Weekly Rewind
Facebook adds original shows: Facebook has become the latest tech giant to give ambitious original video programming a try. The social network is rolling out a new “Watch” section on its mobile, web, and TV apps, featuring several dozen original shows. As TechCrunch reports, some of those shows are funded by Facebook, and they all fall into recommendation categories with a social bent, such as “Most Talked About,” and “Shows Your Friends Are Watching.” This follows an earlier move by Facebook into live sporting events, which also appear in the new Watch section.
I’m not totally understanding why Facebook wants to generate its own shows, rather than offering tools for, say, HBO or Hulu to bring their existing shows into the Facebook app. But those providers may be less inclined to accept the 45 percent revenue cut that Facebook will get from all advertising and product placement on its network. In any case, I’m curious to hear if anyone considers these new shows to be must-see TV.
FX’s ad-free experiment: Just like AMC did last month, FX is launching an ad-free streaming service exclusively for Comcast TV subscribers. The service, called FX+, will be a buck more expensive than AMC’s version at $6 per month, but the plan is to eventually include the channel’s entire library of original shows, including classics like The Shield.
I enjoyed reading Karl Bode’s cynical take on these plans over at TechDirt, though I’m not as fired up about it. The most likely outcome with these experiments is failure to offset the effects of cord-cutting, at which point the networks involved will have racked up more streaming rights and tech experience. Once it becomes clear that they can’t rely solely on TV bundles anymore–as Disney is realizing now–they’ll be better-prepared to do something about it.
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