Good Morning Silicon Valley

A day after ABC, NBC and CBS announced changes to their online strategies (see “TV networks scramble to gain viewership online“), Fox Broadcasting announced that it will offer seven programs for free via Apple’s iTunes store beginning this week.

As the industry continues to seek a balance between its advertisers and its ever-more-empowered audience, Fox hopes free downloads of the season premieres of “Prison Break,”
“American Dad” and five other shows will lure users back to their TVs, or at the very least to pay to download future episodes. Many believe, if the shows are good, Fox should be able to sustain an audience willing to pay a small fee for commerical-free, portable programming.

IPDemocracy’s Cynthia Brumfield puts it well: “At best Fox could gain new fans for untested TV shows, who might end up buying individual episodes via Apple’s store later, and at worst some viewers might be turned off by the freshman programs. But Fox has little to lose from a financial perspective and a lot of knowledge to gain about the power of iTunes, the distribution of new TV shows via the Internet and the caliber of the debuting series.”