Crackle

VOD Type
AVOD

Availability
iOS • AppleTV • Android • Fire TV • Roku • Chromecast • Samsung Smart TVs • XBox • PlayStation • LG Smart TVs • Vizio Smart TVs • Amazon Kindle • Windows Phone • Sony Smart TVs

Content
Narrative, Originals

D.I.Y. via Aggregator or Direct?
No

If Aggregator, is Pitch required?
N/A

Non-Exclusive possible?
N/A

Sony Crackle delivers longform popular, award-winning TV, movies and originals, such as The Oath. Sony Crackle features programming in the following key genres: Action, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Horror and Sci-fi. The streaming network is available in 21 countries including Latin America and is accessible on a large number of connected devices. It can also be seen in-flight on American Airlines and in Marriott Hotels.

Sony Crackle features many Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classics, Funimation Productions, and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions titles and Sony-distributed television series like Damages, Rescue Me, The Shield, and Seinfeld, and a long list of corporate content partners.

Because its library is curated by library titles from its content partners, we have depreciated this platform here.

Ad Age

Crackle Strikes Deal With Comcast to Put Originals On-Demand

April 18, 2016

Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" will be available on-demand to Comcast subscribers this week thanks to a deal between pay-TV operator and Crackle.

All original programming from Sony's Crackle will be available on Xfinity on Demand, with the first batch of shows hitting on April 20. Originals like the animated series "SuperMansion" starring and executive produced by Bryan Cranston will be available in the home and through Comcast's TV Everywhere app and website viewed over the internet.

"Now, millions of viewers will be able to access Crackle's original programming on demand, without having to leave their set top box environment," Eric Berger, exec VP-digital networks, Sony Pictures Television and general manager, Crackle, said in a statement. This is Crackle's first content deal with a cable distribution partner. It is currently available on PlayStation, Apple TV, Roku and Xbox, among others.

But it is only the latest digital platform making its way to the TV box. Cablevision announced earlier in the month that it will make Hulu a channel on its set-top boxes.

Crackle will host its upfront presentation on Wednesday.


Ad Week

Streaming Service Crackle Is Making an Old-School TV Move: Scheduling Shows

But you can restart if you come in late

August 5, 2015

Two weeks after becoming the first streaming network to start sharing ratings information, Crackle is taking another page out of the linear playbook: It will begin programming television, just like a network.

In the latest addition of its "Always On" service, unveiled at April's upfront, the Sony-owned, ad-supported streaming service will start scheduling programming, Crackle announced at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour.

"Movies, TV series and original dramas, comedies and game shows, in all dayparts: daytime, prime-time and late-night," said Andy Kaplan, president of worldwide networks for Sony Pictures Television. "From the moment you watch Crackle, you will see a movie or series that has been scheduled and is already playing. 'Always On' allows viewers to settle into a show title, restart from the beginning or browse through a guide without ever having to leave the video playing in front of them. It's an experience that is truly the best of both worlds." "Always On" is currently available on Roku and will expand to other platforms this fall.

Crackle unveiled its first one-hour drama, The Art of More. Starring Dennis Quaid, the show "explores the underbelly and cutthroat world of premium auction houses," said Kaplan. All 10 episodes of the first season will be available on Nov. 19. Unlike other services, Crackle selectively releases some of its original series weekly and others all at once.

Quaid said he had no qualms about appearing on a streaming service. "I think what's going on with Crackle, and with television, is there's a revolution going on in television that's completely new," he said. "You feel like the inmates have taken over the asylum. It's sort of what it was like in movies back in the '70s—and there was a lot of great stuff that came out of that—because there was this freedom to take on issues and stories that had not been done before. It's an exciting time."

The actor, who previously starred in the short-lived CBS drama Vegas from 2012 to 2013, said the days of movie actors being different from TV actors are over. "It used to be you had movies and you had television, and you wouldn't cross over. But that's all changed," he said. "There's so much exciting material being done on television, it's a draw. Everybody wants to do TV now."

But appearing on a series for an ad-supported network does have at least one drawback. "There's a small, four-letter word that we can't say," said The Art of More actor Christian Cooke.

In addition to presenting The Art of More, Crackle revealed premiere dates for the rest of its fall/winter slate. Season 2 of Sports Jeopardy!, hosted by Dan Patrick, will stream weekly episodes beginning Sept. 23. The outlet's first stop-motion animated series, Supermansion—featuring the voice of Bryan Cranston, who also serves as executive producer—premieres Oct. 8 with three episodes and new ones rolling out weekly. Crackle's signature show, the Jerry Seinfeld-hosted Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, returns for Season 7 on Jan. 6, with new episodes premiering weekly.


Fortune

Move over Netflix, Amazon: Sony's Crackle is ramping up

Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian in Cars has more than 100 million streams. Now Crackle is bringing on more big-name stars to challenge the networks — and upstarts like Amazon. “TV is over,” Jerry Seinfeld declared.

