Comments on: ABC says its online video good for TV

By: Rocker

Rocker — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:37:30 +0000

Yup, it’s driving younger viewers to network TV, as evidenced by their skyrocketing ratings, particularly among younger demos. That said, I do buy the argument that these executions increase engagement with the show brands.

Rob: Well, in fairness, most affiliates don’t do much quality control. Q/A is pretty much unheard of in local TV web circles, for example.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:43:12 +0000

A bit off topic here …

It’s too bad ABC.com forces affiliates to push to the network site for quality control purposes instead of allowing the player to launch in some sort of embedded presentation on the local affiliate site.

It’s too bad that ABC.com feels that while affiliate quality control must be sub-par that the quality control is just fine to allow AOL to embed ABC shows on its platform.

It’s too bad ABC.com won’t give its affiliates traffic data on how many unique users and pageviews are being served from each affiliate’s website. Might be nice to have if you want to sell advertising on the player.

It’s too bad ABC.com doesn’t have an internal system to manage advertising insertion for the player but instead has affiliates work with WorldNow, which means a per-insertion upcharge, whether you’re on the WN platform or not.

And it’s too bad ABC isn’t offering up their shows on demand on local cable systems like CBS is.

There are lots of LOST opportunities here.

By: discreet_chaos

discreet_chaos — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:00:51 +0000

I’ve never had any trouble with the ABC.com player or their HD streaming. And, I believe it was during an ABC show, where three ad spots were national for a pickup and the fourth was a repurpose from my local dealer.

Oh, while I’m sure that ad recall is better online, the very well done Papa John’s and the not very good cruise commercials on NBC could be adding to the factor.

By: Zedov

Zedov — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:10:38 +0000

Possibly, but it’s too bad that their online video site, ad-driven though it is, still suffers from poor implementation.

About a month ago I finally decided to see what the fuss over Pushing Daisies was about. So I checked out abc.com to discover that, for a new show, they are only posting the most recent 4 episodes. And when I tried to play a different video on the site, it crashed my up-to-date firefox. Twice. Had to load it in IE.

In the end, I got into Pushing Daisies, but through the effortless and problem-free media of usenet/bittorrent. Still a ways to go, ABC.