Looks like the long tail saved The Office … check out this Ars Technica post and the original Newsday story.
“I’m not sure that we’d still have the show on the air” without the iTunes boost, says Angela Bromstead, president of NBC Universal Television Studio, which owns and produces “The Office.” “The network had only ordered so many episodes, but when it went on iTunes and really started taking off, that gave us another way to see the true potential other than just Nielsen. It just kind of happened at a great time.”
As a love-it-when-I-see-it fan of The Office who no longer watches much TV, this is great.
And it’s a validation of the long tail theory: when you have great tools enabling distribution of a large variety of [movies/TV shows/socks/anything] to just about anyone, you get greater variety. Add filters to help people identify and find things they’re interested in, and success can go way farther down the chart.
[tags] long tail, itunes, the office, nbc, john koetsier [/tags]