Missed favorite ABC show? Tune to Net!
BY MARISA GUTHRIE
DAILY NEWS
April 11, 2006
Starting next month, reruns of "Desperate Housewives," "Lost" and other top shows will be on the Internet - for free - the day after the episodes air.
A two-month trial period, which will also include "Commander In Chief" and "Alias," begins May 1 on ABC.com.
"The good news with this whole free video on the Internet game is that the consumer wins," said Jon Winsell, director of online media strategy at ID Society, a New York interactive marketing agency. "That whole TiVo, time-shifting, DVR mentality is now carrying over to the Web, where it can be fully implemented any time."
But they won’t be able to watch without commercials. Each episode will include about three advertising breaks, which is less than an average network hour. And fans will not be able to skip through the ads.
Many of the ads will be interactive, according to an ABC spokeswoman. And users will be able to pause and move back and forth within the episodes.
But unlike the television content currently available on iTunes, which is downloaded and stored on a user’s computer or video iPod, streaming video isn’t savable or portable.
The move is the latest effort by television programmers to forge an online presence.
At $1.99 an episode, "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" have sold at a brisk pace since they debuted on iTunes last October. More recently, ABC made those shows available on iTunes’ "Season Pass," which lets users buy entire seasons for $34.99 and have episodes sent to them a day after they’ve aired on the network.
As part of the current experiment, cable’s Disney Channel will stream episodes of several shows on DisneyChannel.com, including "That’s So Raven," "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody," "Kim Possible" and "Power Rangers."
Soapnetic will launch Monday on Verizon’s online broadband service and include original programming as well as repackaged versions of all nine of its current soap operas.