April 29, 2015

The timing seemed suspicious. First, actor Dennis Quaid had what appeared to be a profane tantrum (“THIS IS GARBAGE! B___ME!”) on video – which went viral. Then Jerry Seinfeld, in a spontaneous display of candor, spawned another online furor by declaring “TV is over,” and ripped YouTube as a “giant garbage can … for user-generated content.”

Both Quaid and Seinfeld have been touting their web series for Crackle, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s digital-only network. As it turns out, Quaid’s Christian Bale moment, 3 million YouTube views and counting, wasn’t orchestrated by Crackle – it was for Funny or Die. “ It just happened to be a great coincidence,” the actor, 61, told Fortune, adding he’d done it for the Will Ferrell comedy site. “It was just a fun thing to do … I didn’t expect it to go as viral as it did. We got a big laugh out of it.”

Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee debuted three years ago on Crackle. The web show is entering its sixth season as a bona fide hit, with 100 million-plus streams so far. This year the ad-supported streaming service makes a bigger push into original programming featuring marquee names. It announced its first scripted, dramatic series, The Art of More, starring Quaid and an animated comedy SuperMansion, starring Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad. With Netflix and Amazon Prime challenging networks for eyeballs and Emmy nominations, Crackle is eager to get in the game – but Jerry Seinfeld alone can’t guarantee success.

Enter Dennis Quaid.

“I kind of compare what’s going on in television now to what was going on in the movies back in the ’70s,” says Quaid, who recently starred in the CBS drama Vegas. “It’s a time where you feel like the inmates are taking over the asylum. Where anything can happen. And you have all these new ways to watch. You have all these great stories. I mean, let’s face it: I feel like the networks — the main networks — are really not in touch with what most people want to watch as far as content and how they want to watch it.”

This week, Quaid is in Montreal filming The Art of More, which premieres this winter. It explores the competitive side of the premium auction house industry. Quaid, an executive producer, plays a scheming, self-made real-estate mogul with political aspirations in what may represent a tonal departure for the testosterone-flavored platform. Crackle’s execs think it could turn out to be a defining breakout show on par with AMC’s Mad Men or Netflix’s House of Cards.

Cranston will be a has-been superhero in the animated stop-motion comedy SuperMansion, slated for fall. Eric Berger, Crackle general manager and executive vice president of digital networks at Sony Pictures Television, says Crackle is aiming to reach a “tech-savvy group of men and women,” aged 22-39.

As it evolves, Crackle brings to mind a basic cable channel like the 21st Century Fox-owned FX, which pairs mainstream studio films (Captain America: The Avenger) and sitcom re-runs (Two and a Half Men) against acclaimed original series (Louie, The Americans, American Horror Story) designed to play in the same prestige-TV leagues as HBO.

The June 4th installment of Comedians in Cars, for instance, features Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and future Daily Show host Trevor Noah in the passenger seat; on July 16 Crackle will have the premiere of Joe Dirt: Beautiful Loser, the sequel to the bawdy 2001 David Spade comedy. And next spring, Crackle has Dead Rising, a follow-up to the videogame-inspired zombie thriller film Dead Rising: Watch Tower that began streaming last month. Capo, a mob drama, is in development. At a conventional TV pace, new episodes of Sports Jeopardy! (hosted by Dan Patrick) drop each Wednesday. Fanboy favorite Resident Evil sci-fi franchise is perpetually on tap. (Those films are part of the Sony library.)

Beyond original content, Crackle aims to attract consumers and advertisers through the rollout of a design upgrade that features a new product, Always On, mimicking old-school linear television. Users can click into Crackle’s smart TV apps and watch whatever’s playing at the time — or scroll through related on-demand video via a carousel that presents choices in a way that does not deluge the viewer, Netflix-style, with a seemingly endless menu of binge-watch bait.

It’s “like a sea of one-sheets,” says Berger. “And when you’re in that sea of one-sheets, it can be very overwhelming. And when you choose something, if you don’t like it, there’s a lot of pressing the back-button and menus to come back out to the main point of search and then starting that whole search process again. And it’s why it doesn’t really feel like TV. And it’s one of the things that had come up with our research with consumers — that there’s still is a large population that’s just looking for that relaxing and mindless feeling, sometimes, of just seeing what’s on, particularly if you like the brand of the network and what they curate for you.”

If Berger wants to reinvent the wheel, then he’s got a powerful ally in Seinfeld, a master of his domain, who essentially disrupted how people viewed the regular old television sitcom and made enough money to buy a car for every single comedian in America. (Sony Pictures Television distributes Seinfeld in syndication.)

TV according to Seinfeld might be over, but he continues to toy within a familiar format.


Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments:
ggf
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