With record labels cutting promo budgets and less room for “new artists” on radio playlists, getting a song featured on a hot show like Grey’s Anatomy or Gossip Girl can be the biggest break in an emerging artist’s career. So when fans flood the network’s site with questions about the…

Update: The deal is now official The *Walt Disney Company* and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) are close to one programming deal for video portal YouTube, and are in discussions about another—also involving YouTube—that would preclude a deal with Hulu, paidContent has learned. Disney (NYSE: DIS) and YouTube are in the final…

Starting today, ABC.com is expanding its full-episode player to daytime programming with talk show The View and long-running soap General Hospital. The five most recent episodes of each will be available—The View episode at 3 p.m. ET the same day it premieres, General Hospital  at 5 a.m. ET the morning…

Syndication is coming back with a vengeance in this new frugal reality for the news industry: first the recent announcements about newspapers sharing copy in their local areas—the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram being one example; and now, it is coming to TV. One of the first major…

ABCNews.com’s 15-minute webcast will not be scuttled, despite recent rumblings to that effect, THR reports. For the past two years, the webcast has been streamed live weekdays at 3 PM EDT and then available as a free podcast on iTunes. The podcast, which is hosted by ABC World News anchor…

Internet news vet Jonathan Dube is rejoining ABCNews.com as VP, responsible for strategic planning, business strategy, editorial content and production; he was a national producer for the site in 1999. Dube will report to Paul Slavin, SVP-digital media. Dube has made the digital news rounds: he moves to ABC News…

ABC, among the most conservative of online players when it comes to syndicating its own TV shows (but among the most progressive in putting shows within its own branded environment, along with parent Disney), has done its second major video deal: it has done a deal with Veoh, with full…

When it comes to all the tropes the broadcast networks continue to cling to, the national evening news shows are arguably the most in need of drastic change. As the shows’ millions viewers are getting older and older, ad support is dwindling. While the networks’ online versions of the nightly…

Disney (NYSE: DIS) is doing an interesting experiment: it will be streaming online movies at Disney.com for the first time, intended to boost the “Wonderful World of Disney” summer TV series on sister channel ABC. Among the movies online include Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. and Peter Pan. The movies will…

I’m seated in a makeshift press room on the second floor of ABC’s corporate headquarters, as the audience of marketers and media buyers gather a few blocks away at Avery Fisher Hall for the company’s upfront presentation. The Disney-owned network, like MTV did at its upfront last week, is touting…

ABC is reporting a deal with its affiliates today that gives the network much more leeway for repurposing content across platforms and alleviates affiliate concerns about the network providing VOD to multichannel competitors. It centers on ABC’s “fast-forwarding disabled” VOD: ABC will supply network programming through a local ad-supported VOD…

Disney has delayed the formal debut of a separate digital production unit called Stage 9, charged with developing original online and mobile series, reports THR, citing sources. The unit, based in a separate office in Burbank, has been in operation unofficially since February last year, and was working on four…

ABC News is going the way of ESPN360 with its digital service ABC NewsNow: it is doing away with its online subscription service (offered through ABCNews.com website), and will focus on offering it to partner services on cable, broadband and mobile (it is free on certain broadband ISP subscribers as…

Over the coming three months, ABC.com will be streaming mini-webisodes of the hit show Lost that add more details to the plot and help fill in backstory. As the NYT reports, these episodes, dubbed “Lost: Missing Pieces”, were developed under a special agreement between the studio and the WGA that…