Archive for April 28th, 2008

The WB is reborn as an online video site offering original programming and "reruns"

wb returnsWow. A TV exec gets it.

“My 20-year-old daughter and her friends are watching ‘One Tree Hill’ and ‘Pushing Daisies,’ but not on television,” said the TV exec, Bruce Rosenblum. “They’re watching on laptops and cellphones. Here’s the interesting part — to them, that is television.” (via New York Times)

Rosenblum is the president of the Warner television group, which is bringing back The WB brand not as a television network but an online video site, sort of an Internet network. The new WB (thewb.com) will feature original short-form content developed by talent like director/producer McG (“Terminator 4” and the “Charlie’s Angels” movies) and writer/producer Josh Schwartz (“Gossip Girl”).

Additionally, the new WB will provide “reruns” of shows which ran on the network from its birth in 1995 to 2006, when it merged with the UPN network to form The CW for the 2006-2007 TV season.

WB shows carried over to the Internet will include ad-supported episodes of the “Gilmore Girls,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and “Smallville.” Episodes of other Warner-produced shows like “Friends” and “The O.C.” will also be streamed online. It’s not known if shows produced by outside studios, like “Felicity” and “Dawson’s Creek,” will be featured.

“We do not view this as development for a platform other than the new media space,” Rosenblum told paidContent. “We view the new media space as a business within itself. If one of these series do happen to take off in a wildly successful fashion and if we really believe it can be compelling in another platform, of course we’ll try to take advantage of that.

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"31 Days of the Dragon", a super duper HP notebook giveaway

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been selected to be one of thirty one blogs taking part in a super duper giveaway courtesy of HP. Dubbed “The 31 Days of the Dragon“, beginning this week 31 blogs that cover gadgets and the digital lifestyle will start giving away a HP HDX Dragon 20inch notebook each, loaded with “stuff”, every day for 31 days. The HP HDX dragon is a seriously high-end entertainment machine, and not for the feint hearted, sporting a 20.1″ display, Intel Core 2 Extreme x9000, 4GB of Ram, Blu-Ray drive and lots more including a good few games and Blu-Ray movies to get you started (total retail price approx $5,000).

Please note: the competition is now closed.

The winner has been announced.

Each participating blog will be running its own contest (with total freedom to set to the rules) that will be open for seven days with the first contest kicking off this Friday (May 2nd).

More importantly, last100 will open its giveaway on the 16th of May (a Friday), with the winner announced one week later. You’ll have to wait till then to find out how you can enter, but rest assured it should be fun and relatively painless 🙂

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