ABC's best shows are everywhere BUT here (ABC 1)

Member Name: shroud

Product:	ABC 1
Date:	22/05/07 (106 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great enetertainment

Disadvantages: repeats, repeats, repats, and current ABC hits are on Living, Sky, anywhere but ABC1

~~~~Who or What Is ABC?~~~

ABC in this instance quite simply stands for the American Broadcasting Corporation. It is a subsidiary of Walt Disney after it was acquired in the 1990's.It began life in 1944 as a radio network, and in 1948 they made their first television broadcast. In the 1950's, Warner bros and Walt Disney both produced shows for this network, and helped propel the analogue channels they broadcast on into popularity with the TV public. TV was coming into its own, and the advent of Hollywood style entertainment on the small screen drew in more and more viewers. As time passed, ABC went on to produce many shows that remain in the conscious of popular culture even today. These include international hits such as Batman (1966), Bewitched (1964), Time Tunnel (1966), Te Outer Limits (1963), Happy days (1974), Mork and Mindy (1978), The Love Boat (1977), Dynasty (1981), as well current gems such as Lost (2004) , Desperate Housewives (2004), Grey's Anatomy (2005), Boston legal (2004), and Ugly Betty (2006). In addition they host regular sports programmes such as Monday Night Football during American football season, music and dance programmes for youths weekend evenings, daytime soaps, and Saturday morning is reserved for children's cartoons.


~~~British Presence~~~

Now, with a network line up like that, you are no doubt puzzled as to why their best shows are on other British stations when they have their own channel. I have to ask myself that question as well. Their UK broadcasting history certainly provides no clue.ABC1 was launched by Disney as a UK sister channel to the US' ABC. Initially it was exclusive to Freeview, and uuencoded. Then a few months later it was picked up by NTL's digital cable service, and a 2005, nearly a year later, it leapt to Sky. On Freeview and cable, it is unencrypted, but on Sky it is encrypted and only available as part of a package. Go figure.

Initially it limited its broadcasting hours from 6 am to 6 pm, and strangely only broadcast large blocks of repeats from its back catalogues and none of its current hits. All the shows were available to watch on other channels people were already familiar with, so not much of a draw there. After a year, they introduced some of their Playhouse Disney programmes such as Higgly Town Heroes and JoJo's Circus, which brought these shows to the non Disney subscribing audiences for the first time. In 2006, this all changed again to back to back repeats of blocks of old sitcoms as well as a 24 hour broadcast presence, with 2007 seeing repeats of back catalogue dramas again.

Why on earth they do this to themselves rather than grab a big bite of market share by keeping Lost, Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty, and their other smash hits to themselves and broadcasting them perhaps a week or two later than their US channel (if need be), is a true mystery. Here we have a broadcaster who takes their most lucrative audience grabbing shows, sells the broadcasts rights off, and shows syndicated can be watched elsewhere repasts back to back on their own channel. Uh huh. makes sense to me. NOT.


~~~My Verdict~~~

This is a broadcaster who has great shows, but needs to put them on their own schedule, instead of the current block of multiple repeated repeats of shows in syndication already. Their attempt at a UK channel, is frankly, ill executed for the most baffling of reasons.

Summary: Need to keep their current hits for themselves and make a name for themselves.