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I can’t find anything in the news about this but you may remember me being impressed on Friday that Fox had released via their official YouTube channel a 55-second clip from the Family Guy episode that was to air two days later.
The clip was hilarious and I have to admit that it totally worked: I learned that I was interested in the episode’s topic (gays) and it reminded me to tune in at 9:00 PM on Sunday for an episode that, based on the clip, was going to be especially hilarious.
Then today, I receive an e-mail from “MySpace Video” asking if I had watched last night’s Family Guy. At first I found this weird slash creepy since a) I haven’t been on MySpace in ages and b) MySpace didn’t know I had embedded the clip on my blog and had actually been ‘all about’ last night’s episode.
But then I remembered that my MySpace profile surely lists “Family Guy” as one of my favorite shows and that the e-mail was probably automatically generated in response to that data. I also remembered that both MySpace and the Fox Network, on which Family Guy airs, are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Pretty slick, huh? Well, it gets better.
But first to review: Fox releases to the web viral promotional videos of Family Guy to create interest in the upcoming episode and the series in general; in case that fails, they then mine data on MySpace to target self-described fans (the perfect target audience) and get them to watch the episode they may have missed online at MySpace Video-On-Demand, which is hosted by Hulu, which is owned by none other than – wait for it – News Corp.
Posted by Mark 
Play Happy. 