Los Angeles (CA) - ABC announced this week that it will bring some of its most popular television shows to free on-demand video services, but viewers won't be able to skip the commercials.
ABC will begin to offer shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost on cable/satellite free-on-demand channels. It will be the first time that a non-Internet on-demand video platform will block users from fast-forwarding through commercials.
Despite the fact that other channels like NBC and CBS offer online video and digital downloads, none of the standard networks offers programming on existing on-demand cable services.
ABC does offer complete episodes of some shows directly on ABC.com, with 15- to 30-second commercial breaks that are un-skippable. However, ABC's online video presence seems to be under par compared to other networks.
News Corp, which owns Fox, and NBC have founded a video streaming service called Hulu, where they broadcast full episodes of shows, and CBS has launched its own platform called Inntertube.
