The trial is taking place across the MSO’s footprint and includes 5,000 to 10,000 Charter subscribers from such cities as St. Louis and Madison, Wisc., as well as smaller communities such as Chicopee, Mass., and Kennewick, Wash. Charter cable customers who subscribe to packages that include those channels will be able to use passwords to access streaming video from the participating networks online during the trial, Williams said.

While all trial participants are subscribers to Charter’s broadband Internet service, Williams said that all of the MSO’s video customers, regardless of Internet provider, will be able to access the MSO’s TV Everywhere features.

Charter expects to run the trial through the rest of the year before determining whether to go companywide.

“We’re really focused on trying to make sure that we can provide extended value to our customers for being in a relationship with Charter, and being part of that is providing access to media content that they otherwise would not be able to get,” Williams said. “What we want to do is continue to take steps to offer more value to the customers and the trial is one piece of that.”

Charter also offers the ESPN3 event-centric broadband service to subscribers and last week launched the multiplatform Epix, a premium movie channel owned jointly by MGM, Paramount Pictures and Lions Gate Entertainment.