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October 3, 2006

MySpace Goes Prime Time

Michael Arrington

43 comments »

Fox is expanding it’s Full Throttle offering of television shows (see Fox Streams More TV to Internet). The key difference from the previous offering seems to be that Fox is now distributing the shows through MySpace in addition to 24 local affiliate websites (this was a pain because you had to make up a physical address if you didn’t live in a covered geographic area like Los Angeles).

The shows are available on this MySpace page.

Available shows include “Bones,” “Prison Break,” “Standoff,” “Vanished,” “Talk Show With Spike Feresten,” “’Til Death,” “The Loop” and “Justice,” among others.

Shows will be streamed in high definition and are free, although non-skippable advertising is included. Users will be required to download a player to view the content.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 3:17 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. MySpace & FOX TV, CastTV « Technically Speaking

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Comments

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  1. Andy

    October 3rd, 2006 at 5:41 am

    Any chance us folks from the UK can enjoy this? (or at least enjoy a similar service in the future?)

  2. overcast

    October 3rd, 2006 at 5:41 am

    For the love of god, someone develop a proper social networking site and make myspace go away.

  3. Skip Tracer

    October 3rd, 2006 at 5:52 am

    You can’t blame MySpace / Fox for wanting to offer more of their own entertainment content to their users.

  4. Greg

    October 3rd, 2006 at 5:56 am

    This would probably be a lot more successful if any of those shows were, umm, good.

  5. Hatim

    October 3rd, 2006 at 6:44 am

    That’s what all the TV 2.0 hype is all about. Regular Tv as we know it is pretty much gone.

  6. overcast

    October 3rd, 2006 at 7:08 am

    Greg - Why do you think they are going on MySpace. To raise awareness for crap no one has ever heard of.

  7. Christian

    October 3rd, 2006 at 7:09 am

    Hopefully the shows will get better.

  8. cg

    October 3rd, 2006 at 7:13 am

    they have 4 different shows that are basically the same script. pathetic.

  9. overcast

    October 3rd, 2006 at 7:20 am

    FOX HD is free OTA in my area, and I would imagine many other areas as well. I really don’t see the point in the big networks , that are free over pretty much everything, to provide online feeds of them. Except maybe if they allow you to watch past episodes you have missed.

  10. sc

    October 3rd, 2006 at 7:31 am

    I’m not sure I can let you move-in yet- Fox Media Player! IMO, these shows are not worth the pain of downloading and installing one more player on the machine.

    We need a “Trillian” type app that can play all media (Fox, Amazon, iTunes Video)

  11. Jack of all Trades

    October 3rd, 2006 at 8:04 am

    like Andy asked, does this work outside of the US?

    i tried it in Israel, got all the way the first commercial, but after it finish playing, nothing happens. the explorer did note there is an error on the page.
    tried in firefox as well, but same thing.

  12. Mr Wave

    October 3rd, 2006 at 8:51 am

    The only downside is you have to download the Full Throttle player in order to view the content. Having Flash player won’t do.

    Actually, what I find interesting is the data from Google Trends which shows you which show is the most searched for out of the bunch. The top three Fox shows are Prison Break, Justice, and Bones. You can see that Prison Break is the most popular show of the bunch. Surprisingly, the most number of Prison Break queries is coming from Oslo, Norway, Goteberg, Sweden, and Melbourne, Australia. What about the US? I guess US watchers aren’t that savvy about searching for Prison Break online. Or is it just that they can’t get the show on TV in the Nordic so that they are searching for it online?

    Read More

  13. overcast

    October 3rd, 2006 at 8:56 am

    Mr Wave - Just like no one in the US listens to David Hasselhoff.

  14. Sean

    October 3rd, 2006 at 9:45 am

    Quality of the shows aside, I’m surprised that they actually created a firefox extension for the player, rather than requiring IE as most clueless large corporations seem to do. I tried it out, pretty good quality, but it’s not “HD” by any means. Maybe 480×320, I know that’s a weird res, but on my 1650 wide screen it takes up just under 1/3 of it, at least according to my lazy and imprecise calculations.

    Anyway what does suck ass about it is that you can’t do full screen. You can increase the size of the player, but if it’s not full screen then I’m constantly reminded that I’m watching this on a computer rather than a TV. That sucks.

  15. Vince

    October 3rd, 2006 at 9:53 am

    IMHO myspace is one of the most cost effective distribution points for any media.. its just so effective and word spreads so fast within the network that the hockey sticks are not that usual anymore..

  16. senapati

    October 3rd, 2006 at 10:17 am

    This is quite absurd. The last thing we need is another pesky download to conflict and confuse with many others offering a similar service.
    Just have a look at their offering - a handful of shows! Why would I want a service that has built-in means to communicate externally and seemingly very little purpose?

    Waiting for myspace to self-explode someday soon…

  17. Scott

    October 3rd, 2006 at 10:29 am

    No OS X support either. Why couldn’t they just go with Flash, ugh!

