'Arrested' locked up
MSN to stream repeats on-demand
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News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox TV and Fox Digital Media worked together with the purpose of using the critically acclaimed but low-rated sitcom to start building a new online market for its programming.
"We wanted to get one of the major portals to step up and become a client that is competing with the basic cable networks," said Fox Digital Media prexy Peter Levinsohn.
Microsoft-owned portal will make all 53 episodes of "Arrested" available on demand, with ads. It also will create original interactive elements in an attempt to build an online community and attract new fans.
MSN, Yahoo! and AOL have all offered individual episodes of network shows for promotional purposes, and AOL streams classic Warner Bros. shows on its In2TV service. In addition, WB is selling Internet rights along with on-air for "Two and a Half Men" to TV stations (Daily Variety, May 8).
But new deal is the first a portal has made for exclusive broadband rights in firstrun syndication. MSN will pay Twentieth TV a license fee and share some advertising revenue.
"Not only do we have the entire catalog, but online we can create an immersive world for 'Arrested Development,' " said Rob Bennett, MSN general manager of entertainment and video services. "We want to tap into the passion of the existing audience and give them tools to draw in people who haven't watched before."
Fox can still work with other partners, such as Apple iTunes, to sell downloads of individual episodes.
With only 53 episodes shot and relatively weak ratings over its three-year run, "Arrested" wasn't a strong candidate for syndication despite its fervent fan base. Showtime considered reviving the skein, but it couldn't reach a deal with creator Mitch Hurwitz (Daily Variety, March 28).
By finding three homes for "Arrested," all of which hope to benefit from the prestige and relatively young and affluent viewership it drew on Fox, Twentieth TV may have a better opportunity to recoup some of the losses it took on the show's network run than it would through a traditional syndication deal.
Another potential hiccup: Dedicated fans have snapped up DVDs of the series, meaning many of them may not need to see reruns. That gives "Arrested's" new homes extra impetus to find fresh viewers who didn't watch it on Fox.
"If you look at what happened with 'Family Guy' on Adult Swim, you can find new viewers for a cult show in reruns," said Steven MacDonald, Twentieth Television exec VP of basic cable sales. "We went with the highest bidders, but part of the process was also finding partners who would enable the show to grow."
"Arrested Development" is one of the highest-profile acquisitions to date for both G4, which has been extending beyond videogame shows, and HDNet, which has just started to buy network series shot in high-definition.
About 19% of the aud for "Arrested Development" was men 18-34 this past season, a better skew than many network comedies, which G4 prexy Neil Tiles said makes the laffer a good fit for his net.
"The research we did on the show found that 'Arrested Development' was the most popular TV series among gamers," he explained.
"Arrested" is the fourth rerun series bought by G4 recently, joining Comedy Central's "The Man Show" and both the original "Star Trek" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
G4 plans to run the show five times a week starting in October, while HDNet is looking to air episodes back-to-back on Wednesday nights.
(John Dempsey in New York contributed to this report.)
