In my opinion, the entertainment business is not always on top of things when it comes to domain names. You can have a look at movie posters and commercials to see what I mean: hyphens, names with movie in them, .nets…etc.
Television shows, it would seem, would have more of a reason to own their exact match domain name. They’re usually on television for multiple seasons, people purchase box sets, and fans like to communicate and discuss weekly or daily episodes. In addition, many have unique names, so it’s likely the exact match name will be unregistered before filming.
Companies spend millions of dollars on marketing, so it’s peculiar they wouldn’t either register the domain name when the name is determined. In my opinion, there’s likely a decent amount of error traffic with these types of names since people assume they will find a website on the exact match .com.
Posted below is a list of popular television shows (in no particular order) and a note about whether the exact match .com name is owned by an entity associated with the respective tv show:
- Modern Family – No
- How I Met Your Mother – YES (strangely, not used)
- Entourage – No
- Grey’s Anatomy – No
- No Reservations – No
- Chopped – No
- Gold Rush – No
- Bering Sea Gold – No
- Alaska State Troopers – No
- Weed Wars – No
- Storage Wars – No
- Chuck – No
- American Idol – YES
- Private Practice – No
- Jersey Shore – No
- Real World – No
- Top Chef – No
- NCIS – No
- Big Bang Theory – No
- American Pickers – YES
- Man Vs. Food – No
- Judge Judy – YES
- Desperate Housewives – YES
- Jeopardy – YES
- Wheel of Fortune – YES
- Price is Right – YES
- 60 Minutes – YES
- 20/20 – No
- The Mentalist – No
- Survivor – No
- Biggest Loser – YES
More and more shows are using the letters TV to promote their shows. For the domain name I have seen keyword/sTV.com, keyword/s.TV and even KeywordTV.org. I know of two cases where they use TheKeyword/s.TV as the domain. I believe it is an increasing trend but it may or may not necessarily translate into increased aftermarket activity. Companies will often opt for an inferior reg fee alternative rather than pay for an aftermarket domain.
Doesn’t make sense to me either. I can say however that Australian media is a bit move savvy in this area. I haven’t found a show yet that doesn’t have it’s own domain used either as a standalone or redirected to their main portal (like 9 MSN, Yahoo 7 etc)
The worry here is that these name types above (plus music/movie titles, up and coming artists..etc) are candy for TM domain squatters who will no doubt register them believing they have intrinsic value.
In my opinion, there are 2 issues
1)They’re cheap.
2)Confidence
Why spend tons of money buying the exact match (especially if it’s generic and has long been registered) for a show that may not make it past season one. Easier and cheaper to use networksite.com/show instead
What I have seen with alot of network shows is they just are a part of the network’s domain name.
nbc.com/the-voice/
sho.com/site/dexter/home.do
Ect
Keeping the user on their site helps keep things simple for the user because everything stays the same in regards to look and feel of the site. I can look at one nbc show (for example) while they try and promote other shows to me as well. This is probably much easier for the network to manage all of their shows on one site rather than having them separated.
It could be a liability for them to leave the domain name in some other person’s hands though, so this is definitely an interesting topic.
Just becuse the industry is not embracing something does not mean they are less savvy.
Harrison has a good point. There may be a benefit (from the networks’ perspective) to keeping people on their site, where they can easily advertise for other shows and increase page views/time on the site. Many of those networks group shows together in a “Thursday-night line up,” etc., so maybe it’s about generating a community feel across all their programming, rather than a single show.
@ Nadia
I completely agree. However, I think it would be smart to buy the domain name and at least forward to the correct website. I would think type-ins for the exact match would be high, and why let someone else own the matching domain name. It would seem smart to buy the name of potential titles or at the very least, but the name as soon as a final title is chosen.
I agree with Harrison. They like that integration.
Secondly some names would be expensive, Entourage or Chuck which are generic would be more expensive than the easy handreg of “HowImetyourmother”
I have done a lot of work talking to companies about tv and had great conversations with people who were involved with the original dot tv corp, they said a lot of studios just were not interested, did not feel there was value.
But Harrison said it perfectly imo.
Another point is Twitter, most of the time I see a show advertised I see the hashtag and show name #AmericanIdol etc…
Nearly all show names are very generic, and will have been taken years ago.
The TV companies do their own research to name the show, and I would guess they would aim to keep them as generic, and catchy as possible form their target market to remember.
The actual shows are the core business, and exact match domain names must always take a back seat.
And I bet there are some very exxcited domain owners around when these shows come out!
I just picked one up EMD “.com” for a January 2014 premiere “Kim of Queens” Happy to sell if someone is prepared to offer a fair price… contact me through my site in signature.