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Warner's In2TV |
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Warner Brothers is preparing a 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 reports New York Times.
"In2TV," will serve up "Welcome Back Kotter," "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," "Pinky and the Brain" and "Growing Pains" among a host of other Warner-owned shows beginning in January.
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 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 technology to get the video data to viewers.
"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,' " said Eric Frankel, the president of Warner Brothers' domestic cable distribution division said.
"Just one click and it's any show you want, right there on your screen," Frankel said. "Like your video store, it's laid out by genre, but it looks like an interactive electronic program guide."
AOL Media Networks executive vp Kevin Conroy said that in its first year, In2TV will offer more than 3,400 hours of programming, made up of at least 300 episodes each month drawn from more than 100 separate television series reports MSNBC
"We knew we wanted to innovate here and let TV viewers experience programming in an entirely new way," Conroy said. "This is a new platform for distribution and an opportunity for Web users to experience this programming that’s never been possible before."
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