Warner’s Turner Broadcasting is making a big push into broadband with the Aug. 15 launch of TNT’s DramaVision player featuring ad-free on-demand streaming of Steven Spielberg’s six-part miniseries “Into The West.” The ad-free launch is an anomaly; TNT will offer some 30 hours of ad-supported video at any given time, showcasing it on a nearly a dozen genre channels. Plans call for a similar effort by comedy-focused TBS, according to Steve Koonin, the Turner executive responsible for the two cable networks.
He said the network already has sold advertising for DramaVision and that online represented a “significant” portion of its upfront business as part of Turner’s integrated marketing packages. Why launch ad-free? “We want to give them the opportunity to make the announcement.”
The TNT channels include a heavy emphasis on the network’s original movies—genre channels include Westerns, and its original and syndicated crime dramas. CourtTV, recently folded into Turner, will help produce “Ripped from the Headlines” webisodes. Live events like the “SAG Awards” will be showcased, as well. The launch event with “Into the West” plays off renewed interest sparked by the mini-series 16 Emmy nominations. Viewers will be able to click and buy the DVDs of the mini-series but download to own is not part of TNT’s strategy, Koonin said. “We’re not interested in selling it (online); we’re interested in streaming it.”
As is the case with roughly every network broadband effort, rights play a huge role. “Garnering the rights is the hardest part to this entire quest. We have some partners who are holding rights close to the vest.” TNT doesn’t have the rights for Emmy-nominated crime drama “The Closer” or new drama “Saved” (which could benefit from being available) yet but it will show new Stephen King mini-series “Nightmares & Dreamscapes.” Some of the movies produced under a Johnson & Johnson sponsorship will be online but not under that banner; discussions are underway for online with J&J, which sat out the upfront. AOL Video: TNT also is taking part in TW sibling AOL’s expanded video service; Koonin said a signiciant portion of the DramaVision programming will be available through sister channel “TNT on AOL.”