It started as an internet game primarily played on mobile devices – but it’s gotten so big that the creators and distributors of Angry Birds are seeking to cash in with a new video program featuring the birds and their porcine targets. But is this simply a new 21st Century iteration of an old model?
Rovio is the creator of the game, and Brightcove is behind its streaming power, according to an article in Forbes. The game has been streamed 1.7B times at this point and draws 263M users per month.
With that fan base, the introduction of a weekly half-hour advertiser-supported program Angry Birds Toons is the next step in monetizing the product. Toons launched last month.
Viewers are expected to use the same mobile devices to watch it that they use to play the game.
Forbes points out that this could be a revolutionary venture, opening up a new venue for global program introduction that by-passes the traditional broadcast and network gatekeepers.
However, it is likely to remain an option of which a small elite can ponder using – without its millions of users, Angry Birds would not be able to contemplate this step.
RBR-TVBR observation: It seems to us that it doesn’t matter how you get big – critical entertainment mass, no matter how it is built, can be repurposed in any number of ways. The Beatles sang songs, a lot of people bought those songs, and before you knew it they were starring in movies, were the stars of a Saturday morning cartoon, and were providing kids with an alternative to baseball cards, among other things.
This is really the same exact thing. A venture achieved extraordinary success, and now it is ripe for expansion on to new venues. What has changed since the Beatles are the number and types of options available for targeting.
Does the Angry Birds model show that there is more than one way to get content out there? Yes. Does it diminish the desirability of using broadcast to perform that task? Not in the least – it still is the most reliable delivery system for producers seeking access to millions of viewers.
