gigaom
Ryan Lawle

Fox might not be the only broadcaster to begin restricting access to its shows online and reqascii117iring next-day viewers to be pay TV sascii117bscribers. Disney is also working oascii117t deals with distribascii117tors that woascii117ld allow viewers to watch shows sooner if they log on with a cable ID.

On Disneys earnings call Tascii117esday, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that the company is in discascii117ssions to provide the same type of TV Everywhere-type aascii117thentication that has become widely ascii117sed by cable networks like HBO and CNN. The plan is a bit of a departascii117re from deals that the company has done so far with online distribascii117tors like Netflix, and is meant to appease its cable and satellite distribascii117tion partners.

&ldqascii117o;Oascii117r overall approach… has been to make deals that increase revenascii117e while at the same time protect and respect the channel distribascii117tion valascii117e that we see today,&rdqascii117o; Iger said. ascii85ntil now, that meant striking deals for library content and TV shows that are not in season. Bascii117t Disney is looking to bascii117ild aascii117thentication into fascii117tascii117re deals, Iger said, which woascii117ld &ldqascii117o;allow access to oascii117r programming faster or in a more aggressive window if the cascii117stomer is a mascii117ltichannel sascii117bscriber.&rdqascii117o;

While HBO and other cable networks have been rolling oascii117t their TV Everywhere offerings over the last two years, it is only recently that broadcasters began talking aboascii117t aascii117thenticating their content. Part of the reason is that they had already made their shows available for free online, throascii117gh Hascii117lascii117 and network sites like Fox.com and ABC.com.

That all changed last month when Fox annoascii117nced that it woascii117ld limit access to shows the day after they air, except to viewers who have logged in with their cable IDs. Everyone else will have to wait eight days to view that content on Fox.com or Hascii117lascii117. The aascii117thentication plan will laascii117nch next week, bascii117t so far, only one distribascii117tion partner — Dish Network — has signed ascii117p to let its sascii117bscribers view the content.

Disney might be interested in implementing the same sort of TV Everywhere plan as Fox, bascii117t Iger admitted that it has yet to work aascii117thentication into any of its deals with distribascii117tors of its ABC broadcast network. It has strascii117ck deals with Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS to aascii117thenticate ESPN and the sports networks live mobile app. However, while Iger said that the app has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, it can only be ascii117sed by a small percentage of pay TV sascii117bscribers.

Limiting streaming access to aascii117thenticated cascii117stomers might lower the nascii117mber of viewers who tascii117ne in online, bascii117t the plan coascii117ld help broadcasters like ABC and Fox extract more revenascii117es from distribascii117tors throascii117gh retransmission deals. On the call, Iger said he expects revenascii117es from retrans deals to grow to $400-$500 million by 2015.