Just a Thought - Blade On iTMS: Cool For Other Reasons

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Did you see that Blade has been turned into a TV series, and Spike TV is showing it on Wednesdays at 10PM EST?

I was a big fan of the first 2 Blade movies (the third one sucked like a vampire at a blood bank). Wesley Snipes seemed to be the ideal person for the role of Blade; he's good at martial arts and the only acting he had to do was to growl and look menacing, which he can pull easily even without the dark glasses.

The new TV series is interesting, not because it's a continuation of the Blade franchise, which will have Blade fans cheering, but because New Line Television decided to offer the 2 hour premier episode on iTunes, for free.

That's right boys and girls, for the first week of July (2006) you could have downloaded the entire 2 hour episode, sans commercials, for nothing, zip, no money. It's a double-shame if you missed it; the premier episode has been broken into two parts and iTunes now charges $1.99 for each. (Ouch!)

Whether or not watching the episode is worth your time is not for me to say (though it is my opinion that this premier episode is better, if somewhat slower, than the movie, Blade Trinity); I will say that I'm not surprised to find that New Line is using the popularity or iTunes to get the word out about Blade: The Series, and that it says a lot about the growing influence Apple is having on the entertainment business.

iTunes Music store has sold over a billion songs, and several million videos have been downloaded since Apple started offering them in 2005. iTMS now boast hundreds of TV shows, music videos, and other video content; possibly the largest selection of downloadable videos on the Internet, with more videos being added weekly.

Of course, the iTunes Music Store is connected at the hip to the iPod, the popularity of which is a phenomenon in itself. All of which would led the execs at New Line to rightfully conclude that offering a pilot episode of a new series for free on iTunes is an excellent way to gauge public interest and to do a bit of subversive advertising; if people like the show, even just a little, they will likely tell others, and that, my friends, is called 'word of mouth'.  (Of course, it helps if the shows doesn't suck.)

So, as Apple continues to improve the iPod, iTunes, and iTunes Music Store, so will they increase their importance as an entertainment entity. Not bad for a company who some predicted would be out of business by now.

is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He's been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.

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