Yahoo! CBS Comedies to be streamed on Internet

Yahoo! CBS Comedies to be streamed on Internet

Good news for chronic Internet surfers. In a bid to attract viewers to its popular comedy sitcoms “Two and a Half Men” and “How I met Your Mother,” CBS Network will make the two episodes available for a week on Yahoo.

Christened the “CBS Comedy Bowl,” referring to the popular college football games, the half an hour streamed show on the Internet will be ad-free on Yahoo's video player and available on Yahoo! TV. This is being promoted on all the websites of Yahoo! Network and Yahoo! TV via banner ads.

Commenting on the initiative, Nancy Tellem who is the president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group said, "We want to be where the viewers are, and this exclusive partnership with Yahoo! gives us the chance to target an expanded online audience for 'Two and a Half Men' and 'How I Met Your Mother' at a time of the year when many potential viewers are home on vacation and surfing the Internet."

In April, CBS network formed an interactive Division, the CBS Digital Media, hiring Larry Kramer, the founder of MarketWatch, to unify programming and ad sales from CBS.com, CBSNews.com, UPN.come and CBS SportsLine.com. This is just one of the many online initiatives undertaken by the CBS Digital Media division.

In a statement released by CBS, Kramer says, “This deal marks a continuation of our ongoing broadband initiatives at CBS, and we believe that working closely with Yahoo! will generate significant awareness for these two comedy series."

CBS Digital Media had got active since July, launching across its CBS News sites, a video and banner ad offering, with further plans of extending “The Eyebox” unit onto all other CBS sites. In Septermbr, UPN had teamed up with Google, streaming the premiere of “Everybody Hates Chris”. In October CBS had offered audio podcasts of select shows on iTunes. This included “Guiding Light”, “60 Minutes,” “NFL Hot Topic” and “Survivor Live.”

Rival TV networks reacted to the CBS initiatives by launching something similar. In October, ABC sold downloads of its shows like “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives.” Analysts saw this as the beginning of the much-touted TV and Internet convergence. Others like, NBC Universal, Sci Fi Channel, USA Network and Disney have followed suit by offering their shows on iTunes.

On the other side is Internet Company AOL, which has launched a broadband video network, In2TV that will begin offering episodes of over 30 classic TV series from January. This network will make money by showing 15 and 30 seconds ads.