The growth of the Internet as a viable place to watch
television and videos is fully in evidence today, as another network
has added classic shows to its web roster.
With News Corp. and NBC offering up such oldies as
The A-Team, Kojak, Partridge
Family, and S.W.A.T. (among many
others) to their online audience at Hulu
and other NBC sites, it only seems logical that other television
networks would follow suit in offering former fan favorite shows for
viewing via the internet.
CBS
has now become
the latest network
to join the online old-school bandwagon, as the company’s CBS
Interactive division has announced that some of their classic
televisions shows from the past will now be available online.
TV Classics
Visitors to the CBS
homepage will find a new TV classics section in the ‘Shows’
menu which contains five shows, consisting of Melrose Place,
Hawaii Five-O, MacGyver, Star
Trek and The Twilight Zone.
Though for the time being only selected seasons are available
for
viewing, CBS is expected to add more episodes of the newly added shows,
as well as other classic television titles. As with all of the other
current shows available online expect embedded advertising.
These shows will, of course, be distributed through the CBS
Audience
Network, which apparently has over 300 partners sites and video
services such as Joost, Veoh, and AOL (which is also a Hulu
partner), among others… hundreds of others.
Conclusions
Ever since the writer’s strike began last November, online
video
services have seen surges in traffic, as TV fans looked to find
programming elsewhere.
This is surely CBS’s way to keep fresh (though
old) content available to keep up the high traffic numbers. Whether it
will be enough or not remains to be seen, now that the strike is over
and new episodes of halted shows should begin airing within 4 to 6
weeks.
This article is based on Profy post written by Michael Garrett.
