Build vs. buy at the networks
Cory Bergman March 19th, 2007
There’s an interesting tidbit in this TV Week story about how the networks are depending on their own technology teams to do much of their video development. For example, ABC.com built its own video player in house, which ABC.com classifies as content, not just technology. “Our core competency is creating content,” said Albert Cheng, executive VP for digital media at the Disney-ABC Television Group. “We have that expertise in-house and it didn’t seem to make sense to go out when we have people to do it.” This is the classic battle at many media companies — what to build and what to oursource to a vendor — and a big danger is trying to separate content from technology to make these decisions. In some cases, they’re inexorably linked, just like ABC.com’s video player.
ABC won an Emmy for its player, and Disney has filed for a patent.
7 Comments Add your own
1. Matt | March 19th, 2007 at 8:41 am
The ABC player was built by Disney Internet Group, who manages all Disney, ABC and ESPN websites… and they hire some of the best developers in Seattle.
I’m not sure if the other networks have such an internal Web team, especially one that has proven to be successful time and again.
2. Johnny | March 19th, 2007 at 8:41 am
I’m pretty sure ABC went to a company called Schematic to build its video player. Not an in-house job.
3. Anonymous | March 19th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Unfortunately, you can’t link to a specific show or episode with ABC’s player.
4. Cory | March 19th, 2007 at 9:39 am
They went out to house to help with the design, but they built it.
5. Bob Jones | March 19th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Only ABC/Disney and Fox are really in a position to do this.
CBS could possibly have an inhouse web development team for the whole company, used to be known as Viacom, which I guess could help The CW.
So poor NBC will probably have to look outside, not much of a network for them,
6. Tim | March 19th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
The player is nice, I’ll grant you. But, would they get more benefit if a number of players already out there could play their content? Maybe doing a proprietary player is part of the “ad-skipping vs. forced ad” technology war? Does anyone have a good idea of where that’s heading? Will ads eventually evolve into in-show product placements?
7. Alyssa | March 19th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I don’t like the ABC player. For one thing, you can’t adjust the volume, you can only mute or not mute. It’s also kind of cumbersome, but not nearly as bad as the NBC player with all sorts of distrctions and clutter.
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