For many folks, college is a time when they extend their education and occasionally "experiment" with lifestyle choices, fields of knowledge and the like. So it makes sense for Fox to pick the college milieu for its own experiment: streaming online broadcast TV shows at the same time as they debut on the regular broadcast schedule.

To paraphrase one of the Fox execs quoted in the story, this is a no-brainer. Fox execs noticed ".edu" domains were among the most frequent visitors to the media giant's site. Why not see how the kids like getting TV on their PC at roughly the same time as it airs on the old medium?

Seems like a smart move. Wonder what took so long?

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Is Fox the only one providing free TV shows on the web? What does this do to Apple's sale of TV shows? I just looked at Apple and saw that they are selling prison break and fox is giving it away. I am one of those people who stopped watching TV a very long time ago. Do you think college kids will want to watch TV shows on the web over other things? Can you break down the demographics of how much time is spent by college kids on watching TV versus other entertainment - which I am only guessing is mostly computer based? Sorry I am a bit new to this. Hearing some data around this would be interesting. I also think there are some TV shows that you might want to pay for and other lower budget shows which should be free (maybe reality TV??)- that's why ads were invented. So - the problem however is attention span of the college audience. Do these shows have ads in the stream or is it just the website where the ads are placed? Sorry again, I am a bit out of touch. I need to really watch more TV and TV shows on the internet.