ABC Signs on with Veoh.com

ABC-Disney has entered into its second video distribution deal with a third-party website. The company is providing some of its most popular television shows on Veoh.com including Lost, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. The company will also provide short clips from ESPN such as SportsCenter Right Now and Mike and Mike in the Morning. (Source: reuters.com)

Even though ABC is starting to sign on distribution partners, the network still plans to keep an iron grip on its most valuable content. ESPN clips will be embedded into Veoh's environment, but ABC network programming is only available through its proprietary online video player.

Basically this means that viewers won't actually see any ABC content on Veoh; instead, links will take them to ABC's own website, and the broadcaster will pay Veoh for every customer it delivers to ABC. The ABC network began a similar deal with AOL last year. (Source: nytimes.com)

Visitors wanting to see ABC content will also have to download an add-on to their existing multimedia player before viewing. Many users may see it as a pain to download yet another bit of code to watch content, but on the plus side, ABC plans to roll out various features such as a complete full-screen mode as well as closed captioning in the near future which will enhance the ABC experience.

As the online video business continues to expand, ABC-Disney is also considering deals with YouTube and Hulu.com; however, both Hulu and YouTube routinely provide code to allow users to embed clips and full-length shows into their own blogs and websites. ABC will probably want to avoid this, and while YouTube is flexible on this point, Hulu may be more rigid about this as the ability to share and redistribute content is a major feature of the website touted by the company. (Source: hulu.com)

On a side note, the Veoh deal proves once again that nothing is impossible in business. It turns out that Veoh is partly funded by Michael Eisner, who ran Disney for over 20 years.

Eisner's last years at Disney were marred with tensions and he was eventually ousted by shareholder's three years ago.