Now more than ever, I believe the entertainment and media industry is in a fascinating place. Consumers en masse have changed their viewing habits to consume more media in a time-shifted manner, and technology has evolved to foster that behavior. In addition, content and distribution companies are working together to expand the possibilities in delivering entertainment to consumers. Our goal at Comcast is to bring the best entertainment choices anytime, anywhere to our customers, and a significant component of that is to deliver those choices to our customers in an "on demand" environment, whether it be on TV, online or on mobile devices.
Starting tomorrow, we're taking another step in that direction by adding popular TV series from ABC and FOX broadcast networks to our On Demand television service, making Comcast the first to offer current top-rated series from all four major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC — On Demand. This nearly doubles the amount of hit shows we're making available from these networks On Demand, and adds to the 580 TV series we currently have available on this service. New and recent episodes from hits like "Glee," "Grey's Anatomy," "Cougar Town," "The Simpsons" and 20+ more will join top-rated shows from CBS and NBC that are currently available On Demand including "NCIS," "Hawaii Five-0," "The Office" and "30 Rock." Each of the major broadcast networks will offer the four most recent episodes from the following TV series On Demand.
What does this mean for our customers? Simply put, they can catch up and keep up on all of their favorite shows. What does this mean for broadcast networks and content partners, and why now? First and foremost, people still love to watch their favorite movies and shows on TV. As such, the TV series category On Demand has exploded in viewership — in fact, three years ago it wasn't even a top-rated category on our platform, and today it is our top-viewed category On Demand...and with our On Demand service generating 350 million views a month, nearly 20 BILLION views since we launched the service, that's catching Hollywood's eye.
Additionally, we've built out an infrastructure that allows for new innovation and experimentation in partnership with our programming partners to test methods that begin to build a business model around TV content On Demand. Some of the new initiatives and trials we've been working on include allowing for Nielsen to rate TV content viewed On Demand; disabling the fast forward feature so advertisements can be viewed and counted in the ratings mix, which also enables us to bring customers even more of the best content around; dynamic ad insertion; addressability in advertising; Interactive TV applications, and many others. All of this experimentation will lead to new and interesting outcomes for us and our TV partners, as we continue to see an increased desire from the entertainment industry to leverage VOD.
An insider I've spoken with said the current landscape around TV is like the new "Golden Age of Television" from both the creative side and the way consumers are viewing entertainment, and I couldn't agree more. Also, another recent insider comment I found telling — confirming what we've been witnessing — was that we're seeing a real resurgence in the entertainment industry around VOD and what's happening around movies, etc., and we should consider this VOD 2.0. Actually, I think we're closer to VOD 10.0...and there's much more to come for both consumers and the industry on that front.