Five’s TV download service has been working for a few weeks now, offering downloads of the various CSI flavours. For some reason the service is being heavily advertised in the marketing trade press. Indeed, I thought that maybe they’d put a free episode up for trial such is their current press spend.
But no, it’s £1.49 for old episodes and &2.49 for the next episode in advance. That’s “next” if you didn’t already see it after downloading it in around March or April this year when it aired on US TV.
Obviously charging for episodes is fair enough although you should note that this is a rental fee with episodes only viewable for 14 days. Not for me then.
But my biggest question is about the “sponsored by Yell.com” logo that appears in both the trade ads and on the site. I can’t really see what the sponsorship is doing for me the consumer.
I’ve always argued that sponsorship should be seen to be giving me something that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. Of course I’m not naiive enough to think that Coronation Street wouldn’t be made were it not for Cadbury, but if the Evening Standard gives away copies free for an hour as they did a couple of weeks ago, I understand that it’s a commercial agreement that in this instance was made with Nokia. Nokia get something out of it, and I get something out of it.
Yell’s sponsorship doesn’t really tick those boxes. For all I know, there’ll be a Yell.com ad on the front of the download.
Incidentally, wouldn’t have been better for Five to launch this service with something like Prison Break – a series where you feel that you need to see every episode so as not to miss anything. Sales of episodes will surely be much better. CSI is eminently “missable” with few, if any, ongoing storylines, and is all over television anyway with additional showings on the new Five US.