Dish Network’s new long-term carriage deal with The Walt Disney Company include coveted, expanded streaming rights that will enable the satellite TV giant to offer subscription services over the top.
As explained in the release issued Monday night, the “extensive and expanded distribution agreement grants DISH rights to stream cleared linear and video-on-demand content from the ABC-owned broadcast stations, ABC Family, Disney Channel, ESPN and ESPN2, as part of an Internet delivered, IP-based multichannel offering.”
A Dish spokesman said the terms of the new deal would give Dish the rights to apply those distribution rights toward a so-called “virtual” MSO, but said Dish has not announced any specific plans for an OTT offering. Dish has already developed DishWorld, a broadband-delivered, subscription service that offers several foreign-language TV packages. On the technology side, Dish has already hammered out an adaptive bit rate streaming architecture spawned by EchoStar’s acquisition of streaming video pioneer Move Networks in 2011.
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