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April 29, 2008: Warner Bros. Pushes Shows Online with 2 New Websites

Warner Bros. pushes shows online with 2 new Web sites, including KidsWB.com launched Monday

Warner Bros. is launching two Web sites to capture new ad revenue and a younger generation of viewers, the company said Monday.

KidsWB.com, geared for children, debuted Monday, featuring animated characters from the Warner Bros. library, which includes Bugs Bunny, Scooby Doo and DC Comics heroes like Superman and Batman.

TheWB.com -- with full episodes of shows such as "Friends" and "Smallville" and made-for-online shows -- is to launch in a beta test format next month, according to Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Television Group.

Both sites will be supported by ad revenue, with deals already in place with Mattel Inc., McDonald's Corp. and Johnson & Johnson, the company said.

Group president Bruce Rosenblum said via Webcast from New York that the digital push was intended to make the television studio's content available to viewers such as his 20-year-old daughter and her friends, "who are watching on laptops and cell phones."

"To them, that is television," Rosenblum said.

Click "Read More" below to read the rest of the Press Release.

The executives were in New York to pitch the digital strategy to advertising agencies.

Warner Bros.' move to make its content available on its own branded Web site comes well after other industry steps in that direction.

Last month, Hulu.com, a joint online venture between General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and News Corp., launched to the public after a monthslong test period. And The Walt Disney Co.'s ABC.com has been streaming hit shows since September 2006.

"It's not so late that it doesn't matter," said analyst Martin Pyykkonen of Global Crown Capital.

But Warner Bros. lacks a major broadcast network, and it has sold distribution rights for shows it produces to other companies. "Chuck," for example, was sold to NBC, while "Pushing Daisies" airs on ABC.

Those networks have the rights to rebroadcast episodes on their own Web sites in the current season, leaving TheWB.com at least a season behind on offering the shows, Rosenblum said.

Even episodes of "Gossip Girl," which first air on Warner Bros.' joint venture channel with CBS Corp., The CW, will go online on CWTV.com before it appears at TheWB.com

Warner Bros. is attempting to make its site more than a destination for watching streamed shows.

It also will be possible to viewed TheWB.com inside Facebook users' home pages and vice versa. And the site will offer a lineup of original online-only series, including "Sorority Forever" from a team that included the makers of Web hit "Prom Queen," and an untitled project from "The O.C." creator Josh Schwartz.

Rosenblum downplayed the impact of revenue from the venture on parent Time Warner Inc., which brought in $46.5 billion in 2007.

"I would not be focused on the revenue piece of this for a handful of years," Rosenblum said, explaining that online viewing is just beginning.

"We're still in the embryonic stage of this platform," he said.


2008 Television News

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