Get The Office At Your Office

The Office is an acutely funny workplace sitcom in which the cubicle prisoners fight wrenching boredom and dream of escape. By happy coincidence, that describes many actual offices, minus the acutely funny part. So NBC is giving real workers an escape this summer--by offering new episodes of the show to watch online, in the comfort of their own cubicles.

Starting July 13, The Office will begin streaming 10 2-min. "webisodes" through nbc.com Think of them as The Office, the downsized version. The cast is smaller: the plot follows the supporting characters of the Dunder-Mifflin paper company's accounting department as they track down $3,000 missing from the books. Most important, from the network's standpoint, the budget is smaller. "I don't even know if we had a budget," says executive producer Greg Daniels. "It's more like an extra fee." Chalk up another irony for The Office: you have a big year, and the boss asks you to work overtime for peanuts. But the webisode project is less a comedown than the highest-profile example of the race at the networks to bring the small screen to the even smaller screen, fast.

How fast? Just a year ago, the big networks were debating whether it was worthwhile to sell shows on iTunes. Millions of downloads later, CBS has launched an entire broadband network, Innertube, at cbs.com on which can be seen sketch comedy, reality makeovers and chat shows for superfans of Survivor and Big Brother. In June NBC Universal debuted online channels for gay programming outzonetv.com and reruns of critics' favorite series (brilliant but cancelled.com) ESPN, Comedy Central, MTV, Discovery, HGTV and more have broadband channels. (On Animal Planet's, you can watch Web-exclusive series Pet Trends for the latest in canine fashion and high-end doggie snacks.) Canceled shows are getting second lives online (CBS's Love Monkey), while new shows pull double duty (NBC's 30 Rock, about a sketch-comedy show, will run webisodes with skits from the show-within-a-show). NBC and CBS are even planning online-only reality shows from, respectively, record producer David Foster and Survivor honcho Mark Burnett.

Burnett's show is called Gold Rush, and that's pretty much what's going on here. NBC Universal Television Group CEO Jeff Zucker says digital ad opportunities were "all advertisers wanted to talk about" before this spring's "upfronts," where the networks announce their fall schedules to Madison Avenue. Who can blame them? According to technology-analysis firm Forrester Research, 28% of U.S. households had broadband access in 2005--and that's not counting access at work, which is prime time for online TV. (When CBS streamed NCAA basketball this spring, it included a "boss button" that fans could use to instantly hide the game under a bogus spreadsheet.) More viewers are skipping TV ads using TiVo or other recorders, whereas webisodes are usually preceded by a brief, unskippable ad. Meanwhile, the ratings of even hit shows have shrunk over the years, and some of those former viewers are having affairs with their desktops.