  18. Calvin

    October 3rd, 2006 at 10:57 am

    myspace is jumping the shark…

  19. cg

    October 3rd, 2006 at 11:22 am

    The crowd that uses MySpace does not watch serious crime dramas in the first place (Bones, Standoff, Justice, Vanished). If they wanted to make this effort worthwhile, they’d give free downloads for King of the Hill, or The Simpsons.

    Again, another attempt to gain press by giving crap away that no one wants in the first place.

  20. TC

    October 3rd, 2006 at 1:15 pm

    I think anyone that uses the term “jumping the shark” these days, has in fact jumped the shark themselves.

    Oh wait, I think I just jumped the shark by my definition.

    Dammit!!!

  21. Daisy Whitney

    October 3rd, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    I was surprised at how quickly the player downloaded — less than 2 minutes. But still, embedded video is so much easier

  22. overcast

    October 3rd, 2006 at 1:49 pm

    2 minutes is beyond my attention span for yet another stupid embedded video player.

  23. chris

    October 3rd, 2006 at 2:11 pm

    hey yeah the download is an issue but have you noticed that the buffering is no where to be seen! the videos on the local sites is better then the ones here. I am not sure why but it still seems like an easy way to catch up on all that “great” tv i have been missing.

  24. Calvin

    October 3rd, 2006 at 3:24 pm

    ok, TC. I’ll bite… what would you suggest rather than jumping the shark?

    Screwing the pooch?

  25. JD

    October 3rd, 2006 at 3:33 pm

    They got the majority of America’s youth on one online network. Now every feature release is business related. Bugs that have existed since launch go unfixed and best the members have gotten as far as features go is the stupid Top 8 list and “better” profile editing. Lets just pile garbage on top of garbage. They know most are too naive to leave. They know even people like me wont leave because unfortunately it’s the absolute best place to discover bands and keep up with bands. I’m a music junkie. It’s completely possible to compete with MySpace but too many social networks are trying too hard to be different and screwing it up or they’re starting web apps that work WITH MySpace but it’s really just adding to the mess.

  26. TC

    October 3rd, 2006 at 4:34 pm

    Actually, when it comes down to it, MySpace is just a big advertisement anyway. Each profile is an advertisement for themselves and the things they love. So why not for FOX shows or Hilary Duff Deodorant.

    The press coverage got me to go and check it out.

    I know we find it fashionable to bash everything, yet it is what it is. MySpace is a place to “show your ass in public.” Just like posting a on TechCrunch topic.

    You just seemed to be “showing your ass in public” so I figured I’d take a friendly shot at you, while also taking a friendly shot at me. :)

  27. JD

    October 3rd, 2006 at 6:18 pm

    I’m not complaining about MySpace ’cause it’s trendy to hate it. MySpace pisses off the geek in me. MySpace exchanges millions of ideas every day through it’s network. People are connecting all over the world. MySpace has every right to do whatever the hell it wants and I’m not bitching ’cause I don’t have enough space for pictures. I just hate to finally see an active community with millions of interacting members with no tools to encourage self expression and to grow and share ideas, and no tools to harvest it and use it. Ha, does this only make sense in my head? I just see it as wasting valuable resources and I can only imagine the kind of impact MySpace would have on our society if the site grew with it’s members.

    Facebook hasn’t got it but it’s a lot more on the right track than MySpace is. I wanna see some of our top “Web2″ companies get together and take a chance. Go on the same inspiration that drove FF to compete with IE.

    Ha, now I sound like I’m preaching some sort of revolution. Alright, I’m done.

  28. Ferodynamics

    October 3rd, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    JD, maybe the revolution is right here ;-)

    On Myspace you have all these users on the same website, but they don’t interact much as a group. The one exception is the “bulletin” option which allows your message to reach millions (if friends find your message interesting enough to repost to their friends). Of course, you don’t need Myspace to write a chain letter, but Myspace makes it easier.

    If you want to see more group interaction, like on a large scale, I think we need to combine something like http://labs.digg.com/swarm/ and vbulletin. Or just keep blogging ;-)

  29. Website Builder

    October 3rd, 2006 at 8:07 pm

    I’ll take what I can get being an expat in China.

  30. N8

    October 3rd, 2006 at 10:11 pm

    I have to agree with Greg earlier, it would do better if the shows were better. Why don’t we just all watch tv on the internet. Go YouTube =)

  31. Aidan

    October 4th, 2006 at 2:34 am

    I cant get the player to work here in Ireland, it shows the advert alright bud no sign of the show? Anyone else having this problem? I tried it in Firefox and IE

  32. Michael

    October 4th, 2006 at 11:02 am

    I am able to see the commercials to the shows on both the NY and LA site but I can’t seem to get any of the shows to play.

    Any ideas / suggestions?

    Thanks

  33. Stefanie

    October 7th, 2006 at 8:50 pm

    I can’t get $hit. It says that I need aditonal plugins for it to work. Anyone have any idea what the heck they are talking about.
    (Please respond like you are talking to an idot because at this stuff I am.)
    ps. I love Bones. Bornez is HOT.

  34. Your Mamma

    October 31st, 2006 at 8:10 am

    okkay you all need to get tha fuck ova urself and grow up!!!

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