Starting today, ABC.com begins rolling out a wide array of new interactive digital features for many of ABC’s most popular primetime series, including Dancing with the Stars, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty.
Site highlights include:
· Wisteria Lane Virtual Tour — Sponsored by Lexus, this interactive tour of the Desperate Housewives set allows fans to get an up-close peek into the homes of their favorite Wisteria Lane residents. Fans will be able to click on hot spots found throughout the houses, zooming in on certain features and objects to find details about the series’ characters and storylines, as well as information about Lexus vehicles featured on the show.
· Design a Dance Contest – This feature combines user-generated submissions and weekly polls to allow Dancing with the Stars fans to contribute to a special on-air dance segment based on viewer-selected elements including the dancing couple, style of dance, music and costumes.
· Mode Magazine Online – An online version of Mode Magazine (from Ugly Betty) that is updated with new content each week.
· Dr. Sydney Heron’s Healing with Love blog – Using submissions of the viewers of Grey’s Anatomy, this blog features “tongue-in-cheek” advice and self-help strategies from the Seattle Grace resident
· Life on Mars Interactive Poll – Fans place themselves in Detective Sam Tyler’s shoes when they’re confronted with a series of situations that test how well they would fare living in 1973 versus 2008.
· Life on Mars 1973 Computer Electronic Game – Fans play a vintage computer game that features segments containing trivia and factoids about the year 1973.
· How Well Do You Know Me? Quiz – Viewers of Opportunity Knocks have the opportunity to find out how well their friends, family and co-workers really know them – by challenging them to answer ten simple questions about their habits, likes and dislikes. Users can see which family members, friends and co-workers know them best on their personal leader board, and can compete to have the highest ranking on the ABC leader board by having the most people take the challenge.
· Personality Quizzes – Fans can learn which characters from their favorite shows they’re most like through a variety of quizzes. Shows include Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Samantha Who? and Ugly Betty.
The site offers a multitude of other features, including games, trivia, message boards and a library of over 2,000 pieces of short-form content related to ABC’s popular primetime lineup. ABC.com is also home to a new Ugly Betty webisode series, Mode After Hours, featuring Marc (Michael Urie) and Amanda (Becki Newton) in different adventures at the Mode office after the work day is done and everyone has left. Original webisode series are also planned for Brothers & Sisters and Scrubs.