Get The Office At Your Office

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That's especially true of youth--one reason MTV launched MTVU Uber, an online-only channel for college students. It also goes for upscale viewers like The Office's, who downloaded the show in droves from iTunes. Still, says Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff, the more mainstream online video becomes, the more viewers of all ages and income levels use it. "It doesn't matter whether you're selling Preparation H or sports cars," he says. "Your audience is online looking at videos, so you want to be there."

The question is what to draw them with. "Online is the Wild West," says Zucker. "There are no rules yet." More precisely, online is Deadwood: a mother lode of new riches, with big companies trying to muscle in on the prospectors. (Or buy them out: Carson Daly just signed a development deal with 20-year-old YouTube comic sensation Brooke [Brookers] Brodack.) Online, the competition is not just CBS and Fox: it's college kids on MySpace and raunchy comedy sites like collegehumor com The networks can't take as many risks online--even though the FCC can't touch them there. Daniels considered letting actors swear in the Office webisodes but says he didn't think "people wanted to hear their favorite characters shouting profanities they wouldn't hear on the regular show." Advertisers sure wouldn't; one reason they're urging the networks online is not to have their mutual-fund spots run next to a home movie of a baby farting on YouTube.

Instead, networks are trying to capture the spirit of what makes the Web distinctive. Part of that, says Brian Graden, entertainment president of MTV Networks music group, is a first-person point of view. "If we do a Top 10 music-video list," he says, "it won't work as well as if we offer Snoop Dogg's list of his favorite Top 10." Short works best too--that quarterly planning meeting is in 10 minutes!--and maybe for that reason, comedy, which also relies less on impressive visuals, plays better than drama (though ABC is working on cell-phone mini-episodes of Lost).

Online shows need to be cheap, of course, because they still don't draw as many eyeballs as prime-time TV; they may get costlier, however, as actor and crew unions discover there's money in them. So they can risk seeming like low-rent, store-brand versions of "real" TV. An Office webisode screened at the upfronts was funny, highlighting the show's richly drawn supporting players, but fans of star Steve Carell will be disappointed to find he's not in any of the episodes. (His character, boss Michael Scott, is referenced, though; an accountant catches him having expensed a J. Crew receipt as "lunch.") Only a few network sites re-create the joyful weirdness of the best amateur viral video; Comedy Central's MotherLoad site, for instance, has Golden Age, a hilarious True Hollywood Story parody about the tragic lives of fictitious celebrity cartoon characters. Other sites are filled with extras that are geekily appealing (Sci Fi Network's site reveals how prop masters create futuristic beverages for Battlestar Galactica) or superfluous. (Does anyone really need to delve deeper into My Super Sweet 16 online? It's like scuba diving in a teaspoon.)