Disney-ABC to Unveil New Version of Online Player

BURBANK, May 23: This
fall, Disney-ABC Television Group will present a new version of its ABC.com
full-length-episode player that will feature a completely redesigned user
interface and will incorporate several enhancements to allow for user
customization, interactivity and improved viewing capabilities.

Among the highlights of
the player’s new features are: true full-screen viewing; enhanced navigation
and video search capabilities that will allow users to search for series
graphically, alphabetically, by genre or popularity; content-sharing tools
providing users the ability to send and share video links from full episodes
with others through email or by embedding links on other websites, blogs and
social networks; content recommendation functions; closed captioning; and
parental ratings information for all full-length-episode content.

The player will continue
to offer users episodes of ABC’s most popular series for streaming, many of
them available in HD and in a variety of viewing sizes. Users will also have
the continued ability to launch the player off of ABC.com, affiliate sites,
portals and video aggregator sites, as well as social-networking sites via the
ABC.com full episode widget.

More than 300 million
episodes have been streamed through the ABC.com full-episode player and 1
billion-plus ads have been served since the 2006 launch. Based on research
conducted earlier this year, users of the full-episodes player are highly
satisfied with the viewing experience, with 88 percent rating it positively and
more than 90 percent reporting that they were likely to recommend watching
full-length episodes on ABC.com to others.

“Over the past two years,
we’ve been squarely focused on creating a high quality consumer experience that
combines ABC’s most popular shows within a network-branded environment,
effectively monetizing it through an interactive advertising model, and
distributing it openly throughout the Internet from wherever consumers search
for our content,” said Albert
Cheng, the executive VP of digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group.
“Our leadership position in the online video space is the result of the
tireless efforts of our digital media team. Our desire to continually push the
envelope to create ‘what’s next’ delivers a widely accessible, world class
viewing experience to consumers and unparalleled returns to advertisers.”

“Since we launched ABC.com
full episode player in 2006, we’ve been continually looking at ways to make a
great product even better,” added Alexis Rapo, the VP of digital media at ABC
Entertainment. “The clean, new user interface, powerful search tools and other
enhanced functionality features, like true full screen and closed captioning,
are examples of how we’re again raising the bar when it comes to online video.”

—By Irene Lew