BreakTV.com Inc has launched an internet network with what it says is full-screen television broadcast quality. The company’s target market includes movie and TV studios, home video and DVD distributors and commercial advertisers. Like a TV network, BreakTV intends to launch with syndicated TV shows, hopefully adding original programming later on. At first, users will be able to watch only five or eight minute segments of the programs, but the company promises full-length presentations eventually.
BreakTV is a content provider for Microsoft Corp’s streaming media portal, windowsmedia.com. It also boasts alliances with Columbia Tri-Star, Worldvision/Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox. Thus, the beta launch will feature Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Lucy Show, The Three Stooges, Bonanza and The Avengers. It turns out that what BreakTV is really selling is a web delivery mechanism for traditional TV commercials; the point being that advertisers can re-use commercials already developed for TV broadcast on BreakTV.
Unlike a TV network, however, BreakTV offers extensive profile targeting of potential consumers. It plans to extract information from users themselves and to track and document access of programs by the age, gender and zip code of the user viewing that program. Advertisers will only pay for the penetration they receive. It’s an attractive model for advertisers, but whether internet users will give up their personal information in exchange for scaled-down re-runs of old TV programming is open to question.
