Comments on: Build vs. buy at the networks

By: Alyssa

Alyssa — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:27:00 +0000

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.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:26:33 +0000

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?

By: Bob Jones

Bob Jones — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:40:53 +0000

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,

By: Cory

Cory — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:39:41 +0000

They went out to house to help with the design, but they built it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:32:54 +0000

Unfortunately, you can’t link to a specific show or episode with ABC’s player.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:41:44 +0000

I’m pretty sure ABC went to a company called Schematic to build its video player. Not an in-house job.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:41:17 +0000

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.