Before the internet was created there was TV. Television was the social media back in the 1930’s all the way up to the 1990’s and generations have had certain attachments to it and the TV shows and movies it broadcast. Social behaviour and social interaction was mostly about TV as opposed to the ancient social interaction was mostly about religions, gods, wars and the bloody spectacle of the Roman Gladiators.

At least now our taste for entertainment is just pretence, a make-believe of some sorts but I must say is far more entertaining than the gruesome past. Aside from reading interesting blog posts, seeing all the nice images along with them and tons of freebies and special offers; the internet allows you to stream movies at will (or as long as the movie is available to view that is).

Last year in October, HBO made it clear that the company plans to enter the lucrative and ever expanding streaming TV market by rolling out its own standalone streaming service at some point in 2015. Quite predictably, the market was abuzz with all sorts of speculations within hours – with some even going to the extent that this could well be the end of cable television as we know it.

Adding more to these speculations, CBS announced only a day later that it too was preparing to join the bandwagon by launching a proprietary streaming service. Similar announcement came from Showtime, CBS’s flagship entertainment channel.

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When they first surfaced in the market, Smart TVs were the in-thing that a large chunk of the tech savvy population worldwide craved for. It seemed the next step in the evolution of the television was finally here.

Many even went as far as speculating that the conventional, old generation televisions (dumb tv?) will soon turn into a distant memory. After all, who could resist the temptation of a television that comes blessed with integrated internet and Web 2.0 features, right?

Well, turns out, all those assessments were mere hype shrouded by a thick layer of impracticality – both in terms of cost and functionality. To put in the Darwinian context, the Smart TV was simply not fit enough to wipe the conventional television out of existence. Let’s examine why:

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Fandango, mostly known for its ticketing service on the web and for mobile devices for cinema viewings, has also been creating its own TV shows. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday last week, their service announced that its TV shows will soon, in the coming months hopefully, be showing on the Internet streaming service Hulu on a dedicated channel.

This is Fandango’s first partnership with an on-demand video streaming service that runs on subscriptions.

Fandango’s movie focused shows will be featured on a new channel on Hulu. The awards-focused interview show called Frontrunners will also be included. Within the first three months of 2015, the new channel is scheduled to go live. It is not only available to paying subscribers, but to anyone who visits Hulu’s site.

The vice president of business development and strategy, Mark Young, said that this is the next step in the company’s strategy to create videos that can be played on “any form factor or platform”.

“Our goal is to be wherever there’s conversations about movies, with partners that have scale and are in the right context,” he said.

Fandango could strike similar deals with other similar Internet TV streaming services. Since Hulu is largely about TV discovery, Young said it makes sense for Hulu to be a starting point. Fandango is owned by NBCUniversal which also backs Hulu.

Young said that by creating shows Fandango can move beyond being a simple utility. It gives certain benefits as it leads people to buy movie tickets from the company and helps bring in some money from ads.

Fandango say that views of original video content on the service has increased by 38 percent year-over-year.
So even though that is a really impressive growth figure, this new strategy might be paying of, and with new partnerships they might increase the views even more.

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On Thursday, December 11, 2014 Netflix held its very first “Internet TV Summit.” The affair was deemed a private one and had an array of entertainment industry bigwigs in attendance. The Summit was hosted at a posh and classy upscale resort located in Utah.

The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings and the Netflix chief content officer, Ted Sarandos both hosted the legendary summit event. The Amangiri luxury resort, which is in the Southern Utah area, was the location where the Netflix-hosted Internet TV summit took place.

Some of major execs who attended the event include: the Chairman-CEO of Warner Brothers: Kevin Tsujihara, the president of Sony Pictures Television: Steve Mosko, the CEO of Discovery Communications: David Zaslav; the chairman of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group: Jeff Shell; the CEO of DreamWorks Animation: Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chairman and co-founder of Imagine Entertainment: Brian Grazer, the CEO of Lionsgate Films: Jon Feltheimer, and vice chairman of Lionsgate Films: Michael Burns.

Invitations to the Netflix-hosted summit had been extended to both CBS and HBO but neither company was reported to have had execs in attendance.

A spokesperson for Netflix confirmed that the privately hosted event indeed took place, but declined to provide any of the major details, such as who all was in attendance or what the primary motivation for the event essentially was.

A company rep described the event as an informal “one-day discussion about the future of Internet TV, bringing together our friends from both the entertainment and technology industries.”

The affair was similar to other informal gatherings the e-commerce industry giant has held such as: Amazon Campfire and Google Zeitgeist. Both events had literally dozens of novelists in attendance.

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