most likely their will be viewers who will not go out of their way to watch it again despite being loyal to the show. The benefit comes from hopefully an increase of overall viewer ship in episodes further down the road, and new showtime subscriptions. Therefore, measuring the success of the free clips via viewership of the free content on a paid medium is not really valid. I would be more interested to see the net change in show viewership in later episodes and showtime subscriptions. I think thats where we will see the proof that it works, and that it does provide a benefit. If those numbers don't show the expected increase, we have to be open to the idea that maybe it's not working.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Content was made available for free, and non-free TV viewership was not harmed because of it.
Do you really think that fact is indicative of anything in the grander scheme of things? What exactly do you believe you're arguing here? Please paint for me the scenario you envision in which someone already subscribed to Showtime decides that they would prefer to watch a low resolution, CENSORED (another oddly omitted fact) version on youtube instead...the viewership being harmed was never a fear anyone had with this. You might as well be proclaiming that it didn't harm a rare species of Lemur in Madagascar.
Your opinion of Mike does not magically change the facts that in this case; sales were not harmed.
Nor does my opinion of Mike magically change the facts that in this case, a rare species of lemurs did not go extinct. Obviously, one can now safely conclude that youtube has BENEFITED lemurs.
It is also irrelevant, since 'Dave' wrote this article, not mike.
It's not irrelevant when you consider the title of the article is presupposing that correlation implies causation and that it's posted on TechDirt which seems to pride itself on never missing a chance to repeat the opposite mantra. That's called "hypocrisy", Kyle. If nothing else I'm glad I could help you learn a new word today.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]