Go live to bring in viewers

There’s a lot to agree with in the notion that real-time social and public chats that happen on Twitter and Facebook are good ways to get people to tune in to live television broadcasts (New York Times, 2/21/11).

So since the movie industry is about two or three years behind their colleagues in television (who are themselves two or three years behind the music business) in terms of adopting new technologies it’s safe to speculate the studios will eventually get in on this game. After all, if TV is seeing benefits from having talent engage on those social networks while their shows are being broadcast then it can be assumed that the movie industry might see this as a way to boost home video purchases in whatever way they’re available in a couple years.

I’ve long felt that studios were missing a huge opportunity by not making more of an effort to create appointment viewing opportunities on home video. Encourage people to attend a streaming event and then play the movie while a chat happens on the side of the screen or something like that. There have been a couple different technical problems with getting this off the ground, but the best thing for this idea might be the premium VOD model that some studios have been planning since that would presumably give them the option to control the infrastructure a bit more.

Again, I’m sure it will just be a matter of time before studios hop on this bandwagon since it’s in their best interest to at least experiment with just about anything that can reignite interest in the home video market and take some control of that market back from the companies they’ve outsourced it to for years now.

By Chris Thilk

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist with over 15 years of experience in online strategy and content marketing. He lives in the Chicago suburbs.