MTV series premieres early on mobile app

NEW YORK — MTV released a full season of a new series about a luckless high school football team on its mobile application Friday, a week before the first episode is shown on television.

It appears to be a new milestone in the fast-moving world of technology changing traditional television content, much like when Netflix made an entire season of “House of Cards” available at once through the streaming service. MTV made its free app available on iPhones, iPads, iPods and the Xbox 360 in June, and nearly 2 million have been downloaded.

The series, “Wait ‘Til Next Year,” is a 12-episode docudrama about a high school football team that had lost 43 games in a row and the community surrounding it.

The series debuts on television Friday.

“It will be fun to see if we can get them to come back and watch on television,” said Kristin Frank, MTV’s executive vice president of connected content.

That’s always been a worry among networks about new content delivery forms, since the financial underpinning of the business is still largely dependent on viewers watching programs — and their commercials — on television. But MTV figures that many people who watch the series on the app will become promotional vehicles themselves, spreading the word about it on social networks and encouraging others to watch on TV.