Thanks to a long-term distribution agreement with The Walt Disney Company, Comcast Corp. on Wednesday announced its Xfinity TV customers will be able to view ABC, Disney and ESPN shows live or on demand and across multiple devices.
The comprehensive pact will deliver Disney's entertainment, news and sports content to the cable giant's Xfinity TV customers over television, the Web and on tablet computers and handheld devices.
Philadelphia-based Comcast and Burbank, Calif.-based Walt Disney said they "also agreed to collaborate over the terms of the deal to create new, innovative viewing experiences for Xfinity TV customers."
The agreement covers such networks as ABC Family, ESPN Classic and Disney XD, and Comcast plans to launch a new 24-hour basic channel – Disney Junior – for preschool-age kids, parents and caregivers.
The 10-year deal will further Comcast's goal of offering "TV Everywhere," a phrase that describes the growing trend in the pay TV industry to offer television programming on multiple screens like an iPhone and iPad. "We are very pleased to have reached this unprecedented and innovative, long-term agreement with Disney which embraces the future of entertainment and allows Comcast to continue to bring our vision of TV Everywhere to Xfinity customers whether at home or on the go," Comcast Cable President and CEO Neil Smit said in a statement.
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig Moffett told Bloomberg the agreement will motivate customers to stay with Comcast, but will hurt Hulu and Netflix, whose competitive advantage of offering content over the Web will erode.
Comcast, the largest U.S. cable TV operator, already enables its subscribers to view on-demand content – more than 65,000 TV shows and movies – through www.XfinityTV.com on PCs, laptops and connected devices including Xbox game consoles and connected TVs. Customers cannot currently view content through the website on tablets or smartphones, although the cable giant offers an app that provides access to more than 8,000 hours of on-demand TV shows and movies over the iPad, iPhone and iTouch.
"Live TV is coming very soon," and so is the ability to watch on-demand content on Android-powered devices, Comcast spokesman Peter Dobrow recently told Vision2Mobile in an interview.
Comcast and other pay-TV operators are offering television on multiple devices in order to reduce customer defections and add value. "The pay TV providers are really wary of losing customers to alternative video sources" like Amazon, Hulu and Netflix, Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst with market research firm Parks Associates, told V2M. In the third quarter, Comcast lost 165,000 video customers to end Sept. 30 with 22,360 cable TV customers.
