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As strange as it does sound, Arrested Development has been picked up for syndication, by a web portal - not a television network. The distribution of the video will be bundled with vide and display advertising.

In what is MSN’s biggest content grab to date, the web portal has secured exclusive online syndication rights to Fox Entertainment Group’s canceled screwball comedy “Arrested Development.” By fall, MSN plans to add the complete three-season series — 53 episodes — to its cache of free, ad-supported video offerings.

Advertising Age - MediaWorks - Fox Sells Syndication Rights to Web Portal

There are several reasons why this is big news obviously because it marks the first syndicated distribution deal between a major television network and an online video distributor. Secondly it marks a big milestone for MSN Video, who without doing any research I can guess is trailing most online video distribution services. It will be interesting to see if the series is offered via RSS which I think would be very cool. It will also be interesting to see how ads are displayed in both the video and display, or in RSS.

Of all the problems with MSN Video, here is my deterrent:

I wonder if YouTube bid on syndication rights, and if not — why? I am guessing they have no proven monetization strategy, aside from display ads. It’s a wonder if they did spark an interest for Fox, being the leading online video distributor. I think it would have been a perfect match.

And then there’s Google Video, which would have been my second choice instead MSN Video.

We’ll see if the relationship is a success and it will be interesting to see syndication paralleled online. I for one don’t care about the inclusion of ads, because that is something we will have to live with for quite some time until the advertising industry gets back in shape. All I want is to choose which television programs I watch, have them delivered via any subscription program to my Media Center where I can watch them on my own time. The versioning posssiblities alone for syndication via the Internet is overwhelming. More on that in another post…

technorati tags:msn, arrested development, IPTV, vido, youtube, google video, tv

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