CBS' Trek Leads Online
There's something to be said for the oldies-but-goodies.
CBS, at least, is betting that fishing a few hits out of the archives will result in more online traffic and, subsequently, more ad sales. (Those striking writers may have had something there…)
The company's interactive division announced Thursday it is adding full-length episodes from the early seasons of Star Trek, MacGyver, The Twilight Zone, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place to its Website and partnering sites such as AOL and Joost that make up the CBS Audience Network.
More series will be added in coming months and, while short commercials are part of the deal, viewers get to watch for free.
CBS' move, along with a similar venture announced earlier this week by NBC, falls neatly into the networks' recent efforts to give viewers more multimedia choices when it comes to following their favorite shows, be it by laptop, iTunes or cell phone.
"With offerings in entertainment, news and sports, this is about solving for what the user wants and staying focused around CBS content," CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith said. "Furthermore, meshing this content with the interactivity of the Web allows for more comprehensive experiences around each show—not simply a broadcast model."
And in addition to finding new ways to present their current lineups, which has included adding vast troves of behind-the-scenes and other bonus material to supplement the shows people regularly tune into on TV, studios have been dipping into their libraries to refresh interest in shows that haven't been prime-time fare for 20, 30 or, in the case of The Twilight Zone, nearly 50 years.
"NBC Universal has a tremendous library of quality content and we are very excited to reintroduce these classic shows to a new Web audience," Vivi Zigler, executive VP of NBC Digital Entertainment said Tuesday in touting the upcoming revival of numerous cult-classic series on nbc.com and other in-house niche sites.
The NBCU-owned Sci Fi Channel, home to the 21st-century Battlestar Galactica, has scored episodes of the acclaimed series' 1978 predecessor for its Website, as well as Tek War, Buck Rogers and Night Gallery, the last of which will also be going to chillertv.com along with Tremors, Swamp Thing and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Sleuth Channel's mystery-fueled Website will be able to count Kojak, Miami Vice, A-Team, Simon & Simon and, once again, Night Gallery, among its new offerings.
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