TV marched farther into the online world Thursday as Time Warner’s AOL video site began offering free ABC prime-time shows, a day after NBC said it would provide limited free downloads of many programs.
By making shows such as “Lost,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Ugly Betty” available on AOL, Walt Disney’s ABC joins other networks in expanding free, ad-supported programming beyond their own Web sites.
“AOL has a much bigger audience than abc.com would have,” said David Card, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research.
ABC said its deal with AOL is the first time its programming has been available on a major Web portal. TV episodes will appear on AOL the day after their first broadcast, with four episodes per series usually available at a time. Shows will include three interactive advertisements from a single national sponsor.
NBC Universal said Wednesday it also will let Internet users download some of its shows for free to Windows-based computers. The shows will include advertising that can’t be skipped.
A test version of this NBC Direct service is to launch next month, making shows available for downloading and viewing for a week after an episode’s broadcast TV debut.
