DISNEY-ABC TELEVISION GROUP'S EMMY & WEBBY AWARD-WINNING ABC.COM LAUNCHES UPDATED FULL EPISODE PLAYER WITH NEW CUSTOMIZATION AND ENHANCED VIEWING FEATURES
Site Also Debuts New Embeddable Short-Form Player
Dedicated to expanding its network and channel brands across multiple platforms and connecting viewers with their favorite shows anytime and anywhere, Disney-ABC Television Group today unveiled a new, updated version of the award-winning ABC.com full episode player. The new full episode player features a completely redesigned user interface and incorporates several enhancements to allow for user customization, interactivity and improved viewing capabilities.
ABC.com's full episodes player's new features include:
� True full screen viewing
� Enhanced navigation and powerful video search capabilities that allows users to search for series graphically, alphabetically, by genre or popularity
� Content sharing tools providing the ability to send and share video links from full episodes with others through email or by embedding links on other websites, blogs and social networks
� Content recommendation functions
� Closed captioning available for player content, beginning this fall
� Parental ratings information for full episode content, beginning this fall
Combining sleek, modern design with superior user-friendly functionality, the player currently offers users over 180 episodes from over 15 of ABC's most popular series, many of them available in HD. Online video viewers continue to have the ability to launch the player off of ABC.com, affiliate sites, portals and video aggregator sites as well as social network sites via the ABC.com Full Episode widget.
Featuring a unique interactive advertising model designed for high ad retention, ABC.com's full episode player continues to deliver a premium to advertisers, attracting a young, highly educated and loyal user base. Since launching in 2006, over 441 million episodes have been initiated through the ABC.com full episode player and over one billion ads have been served. Based on research conducted earlier this year, users of the full episode player are highly satisfied with the viewing experience, with 88% rating it positively and over 90% reporting that they were likely to recommend watching full-length episodes on ABC.com to others.
This week ABC.com also launched a new short-form video player which allows users to embed videos throughout the web, including their own blogs and third-party social networking sites. Additional enhanced features for the new short-form player include an enlarged format, allowing for better viewing on the ABC.com home page and show site home pages and the ability to browse by video category. The embeddable player also allows users to email friends about featured content, recommend clips, and to browse up to six related videos. The ABC.com short form player is home to over 2000 pieces of content, including original webisodes, exclusive sneak peeks and interviews with the stars of ABC's most popular series, as well as ABC.com's original daily online series, �Start Now.�
The Disney-ABC Television Group is home to all of The Walt Disney Company's (NYSE: DIS) worldwide entertainment and news television properties. The Group includes the ABC Television Network (including ABC Daytime, ABC Entertainment and ABC News divisions); the Disney Channels Worldwide global kids' TV business, ABC Family and SOAPnet; as well as television production and syndication divisions ABC Studios, Disney-ABC Domestic Television and Disney-ABC International Television. The Disney-ABC Television Group also manages the Radio Disney Network, general interest and non-fiction book imprint Hyperion, as well the Company's equity interest in Lifetime Entertainment Services and A&E Television Networks.
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