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More television shows are sidestepping the idiot box in favour of launching on the internet including a new dating series to air on the Yahoo!7 website in December.
That's Why You're Single will put a group of contestants before a panel of dating experts, who will coach the unlucky-in-love on everything from their dress sense to when to sleep with a potential partner.
Presenter and producer Brooke Hemphill developed the idea for the show from her dating column on the same website. She said it would be great if the series was picked up by a television network but it could be successful on the internet alone.
"Online TV is coming into its own," she said. "[People] talk about digital convergence, when in the future, people can watch content on their mobiles and laptops.
"Dating shows can either do really well like Perfect Match , which was on for years, or tank like Taken Out [the recent Channel Ten series axed after a few weeks].
"If you can get the show up online and really get it set up and get a following, then it would be less of a risk [for television networks]."
The series will be broken up into daily, five-minute instalments, known in the industry as "snacking".
"You will get little, five-minute grabs, which people can watch on their computers at work when they are meant to be doing something else," Ms Hemphill said.
"With the lives that we live nowadays, it is really hard to have the time to sit down and watch a particular show. We have got people illegally downloading [shows] off the internet. "If you are not giving it to people, they will find a way of getting it."
The dating panel will feature fashion stylist and television identity Donny Galella, online dating guru Julie Hamilton and stand-up comic Clint Paddison, who previously ran a dating company.
Meanwhile, ABC2 will air the controversial new show, Review With Myles Barlow , which has already gained a strong following online. Barlow satirises review-style shows by giving a score of up to five stars to real-life experiences such as paying for sex, living on the street and taking heroin.
The first episode was uploaded on BitTorrent, a US website where users download entertainment content, even before the Australian series aired online.
A grass-roots, viral-style marketing campaign was launched for the show last week, with posters plastered around the inner city, reading "Sex with a Prostitute: fun, yet regrettable romp … 2 stars" and "Heroin: absolutely amazing yet annoyingly addictive … 1½ stars".
Neon Pictures' Peter Taylor, whose production company is developing six shows for online broadcast, including That's Why You're Single , said the internet represented the future for television.
"If you look at the marketing rags, the trade magazines, there is a definite trend for traditional television audiences migrating to online," Mr Taylor said. "If you believe the reports, in three years it is going to be really noticeable and in 10 years online could just take over."
Mr Taylor said that US research had shown Americans were consuming more hours of media than there were hours in the week, with viewers multitasking by having their televisions, computers and mobile phones turned on concurrently.
cmarcus@fairfaxmedia.com.au
