ABC’s Streaming: Reactions: ESPN Unlikely To Follow; Others

ABC’s announcement yesterday to stream shows online, free, has generated a lot of comments from others in the industry: some reactions and followup comments from Disney
Disney Unlikely to Offer Free Online Streams of ESPN Shows: Robert Iger said that the chances were slim that the media giant would ever stream ESPN shows on the Web for free…it could jeopardize ESPN’s subscriber-fee revenue, Iger said during an investor call Tuesday.
Learning From Music Industry’s Failures: At the same investor call, Iger said that the latest move was motivated in part by a desire to avoid the mistakes made by the music industry. In affiliates: “What we can’t do is we can’t let a fear of that relationship being challenged or creating tension with them get in the way of following consumers who are going to other places. We just can’t do that.”
TW Cable’s VP Questions ABC’s Move: Fred Dressler, Time Warner Cable’s exec VP of programming, said at NCTA that his reaction is quizzical, more than anything. “It seems that ABC is sort of acknowledging that they offer their content free over the air and now they’re going to offer it free over the Internet, so why their expectations are that they would be compensated for retransmission consent is a little quizzical,” Dressler said.

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