ABC To Put TV Shows Online For Free
Monday, April 10th, 2006
April 30th, ABC/Disney will become the first broadcast network to offer top entertainment shows online for free. The catch is that you can watch the entire episode and jump from scene to scene, but you won’t be able to skip ads. Ads on launch will include several blue-chip advertisers like Ford, AT&T, Suave, Procter & Gamble, Universal Pictures and many more according to the article in Ad Age.
Internet TV is still in its infancy, but I’ll hand it to Disney/ABC in that they are bold and agressive in trying out different technologies and business models. It’s amazing how much has happened in just the past few months. Between the shows available on iTunes and AOL’s In2TV and NBC’s Webcasts of the evening news and Google Video’s for-pay episodes of stuff like I Love Lucy and other developments, a lot of TV has made the transition to the Net all of a sudden. Content owners seem to be a lot more open-minded and experimental than they were when music started to go digital…and that can only be healthy.