Mar
24
South Park Goes Legal
March 24, 2008 |
Sometime around 8 years ago when I was living in Europe, I started downloading episodes of a new animated show called South Park on a 56k modem. It took hours to get those Real Player files downloaded.
Over the years, South Park must have become one of the most downloaded shows on the net, mp3 audio clips were some of the most heavily traded files on Napster and Kazaa, and numerous sites popped up in the last few years that allowed users to watch South Park online - yet, while most of these sites seem to have operated without too much disturbance, there was never a legal way to do watch full episodes online.
Update: According to German blogger Marcel Weiß, southparkstudios.com is available in all non-English speaking countries (at least in Europe), but not in Canada, England and New Zealand (I haven’t heard about Australia yet).
Starting today, though, all South Park episodes are available online - legally (at least in the US), as part of last year’s $75 million agreement with the creators of South Park and Comedy Central:
The agreement Comedy Central forged with Parker and Stone addresses what has become a hot-button issue in negotiations between talent and TV networks: divvying up revenue generated by new-media platforms, ranging from the Internet to cellphones.
In the case of the new South Park deal, the show’s creators and Comedy Central will split ad revenue 50-50 from the digital joint venture, a network official confirmed last week. Stone and Parker also will get an increase in their salaries and guaranteed advances from DVDs, merchandising, international sales and syndication, The New York Times reported last week.
Doug Herzog, president of MTV Networks Entertainment Group, couldn’t be reached for comment last week. But the new agreement is worth in the neighborhood of more than $75 million to Stone and Parker over the next four years, an official familiar with the deal confirmed last week.
Seems like a very smart move to me. Fans were already sharing the episodes online anyway and no revenue went to either Comedy Central or Parker and Stone. I guess it’s a safe bet that this agreement was reached under the influence of the recent writers’ strike.
Some observations about the site itself:
- clips can be shared and embedded - full episodes can’t
- there is no advertising in the form of pre-rolls that I can see, but when playing full episodes, there is an indication on the timeline where the TV ads would have been
- finding specific clips isn’t easy - they don’t seem to be organized by episodes, but they clips are tagged well and so search is easy
- the interface is very much like Hulu, but the complete catalog of shows is available and not just the last five
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