Cox Communications’ digital cable customers in Arizona, Roanoke, Va., Kansas and middle Georgia will be able to access NBC and ABC shows on-demand the day after they air through Cox’s MyPrimetime service.
Episodes of ABC and NBC primetime shows will be served up free of charge to Cox’s on-demand tier through its MyPrimetime section. Cox also announced that it has entered into an agreement with Fox to offer some of its top-rated shows in the MyPrimetime category later this summer, starting with a trial in Cox’s Orange County system.
ABC hits such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” and NBC shows including “30 Rock” and “Medium” will be available to Cox’s digital customers for up to 28 days after they initially make their broadcast debuts.
“Our digital cable customers’ beloved on-demand library keeps getting better and better,” said David Pugliese, SVP of product marketing for Cox. “With the addition of this incredibly popular content, not only can our customers access movies and cable programming favorites any time they choose, they can now watch popular broadcast hits at anytime. We are excited to collaborate with ABC and NBC and look forward to building the MyPrimetime library later this year with Fox hits, as well.”
Cox commissioned research after the initial launch of MyPrimetime last year and found that 80 percent of its users were satisfied with the service and planned to use it again. The most common reasons for viewing MyPrimetime content were to catch up on a missed episode, as an alternative to setting their digital video recorder (DVR), and to sample shows they haven’t seen before, especially shows that were new. One in four survey respondents said that if the shows had not been available on-demand, they would not have been able to watch them at all.
With VOD from Cox, digital cable customers have access to more than 6,000 movies and shows, including high-definition (HD) content and exclusive programming.
Cable and telco providers have a big edge over satellite providers, since the latter can’t offer true VOD services. Satellite providers can download movies into set-top boxes but can’t offer VOD in a dynamic fashion.
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