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Catch-Up TV coming to Seven

Seven is set to expand its online content with an advertiser-supported new platform in January.

lostoSeven will step up its online TV offerings in January when it launches Catch-Up TV with full-length episodes of titles set to include Home & Away, FlashForward, Greys Anatomy, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Heroes and My Kitchen Rules.

The streaming site will expand on episodes currently available via Seven’s Yahoo! portal operating in a similar capacity to the ABC’s iView platform.

Content aside, it’s main point of difference will be “mid-roll advertising” to show advertisements mid programme, much like commercial television.

A spokesperson told TV Tonight they expect around 3-4 ads per one show. Availability of titles is expected to be as soon as a show finishes on air (although history as shown this usually means as soon as a show finishes on air in Perth). Titles will remain online for between 7 – 28 days depending on rights.

Rohan Lund, CEO Yahoo!7 said, “Australians have already embraced Catch-Up TV with nearly two million streams of full episode TV shows each month on Yahoo!7 and we expect this to quadruple with the launch of the new Catch-Up TV destination. We’re privileged to have access to Seven’s stable of programs and the dedicated Catch-Up TV destination site will allow us to extend the range of shows we can make available while making it even easier for users to access the TV The new site will launch with mid-roll advertising, an Australian first for online video.

So far no ISPs are yet on board for unmetered content.

Freeview has been pursuing a similar online service though Seven has been less enthusiastic about a joint project than Nine or TEN.

“Catch-Up” was also the name of a brand used by an early Channel Nine platform.

19 Responses

  1. sometimes eps of the ten’s shows are posted on the website while the ep is airing on tv meaning that without ads you can finishing watching the ep about 10 minutes before it finishes on tv.

  2. I’d prefer a fast tracked shows take Sci-Fi with Star Gate Universe that’s about a week. I’d hope they do that with Lost because I’d hate the ending being spoiled through casual internet browsing.

  3. I wish the other networks would take a look at TEN who keep most episodes online for as long as possible (for example, with Dance and Idol they have all seasons available online still) and TEN only show a few ads inbetween sections on the show.
    However with the more popular shows like MasterChef there were generally about 4 ads throughout the entire thing. Still, their model is much better. My only complaint is that the highest quality stream doesn’t look good at all on my TV, lol. I wish we had a good IPTV service in Australia.. And oh what do you know, Windows 7 has a very good IPTV program in it which has been disabled for Australia! *facepalm*

  4. There are a few things this catch-up service will need in order to be successful:
    – Needs to be unmetred, like iView is on many ISPs.
    – Needs the ads to be non-obtrusive. For example, if they want to put 2-3 ads in the middle, put them where the middle ad-break would be, as opposed to exactly 50% through the video, which could be in the middle of a scene.
    – Needs to be available to every Australian – not just those who are in the major cities. In other words, don’t abandon those of us who are stuck with horrible Prime.

    Also, they should contact Microsoft and work out a deal with them to make the service available through Windows Media Center. Australia has No internet content through WMC, but they do in the US and UK.

  5. Nup, no thanks, not liking this. I know I’m in a minority, but I can’t enjoy viewing shows like this – I want it on the big screen! plus, not that keen on those massive internet bills.
    And like others, when’s 7TWO coming to Prime!?!?

  6. without having unmetered access to either bigpond or optus, things like video streaming on the net sucks. You might as well DL it via other means while still using roughly the same amount of bandwith

  7. Well done Seven – about bloody time (welcome to 2003)… Ad supported or not, this is a leap forward in the right direction.

    Let’s hope the have DRM free downloads, and not just streaming.

  8. lol, alot of the reason people watch catchup tv is cause they dont want ads! ten has been the leader in online content for yrs now and they have 1 commercial at the start of every ep which is fine with me but if they put ads during the show i would no longer watch it!
    Welcome to 2009 7! too bad your joint venture with yahoo makes your site suck major! it pales compared to network ten’s online site!!

  9. Ten’s sounds a lot friendlier, with an ad at the start of the programme, instead of unskipable ads during the show. But I guess tv networks are loving the internet for the feature of unskipable ads, something they can’t control on dvrs

  10. People buy a PVR and just record your shows, TiVo does it automatically when set up and you don’t have to worry about unmetered use, can cut ads and in some cases copy them to DVD to keep. Plus you get all this on your big TV and now your smaller Computer screen.

    IMO people are lazy, while iView is a great site and unmetered on some ISPs I haven’t used it as much as I thought I would.

  11. Would be much more convenient if they all joined forces. Not that it matters, just download a proxy (Hotspot Shield) and go to the American network’s Hulu site.

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