Television
November 30, 2004
Telecom Italia And Warner Bros. International Television Distribution Sign Deal To Distribute Movies Over The Rosso Alice Portal
(November 30, 2004 – Milan) - Warner Bros. International Television Distribution (WBITD) and Telecom Italia have signed a two-year deal for the distribution of more than 100 movies each year via the Rosso Alice broadband portal.
Starting from December 1, all ADSL users will be able to purchase both new movies, most of which were only released on DVD six months earlier, along with library titles. These movies will be available in streaming mode for 24 hours following their purchase and will be geo-filtered to ensure that they are available only to Italian users. The deal also commits the two companies to increase cooperation in the fight against online film piracy.
Among the international blockbusters that will be available are “Matrix Revolutions,” “The Last Samurai” and “Mystic River.”
This deal is very important to both Warner Bros. Studios and Telecom Italia, as they not only develop a new distribution channel for movies, but also give consumers in Italy legitimate access to films online.
“Telecom Italia is continuing to expand its broadband offering, leveraging a tight integration between technology, services and content that offer major appeal to the public,” says Riccardo Ruggiero, Telecom Italia CEO. “Warner Bros. is one of the movie business’s biggest players.”
“We are delighted to be working with Telecom Italia. We recognize that there is considerable interest by consumers to view movies online via their PCs in a legal manner and not through illegal downloading,” said Jeffrey R. Schlesinger, President, Warner Bros. International Television Distribution. “As broadband’s penetration widens, it is important that we make our content available in a timely, easy to access, legitimate manner, while at the same time protecting our content rights in the digital space. We are looking forward to a mutually beneficial relationship with Telecom Italia.”
All broadband users can purchase WBITD movies. Pricing varies depending on the movie: €2.99 for movies released recently on home video (following a six month delay); €1.99 for cult movies and classics; and €1.50 for children’s movies and special offers. Alice customers can either charge movies to their Telecom Italia bill, or pay by credit card. All other customers must pay by credit card.
Rosso Alice is the Telecom Italia broadband portal that is accessible to all websurfers who access the Net via ADSL or a fibre optic connection. The site’s many theme-based sections – Sport, Film, Music, Games, Big Brother, News, Comics and VideoCommunity – offer content and live events in streaming mode or for download to the user’s PC. All this content is accessible at the www.rossoalice.it website.
Initially launched by Telecom Italia in March 2004, Rosso Alice registered 2,535,000 unique visitors in October 2004 (visitor who connected to the site at least once). A total of 66,614,000 pages were viewed with an average daily audience of 2,200,000.
Telecom Italia has enjoyed dramatic broadband growth. The company supplied 3,655,000 broadband accesses at the end of September 2004, 355,000 of which were outside Italy.
Rosso Alice’s on-demand offerings include over 200,000 songs on the Music channel for €0.99 per tune or €9.99 per whole album. The live events schedule features live coverage of 2004-2005 Italian soccer championship matches played by 15 teams in Serie A TIM and Serie B TIM.
Warner Bros. International Television Distribution is one of the world's largest distributors of feature films, television programs and animation to the international television marketplace (broadcast, pay cable, basic cable, satellite, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, digital platforms, etc.). It licenses some 45,000 hours of programming (including more than 6,000 features and 50 current series), dubbed or subtitled in more than 40 languages, to telecasters and cablecasters in more than 175 countries.
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