All I can say is NO NO NO NO NO… Read and enjoy.
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[size=large]Record Company to Sell TV-Like DVDs with Ads[/size]
[i]LOS ANGELES (Reuters)[/i] – Independent record label Tommy Boy has come up with a novel way to cash in on the booming market for DVDs: form a film company to release DVDs that look a lot like TV shows — complete with advertisements.
Tommy Boy, which has produced hit records for recording artists such as Queen Latifah, on Tuesday said it has formed Tommy Boy Films with plans to release a series of DVDs called “Kung Faux” that spoof old Kung Fu martial arts films.
Each DVD will contain two half-hour episodes of the “Kung Faux” spoofs, and within each of the episodes, the company will intersperse commercials for the likes of jeans maker Levis, Target Corp. stores, and cable TV network Showtime, a unit of Viacom Inc.
In recent years, TV networks and producers have scrambled to take advantage of the explosive growth in DVD sales by putting shows like “Friends” on DVD, but not with commercials.
DVD sales topped $4.6 billion in 2001, which was more than 2.4 times the previous year and are seen going even higher in 2002 as DVD players get installed in 40 million U.S. homes, according to industry consortium, DVD Entertainment Group.
Industry experts and executives at Tommy Boy think it’s the first time a company has produced DVDs with advertisements interspersed throughout, but Tommy Boy Films head Michael “Mic” Neumann thinks consumers may just like watching the ads.
“When you read certain magazines, you like looking at certain ads. When you watch the Super Bowl, you look forward to the ads,” said Neumann, referring to the professional football championship that is a showcase for company advertising.
NICHE AUDIENCE
For advertisers, Neumann said, the DVDs deliver a highly concentrated, niche audience to whom to deliver a message, as opposed to TV which broadcasts to a wide audience that makes it ideal for mass products like cars and laundry detergent.
Because the “Kung Faux” spoofs are aimed mostly at men ages 17- to 34-years-old and audiences who like hip hop music (the spoofs will use hip hop songs and singers over the actor voices), advertisers know whom the audiences is.
“Really, the key seems to be it’s a niche audience, which should make for less resistance to an appropriate message,” said Jack Myers, publisher of advertising and TV newsletter, The Myers Report.
Myers said that perhaps the most important element to making sure audiences don’t simply fast-forward through the ads will be the creative elements of the advertisements.
Neumann said that for the “Kung Faux” DVDs, advertisers have essentially taken ads they made for TV and reedited them to speed them up and add a lot of motion so they fit with the Kung Fu theme of the spoofs. He likened the ads to “10-second and 15-second-long, rapid-fire commercials.”
Beyond the ads, the DVDs will contain other features, such as a “karaoke” function in which users can project their own voices into the DVD.
Currently, Tommy Boy Films has six “Kung Faux” DVDs scheduled for bi-monthly releases throughout 2003, with the first beginning in January.
Neumann said the company also is working on a series of Science Fiction DVDs similar to the “Kung Faux” line.