Sprint to offer on-demand episodes of ABC shows

Sprint today announced a major content deal with Disney-ABC Television that will bring on-demand full-length episodes of popular TV shows like “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” to the mobile screen.

Sprint will make available full-length versions of “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ugly Betty,” “Lost,” and “Housewives” for streaming over the Sprint TV service on Power Vision 3G devices. Customers can watch the most recent episode or select from an archive of the most recent four episodes. In addition, the Sprint service will offer on-demand streaming of the “Nightly News with Charles Gibson,” “Nightline,” and other ABC News specials and shows as well as add two new linear streaming channels featuring children’s content from the Disney Channel and a 24-hour ABC News channel featuring breaking news and feature content.

In the fall, Disney plans to expand on its relationship with Sprint TV adding full-length episodes of popular Disney Channel programs to its on-demand offering, including “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” “Cory in the House,” and “Kim Possible.”

Sprint is taking a three-tiered approach to pricing the content, offering all of the on-demand in linear channels as part of its Power Vision TV Pack, which includes 20 other linear channels and on demand video from other broadcasters, for $20. Or packaging the Disney children’s content into a special video package for $15 a month. However, the prices may come down in the fall as Sprint plans to introduce advertising into the programming in the form of commercials though it did not say if those ads would be general commercials recorded in the video stream or specifically delivered ads targeted at each subscriber.

While Qualcomm’s MediaFLO service offers extensive full-length programming across a broad range of channels and content providers, it does not support on-demand programming. Verizon Wireless, which is currently the only operator live on MediaFLO, supplements the multicast TV offering with its own on-demand selections, but the majority of that content is short-form programming rather than full episodes.