Seeing a high-quality copy of “Desperate Housewives” obtained 15 just minutes after the episode’s airing was a seminal moment in Disney’s corporate decision to offer parts of its content online (via Apple’s iTunes store), said Disney exec Anne Sweeney in her keynote address Monday morning here at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit.
Sweeney, whose numerous titles at Disney include that of president of the company’s Disney-ABC television group, told a story about how a celebration of ratings success for “Housewives” was dimmed when a Disney employee showed Sweeney and others a copy of an episode obtained via BitTorrent just 15 minutes after it was broadcast.
Coming “face to face” with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version, Sweeney said, told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates — and as such was an experience that “prompted us to [eventually] do the iTunes deal with Apple.”
Calling the iTunes experiment as well as other online forays a business success — “we are not cannibalizing our audience; it’s additive,” Sweeney said, citing company research — Sweeney said to be on the lookout for a new player and more, more more online content from Disney properties sometime this Fall.
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