So here’s one of its solutions: SeeSo, a $4-a-month, ad-free streaming video service dedicated to comedy. This system is meant to be a “compliment, not a replacement” for the larger streaming video-on-demand services, so says Evan Shapiro, executive VP of NBCU Digital Enterprises with Variety this morning.
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Shapiro said the service will complement both NBC’s traditional linear TV offerings as well as its efforts with Hulu (which NBC owns along with Fox and Disney).
Why not launch it as a cable channel? “I think we have enough television channels”. He said Seeso’s goal is “not to just protect our ecosystem, but to grow it”.
Stars like Amy Poehler and Wyatt Cenac will be appearing in new shows, as will a long list of up-and-coming comics. Also: “The Office”, the original BBC version of “The Office”, “Parks and Recreation”, “30 Rock”, “The Mighty Boosh”, “The IT Crowd”, “Nathan Barley”, “The Young Ones”, and “hundreds of hours of television and films, specifically chosen to fit the Seeso filter of right brain comedy”.
While there will be so-called “library” shows – like old episodes of “The Office” that are already available on other streaming sites – Seeso’s focus is the same as Hulu’s and Netflix’s: exclusivity.
NBCUniversal wants the millennials (and everyone else) who have stopped watching its shows on TV to watch them somewhere, anywhere. Another series will have highlights from Carolines on Broadway.
As the Wall Street Journal had previously reported, at one point NBCUniversal was considering pulling clips of “The Tonight Show” and other shows off of YouTube and keeping nearly all of the show behind the new service’s paywall.
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There will also be a series called “Hidden America”, with the comedian Jonah Ray, described as a spoof of CNN’s “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”. The network that stripped “humor” out of its vocabulary over the last 24 months is launching a comedy-specific streaming service. The SeeSo team is hoping for a trickledown effect wherein tentpole NBC comedy brands like SNL lead viewers to classic licensed properties like “The Kids In The Hall” and fresh original sketch comedy exclusive to see so like the upcoming “The UCB Show” from the founders of expansive improv school The Upright Citizens Brigade. At an event in New York, Mr. Shapiro emphasized…
