MySpace to Sell 24, X-Men, Prison Break

[Dumi]

News Corp. sites will offer downloadable Fox movies and TV shows across various sites.
August 14, 2006

News Corp. sites like MySpace.com will begin selling downloadable movies and TV shows from the company’s Twentieth Century Fox studio and various Fox channels, the company said Monday.

Among the offerings will be the movies X-Men: The Last Stand and The Omen, along with the TV series 24, Prison Break, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

The company will begin to offer the movies and shows in October through a site called Direct2Drive run by IGN Entertainment, part of News Corp.’s Los Angeles-based Fox Interactive Media (FIM) division.

Other FIM sites, such as the popular social networking site MySpace.com, will sell the shows and movies at an unspecified date later. The shows will also be promoted on other IGN sites, including IGN.com, Rotten Tomatoes, and Film Force.

The content will come from Twentieth Century Fox, Fox Broadcasting, and the cable channels Fuel TV, Speed, and FX.Shares of News Corp. rose $0.23 to $19.44 in recent trading.

Selling Its Own Downloads
Up to now, Fox has mostly been selling its shows for download through other sites, such as Apple’s iTunes. The company also inked a deal in April with Movielink to sell movie downloads as well.

However, News Corp. did say back in May that it would sell episodes of 24 on MySpace.

“Today marks an important step as we continue to build a bridge between the worlds of user-generated and top-quality professional content, further enhancing our range of consumer offerings across both free, ad-supported, and paid download business models,” FIM President Ross Levinsohn said in a statement.

Fox will even offer releases of new feature films for download through the services, but at a steep price: about $19.99. However, the TV shows will be more competitively priced, at $1.99 per episode, which matches iTunes’ pricing.

Fox will have a large potential audience for the video downloads, with more than 75 million monthly users on its sites, the majority of them on MySpace.

Users can download the movies and TV shows to up to two computers as well as to Windows Media-controlled portable devices.

“We’re pretty excited about the ability to download to portable devices,” said Mickie Rosen, senior vice president and general manager of entertainment for Fox Interactive Media. “That’s an industry first.”

While that leaves out the iPod for now, Ms. Rosen said that Fox is “happy to work with any DRM,” or digital rights management technology, and hopes to expand the program.

She said the nearly $20 price for the new feature film releases isn’t unreasonable considering that customers who already use the Direct2Drive site typically spend an average of $30 per person, though that’s mainly for video games.

Ms. Rosen added that Fox had not yet decided which movies and TV shows would be available on which sites.

“I think we’ll decide based on what’s appropriate for that particular audience and on what makes sense for that particular property,” she said. “We’re working on those plans right now, and over the course of the next year you will see them rolling out across the Fox network.”