New Light in Internet Service
A new internet service
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Warner Brothers is preparing a major new Internet service that will let fans watch full episodes from more than 100 old television series. The service, called In2TV, will be free, supported by advertising, and will start early next year. More than 4 800 episodes will be made available online in the first year.
The benefit of the new technology
The move will give Warner a way to reap new advertising revenue from a huge trove of old programming that is not widely syndicated.
Programs on In2TV will have one to two minutes of commercials for each half-hour episode, compared with eight minutes in a standard broadcast. The Internet commercials cannot be skipped.
America Online, which is making a broad push into Internet video, will distribute the service on its Web portal. Both it and Warner Brothers are Time Warner units. An enhanced version of the service will use peer-to-peer file-sharing technol0gy to get the video data to viewers.
Warner, with 800 television programs in its library, says it is the largest TV syndicator. It wants to use the Internet to reach viewers rather than depend on the whims of cable networks and local TV stations, said Eric Frankel, the president of Warner Brothers' domestic cable distribution division.
"We looked at the rise of broadband on Internet and said, 'Let's try to be the first to create a network that opens a new window of distribution for us rather than having to go hat in hand to a USA or a Nick at Night or a TBS,'" Mr. Frankel said.
Warner's offering comes at a time when television producers and networks are exploring new ways to use digital technology to distribute programs.
The Competition among different distributors
Many of the recent moves include charging viewers for current programs. ABC has started selling episodes of some programs to download to Apple Pods for ＄1.99. And NBC and CBS announced last week that they would sell reruns of their top new shows for 99 cents an episode through video-on-demand services. CBS is working with Comcast and NBC with DirecTV. The CBS programs to be sold on Comcast include commercials, but viewers can skip them. The NBC programs on DirecTV and the ABC programs from Apple have no commercials.
Of the media companies' new experiments, Peter Storck, president of the Points North Group, a research firm, remarked, "They are saying let's take the plunge, put the content out there, and figure out how to monetize it." Programs on In2TV will range from recently canceled series like "La Femme Nikita' to vintage shows like "Maverick" from the early 1960's . Other series that will be available include "Chico and the Man," "Wonder Woman" and "Babylon 5."
"The company will offer a changing selection of several hundred episodes each month, rather than providing continuous access to all the episodes in a series," Mr. Frankel said, "so as not to cannibalize (拆分) potential DVD sales of old TV shows."
"And in the future, when Warner negotiates with cable networks to syndicate popular programs," Mr. Frankel-said, "the price will be higher if the network wants it kept off the Internet."
For AOL, the In2TV deal is part of a broad strategy to create a range of video offerings to attract people to its free AOL. com portal. It already offers some video news and sports programs from CBS News, ABC and CNN.
At the same time, it is creating programming aimed at women and young people, including an online reality series called "The Biz," giving contestants the chance to become a music producer, in conjunction with the Warner Music Group (which is no longer owned by Time Warner).
Next month AOL

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