Are you willing to surrender the power to zip past ads on TV? Disney and Cox want to find out.

The Walt Disney Co and cable operator Cox Communications Inc have offered some of the most popular  prime-time ABC shows, as well as some ESPN games, as an advertising supported, on-demand service in a trial basis in Orange County, California for the past several months. They’re finally ready to roll it out nationwide later this year. Disney’s also talking to other TV service operators about similar arrangements.

The catch? ABC will sell ads for the shows available in the on-demand service and they want to make sure you watch them.  To do that, Disney and Cox disabled the popular fast-forward feature.

The companies carefully polled viewers to make sure they were okay with watching up to 10 30-second ads per hour, less than the average  30 spots on network television, in exchange for being able to access prime time shows, including “Desperate Housewives,” “Lost”, and “Grey’s Anatomy”, for free.

More than 90 percent said they rather watch a few ads than pay for ad-free shows, the companies reported on Monday.

For Disney, the idea isn’t all that new. They borrowed the template from abc.com, which has been a big hit with viewers despite requiring them to click through a few commercials to watch ABC prime-time shows online for free. The Web site’s broadband player has served up 260 million streams since it went live in mid-2006.

Cox says it has no current plans to fiddle with the fast-forward on its regular cable channels. Viewers who can’t imagine sitting through ads no matter what can rest easy, for now.

(Photo: Reuters / Disney CEO Robert Iger at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show)