Sony Wants to Cash In on High-Speed Culture With TV "Minisodes"

Finally! A great idea from a big company about the potential for mobile TV. As Comscore reported, and as I coulda told you, people are not that interested in watching TV shows on their mobile devices. Doh.

The New York Times reports that Sony Corp and its production studio, Sony Pictures Television, are set to launch "minisodes" -- six-minute versions of episodes of old shows like Charlie's Angels and T.J. Hooker. They'll be available on MySpace starting in June.

"These are not clips of the shows, but actual episodes with beginnings, middles and ends, all told in under six minutes. ... Steve Mosko, the president of Sony Television, said, “So in ‘Charlie Angels,’ they have a meeting, Charlie’s on the intercom telling them what the assignment is, there’s a couple of fights, and then a chase, and they catch the bad guy. Then they’re back home wrapping it up.”

I don't know why anyone would be surprised that people don't want to watch TV shows on their phones. Remember those watches with video screens? Nobody wanted to watch those either. That's because network TV, and most of what's on cable, sucks.

In case network executives still don't get the picture, network TV has been losing viewers for years because it's full of so-called reality shows and formulaic sit coms that weren't funny, poignant, dramatic, exciting, etc. the first time the plots came around.

It would be great if networks would start producing ORIGINAL shows designed for what Wired Magazine calls "the snack culture" - bite sized bits of entertainment designed for high-speed munching.

P.S. - We also don't want to watch commercials on our phones.

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Posted by: mike at May 1, 2007 3:51 PM

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