Anne Sweeney, right, president of Disney ABC Television, leaves an interview with the press along with Disney public relations executive Kevin Brockman at the National Cable Television Association's annual conference in Atlanta, Monday, April 10, 2006. ABC announced some of the programming on ABC, including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," would soon be freely available on the Internet.
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Hollywood continues to move its business toward the Internet, knowing that it is inevitable that the industry will have to move that way.
Beginning in May the Walt Disney Co. announced that it is going to start offering several popular shows online. The shows will be "Desperate housewives", "Lost", "Commander in Chief" and the entire season of "Alias." They will be available through June, according to Disney.
The business model that they will be using will be advertising based. Those on board will include AT&T Inc., Ford Motor Co., Proctor & Gamble and Toyota Motor Corp. among a number of others.
In another interesting twist on their strategy, Disney's TV group will be launching its broadband channel for soap opera viewers on April 17. It will be available to Verizon Communications Inc. consumer broadband users. It will be called Soapnetic.
The merging Hollywood and the Internet is continuing. It is picking up steam a little faster than I thought it would. But they now have competitors everywhere that will meet the growing trend of consumers for video-on-demand.
This is not going to slow down, but will speed up soon, and will continue on into the future at a fast rate.
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