News Corp to sell episodes of 24 on MySpace

LONDON - Community website portal MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, is to sell episodes of Fox's '24' online from next week, as part of plans to transform the service into a more profitable venture, in line with Yahoo! and iTunes, by supplying downloadable digital content.

MySpace, which was bought last year by News Corp for $650m, has more than 75m registered uses worldwide, and offers users the chance to create simple personalised homepages.

The episodes of '24', which stars Keifer Sutherland and Elisha Cuthbert, will be available for $1.99 a programme from seasons one to five, through a Burger King-sponsored deal under the fast food giant's tagline "Have it Your Way."

Burger King will offer free downloads of the first episodes of series one and five of '24' in an attempt to entice users to access the full service.

Gillian Smith, senior director of media at Burger King, said: "We know our customers spend a lot of time [on MySpace]. The important thing for us as an advertiser was to make sure we were providing content that resembles entertainment more than advertising."

This follows last week's deal by Apple's iTunes, which announced it was making shows like 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and '24', available as iPod downloads.

Warner is also planning to sell online content through BitTorrent, a file sharing service that will enable users to download films such as 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' to coincide with the DVD release.

Previously, BitTorrent had been sued for supplying digital content, but the change in attitude indicates companies are rapidly wising up to consumers' needs.

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