Heroes on NBC

Continuing to create the most confusing front possible NBC/Universal has announced a new service called “NBC Direct” (the site still has a few bugs to work out). This is separate from hulu.com their joint venture with News Corp. Users will be able to download primetime and late night shows for free, with un-skippable ads, for a week, on a PC only. Take that Apple! Future incarnations of the site (if it last long enough) will permit viewing on Macs as well as portable devices. Not only that but you will also be able to download-to-own your favorite shows (or 4 th favorite as NBC was in last place this past year). I can only hope if you plan on leasing a season of ‘Heroes’ you’ll be able to avoid the ads. While I support NBC/Universal in their effort to diversify their distribution effort they might want to rethink the ‘rental’ concept. Free, limited duration rentals sounds like the public library without late-fees and mandatory return dates. The point of having access to programming via the web is to promote easy accessibility and ease of use. Downloading shows that you then have to watch within a week creates a time frame and the very schedule the consumer was trying to avoid in the first place. This creates more work for the consumer who is better off with a DVR system via directTV or Tivo. 

In a move to make their shows more accessible ABC announced yesterday a partnership with AOL (who has much higher traffic #’s than abc.com) to allow for the same viewing opportunities they have on their own site.


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