"LOST" on-demand launched for the first time in a dedicated environment
Milan, 29 September 2008 - FASTWEB, Italy's second-largest fixed telecommunications provider, and Disney-ABC-ESPN Television announce a strategic agreement to offer premium award-winning ABC Studios-produced television series to FASTWEBTV's subscribers on an on-demand basis.
This is Disney-ABC-ESPN Television's first agreement to make a TV series available on a VoD service in Italy, and reflects its commitment to working with international partners strong in the new media space to bring its content to viewers in flexible, innovative ways.
A dedicated area has been created to accommodate the launch of FASTWEB's IPTV interface featuring "LOST," the award-winning series that follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island. The agreement also includes many other long-running acclaimed favourite TV series such as "Criminal Minds" and "Alias."
This agreement was negotiated by Disney-ABC-ESPN Television's Edward Humphrey, director, New Media distribution, Stefania Severini, senior manager, Programme Distribution, EMEA (South), working with Claudio Bellinzona, Fastweb's Head of content and programming.
"We are very proud to be working with Disney to give our subscribers access to some of the hottest series on international TV" said Alessandro Petazzi, FASTWEB's Head of Media & TV. "and we are particularly keen to be working with Disney at the forefront of innovation, with the first launch ever of a dedicated video-on-demand environment for a hugely popular series such as LOST".
Maria Kyriacou, Senior Vice President, New Media Distribution, Disney-ABC-ESPN Television, commented: "We are pleased to be working with FASTWEB to offer consumers in Italy some of our most popular series on demand, for the first time. Making our content available to international viewers to access in a variety of ways, when and how they choose to is an important commitment for us, and this agreement brings us even closer to achieving this."