• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, November 14, 2005

In 1975, "Jaws" fired up box offices, Bruce Springsteen catapulted into the top 10 with "Born to Run," and a 21-year-old John Travolta gained instant teen idol status playing "Vinnie Barbarino."

Since then, Springsteen's masterpiece has remained in circulation, while "Jaws" has been available as a rental for at least 14 years. But Travolta's big break, "Welcome Back Kotter," like many old TV shows, hasn't been nearly as accessible.

Now, the Internet is on the cusp of changing that.

America Online and Warner Bros. today will announce an ambitious initiative to make scores of old WB programs available on demand on the Web. Streams of the programs will be available for free to all online users.

The deal represents the type of major collaboration between AOL and a sibling Time Warner company that executives envisioned when the companies merged in 2000. "We have been building to this moment for a long time," said Kevin Conroy, executive vice president of AOL Media Networks. The initiative, he said, "is very much in sync with everything we've been doing for five years."

AOL will launch the service, dubbed In2TV, in January with at least 40 old shows, ranging from the campy "Wonder Woman" to the cult favorite "Babylon 5," to the family drama "Eight is Enough." AOL plans to roll out around 60 additional programs throughout the year.

In2TV will include six channels--comedy, drama, animation, superheroes/villains, action, and classics--and each will carry different shows. The ones scheduled to debut in January haven't aired for at least several years. Only a handful of the programs are available in some form on DVD; even in these cases, all episodes aren't necessarily for sale. For instance, Warner Bros. put out a "Welcome Back Kotter" DVD, but it contained just six episodes out of 95.

At launch, 10 episodes of each show will be available; AOL will later roll out additional episodes. AOL also has surrounded the shows with extras like trivia quizzes, and information about stars of the shows will surround the streams.

The company intends to offer marketers in-stream video ads, banners, and other sponsorship opportunities--for example, the prize for winning a quiz might be a free music download from a sponsor. The 15- and 30-second streaming video ads will run as pre-roll and once per half-hour episode at the original commercial break; they will be limited to one to two minutes within each 30-minute episode.

So far, Pepsi-Cola Co.'s Mountain Dew is one likely advertiser. The soft-drink company probably will sponsor one more of the quizzes, and offer a Mountain Dew product as a reward for correct answers.

The streams will be configured so viewers can't fast-forward past the ads--a feature of growing importance to marketers. "For sure, this is the way the world is headed," said Sarah Fay, president of Isobar. "You can't TiVo past those commercials."

Conroy said he expects that the shows will cross the generational divide, appealing to both those old enough to have watched them the first time around and their children. Some of the offerings were big hits in their day. "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Alice," for example--both on AOL's roster--tended to draw around one-quarter of TV households, according to data from Nielsen Media Research.

But old programs might have a hard time holding people's attention for long, said Robert J. Thompson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. Production values often are better today--and, despite the old shows' nostalgic appeal, it's not clear that people will spend hours upon hours watching them again.

"A large number of people will hear about this and say: 'Eight is Enough'--I loved that when I was a little kid,'" Thompson said. "You remember them so fondly, but when you actually go back and watch them, you don't really want to watch that many."

There's also the question of how many viewers will watch on a small computer screen. A recent Points North Group study found that 12 percent of Web users say they watch TV online at least three to four times a week. But that's still a fairly small group of people--and, presumably, they don't all want to watch old shows.

"The big question is how you grow this beyond a real niche," said Craig Leddy, a Points North analyst. Also, the online video clips that have done best so far have only lasted a few minutes--which might be a better fit for multitasking Web surfers. "A 30-minute show is a pretty big investment," Leddy said.

Another factor will be the quality of the video streams, Leddy said. "It still has to look good on that PC screen, or else people won't stick with it," he said. "Advertisers want to make sure their ads look good, too."