With Online TV, Yesterday's Hits go Long Tail

Lee Bartlett used to work for News Corp-backed Fox before he became the managing director for ITV Global Content (that's the international production and content businesses of ITV, the UK commercial broadcaster). So, no surprises that ITV-Hulu talks are ongoing. Lee says "We've talked about going on the Hulu site - we have a lot of good content that we have never put on a site like that."

What does he mean by good content?
"The best way to do it would be to use current shows, to put them up as a leader," Bartlett said. "For example [long-running soap opera] Coronation Street has never sold in the US - what an interesting proposition if you could get a handful of people interested, they tell their friends and you could have 10 million streams within weeks."

Coronation Street is a British TV soap opera that is older than I am (I am serious. It started in 1960!) and is still running barring a few hiccups in history.

Note a few things here:
Lee is expecting a 'long tail' of content to be interesting for someone
He is expecting things to spread virally (think Facebook etc...)
You get to know what people stream.

There is a lot more national TV content that could get cult status by going international.
(I was amazed when I flipped through the cable TV channels in a Tokyo hotel room and started getting all the old B/W american series I had faded memories of as a kid. It was a bit Youtubey).
 
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