Sony Invents the Minisode

Joseph Laszlo | April 30, 2007, 06:49 PM

We've always had episodes, more recently mobisodes, and now Sony's introducing the minisode [NY Times, won't be free for long, sorry], a sort of highly condensed, Readers-digest meets haiku version of some of its back catalog of TV shows, where you can see the key plot points of, say, Charlie's Angels in a mere 3-5 minutes.

TW's (or AOL's) in2tv.com has been one of the pioneering efforts to deliver and remonetize old TV on the Web, but it's all full episodes. Though I see mounting evidence of consumer willingness to watch full shows online (if they're passionate about a show and can see it no other way), I get the idea of boiling them down to their most salient points for shorter Web attention spans.

NOT that I think there's a big audience out there for TJ Hooker reruns or Charlie's Angels...after all, if there were, those reruns would still be places other than dead-of-night TV (if that).

Actually, this week I'm even more intrigued by the idea of remixing or mashing up episodes. I had a chat with the guys at Gotuit recently; their metatagging technology, though labor intensive, opens up some interesting possibilities for do-it-yourself highlights reels. If I could type into a search bar "jill+bikini" or "sabrina+tied up" (your tastes may vary), and view relevant scenes across episodes, I could relive some formative moments of my childhood.