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Arguably the biggest hang-up in airing an original series online is keeping control of distribution. Well, a recent mess involving Fox Digital Studio, MySpace and online video site MyPod Studios won't help matters.
Fox Digital had granted MySpace exclusive ad-supported online distribution rights for its digital-only series "Wolfpack of Reseda" and began airing the series on the social-network-cum-enigma in February (the series is also available on a pay or subscription basis via iTunes and Netflix). But on April 6 Adweek learned that the series was also available at Wolfpackpod.com, a domain owned and operated by online video platform MyPod Studios. Howâd that happen?
Jay Miletsky, founder and CEO of MyPod Studios, said a distributor supplied MyPod with the series content before asking the site to remove the series last week after it had been available for roughly a week. He refused to say whether the distributor was MySpace, Fox Digital Studio or another party.
Dan Berger, vp of corporate communications at Fox Digitalâs parent company News Corp., said in an email this week that âMySpace is the exclusive ad-supported distributor for Wolfpack and the only place to watch it for free at launch.â
That language would seem to indicate MySpace would eventually be clear to deliver the series to MyPod without issue. But a source said that while MySpace may syndicate the series in the future, Wolfpack's appearance on MyPod was inadvertent, which is why the series was taken down as soon as it was discovered. That the show was taken down so suddenly suggests that it shouldn't have been put on MyPod in the first place.
For its part, MySpace initially didn't seem to know about the syndication deal. Then it did. Then it stopped talking. Neda Azarfar, marketing director at MySpaceâs parent company Specific Media, said in an email last week that Myspace had begun syndicating the series as part of a promotional plan to boost viewership.
Azarfar then wrote in a subsequent email that MyPod Studios was âa site we syndicated onâ but did not respond to follow-up emails sent this week to confirm that MySpace supplied MyPod with the series. MySpace is also the exclusive ad-supported distributor for Fox Digitalâs original series "Letâs Big Happy,"Â which debuted last month, and so far it seems like the site has been able to maintain that exclusivity.Â
But what about MyPodâs role in this whole thing? While Berger said MySpace is the exclusive ad-supported distributor, that wasnât the case. MyPodâs Miletsky initially said through a spokesperson that the site didnât run ads against the videos. But after being presented with Wolfpackpod.comâs source code showing that a preroll ad had been slated to run with the videos, Miletsky said in a phone call with Adweek that the ad was a spot for âWolfpack of Resedaâ that directed viewers to its Myspace hub and that the ads were provided by the unnamed distributor. He added that MyPod didnât make any money from the ad.
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