With the close of the Republican National Convention last week, ABC News achieved a significant milestone in its 14-week programming venture to deliver expanded political coverage via various digital delivery avenues, including multicast DTV channels, broadband Internet connection and cell phones.
ABC News Now, which began July 26 with the opening of the Democrat National Convention from Boston, and will conclude with election night coverage Nov. 2, provided the network with a vehicle to deliver gavel-to-gavel convention coverage while simultaneously meeting its other programming objectives for the main network.
The service is available from all 10 ABC-owned stations and many affiliates nationwide on digital multicast channels. Those with retransmission agreements with local cable companies for a channel on the digital tier will distribute ABC News Now to cable viewers.
ABC News Now is also available via broadband Internet connection to AOL members, Comcast.net subscribers, ABC News On Demand or RealNetworks SuperPass subscribers, SBC/Yahoo customers and Bell South DSL users.
Additionally, MobiTV is streaming live ABC News Now service to Sprint PCS Vision customers.
At the Democratic and Republican conventions, ABC News Now provided fuller coverage than the broadcast network, including additional analysis, interviews with the parties’ leaders and elected officials that did not make it to air.
Following the Republican convention, ABC News Now entered the next phase of campaign coverage, offering live breaking news events, hourly news briefs and reports from ABC news correspondents.
During the convention, viewers comparing ABC News Now to the network feed would have noticed that ABC anchor Peter Jennings was available for the new digital service when he was not on the traditional broadcast network. While anchoring coverage for ABC’s broadcast feed, the network’s Terry Moran and Bob Woodruff anchored ABC News Now.
For more information, visit http://abcnews.go.com/sections/abcnewsnow.
