I found an article from the Business Insider that discusses the release of Yahoo’s new TV lineup an argues it could save the companies entire TV division and keep the idea of web television alive. Megan Angelo points out five different reasons why this could potentially be a big hit for Yahoo. First, the company is not working with small no-name actors; they have some well known celebrities headlining some of their shows. They have a former studio head, Ben Silverman, running their new network and they are producing mostly reality shows, which are a lot easier to sell and so not require a lot of buildup. Yahoo is in a good position because they already receive millions of viewers a day to their website. Therefore, advertising will not be an issue and getting the content in front of the general population will be easy.
I found this to be particularly interesting because the internet seems to be taking over various industries, and now television shows are going to be hit even harder than they already were with Megavideo and Hulu. Once the internet begins producing its own shows, it will be even harder to studios to produce shows people will sit down and watch at a certain time when they have other options online. This is just another example of how the internet is changing the game and causing a stir in industries that have previously had no unique forms of competition.
This is really cool, Kevin--I hadn't heard about Yahoo!s foray into TV production/exhibition. It will be interesting to see whether this helps to legitimize TV created for the internet--seems like we've been waiting a long time to see online TV and film succeed. Your points about the economic and institutional aspects of the Yahoo! rollout are great--sounds like they've got the components to succeed in place!
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