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Disney to put TV shows online for free
« on: Apr 10th, 2006, 11:46am » |
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Disney to put TV shows online
Hits like 'Desperate Houswives' and 'Lost' will stream for free, but commercials can't be skipped.
April 10, 2006: 10:49 AM EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co.'s ABC Television will offer some of its most popular shows, such as "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," for free on the Internet in a two-month trial, the company said Monday.
Advertising revenue will support the trial run on ABC.com, with advertisers AT&T Inc. (Research), Ford Motor Co. (Research), Procter & Gamble Co. (Research) and Universal Pictures already signed up.
"Commander in Chief" and "Alias" along with "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" will be available on the Web in May and June, starting the day after they are first broadcast.
Viewers will be able to pause and move between "chapters" in an episode but will not be able to skip embedded ads.
Disney (Research) is also launching a high-speed Internet channel for soap opera fans, called Soapnetic on April 17 for subscribers to Verizon Communications Corp.'s (Research) Internet services.
Leading U.S. media companies are experimenting with ways to deliver programs via new technologies and still maintain revenue as viewership for their prime-time schedules slowly erodes.
ABC sells digital downloads of its highest-rated TV shows for the popular iPod music and video player, while other networks have been testing online and video-on-demand formats for airing shows soon after they first appear on broadcast TV.
"In the future, consumers will rely more and more on strong brands to help them navigate the digital world, and we have some of the strongest brands in entertainment," said Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC television group. "Stay tuned ... because this is just the beginning."
During the past two years, ABC has gone from being the laughing stock of the major broadcast networks to arguably the coolest network thanks to hits "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost."
Disney's stock has followed that turnaround, up nearly 20 percent so far this year, making it the second-best performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Other companies have turned to the Internet to broadcast programs typically reserved for television.
This year CBS' March Madness on Demand offering, live streams of games from the NCAA college basketball tournament, put live entertainment online.
And it was a big success.
According to figures from CBS SportsLine, the online sports news site of CBS, more than 1.3 million people signed up for the free service. These users visited the on-demand site about 5 million times during the first three weeks of the NCAA tournament and watched over 15 million live video streams.
By way of comparison, CBS SportsLine said that it had only between 20,000 and 25,000 users for a similar product during last year's tournament, when it charged $19.99.
And last year saw the successful video and audio Web casts of the Live8 charity concerts by AOL, the online portal owned by Time Warner (Research). (Time Warner also owns CNNMoney.com.)
AOL also recently launched a site called In2TV, which offers free streams of old TV shows from the Warner Bros. library, including "Maverick," "Welcome Back Kotter," and "Wonder Woman."
-- from staff and wire reports
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