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A Failed TV Show Attempts New Life as a Yahoo Webcast In two brief runs on broadcast television, the live-concert show "Pepsi Smash" drew only a modest audience, but Yahoo is betting that putting the program online will be a boon to its digital music offerings. Yahoo today plans to introduce a section of its Web site housing a redesigned version of "Smash," which as a program on the WB network attracted an average of just 1.3 million viewers in eight episodes last summer. Yahoo and Pepsi are reviving the show as a collection of video segments on the Web, with plans to serve up digital streams of live performances from Coldplay, Kanye West and Gwen Stefani, along with new clips designed for short-attention-span online viewing. Yahoo will supervise production of the segments and promote the "Smash" series throughout its Web site, hoping that it will help Yahoo maintain an edge in the crowded field of digital music services, which includes rivals like America Online, Microsoft and Viacom's MTV. The move comes as Yahoo is trying to draw customers to its new subscription-based music service. It also reflects Yahoo's transformation into a purveyor of a range of video programming. It recently offered a Webcast of the debut episode of the Showtime series "Fat Actress." Pepsi plans to pay for advertising on television, radio and other offline media to prod viewers toward the online programming, which is emerging as a popular venue for marketers. Analysts said the prospects for Web video to draw big audiences were rising as more people signed up for high-speed Internet access. About 34.3 million homes in the United States, reflecting 29.9 percent of households, had broadband connections last year, according to eMarketer, an Internet research company. By 2008, more than 69 million homes, or 56.3 percent of households, will be similarly equipped, according to the company's projections. There is also research suggesting that the amount of time young consumers, in particular, spend online has eclipsed the amount of time they spend watching television, making online programming even more enticing for advertisers. But that still leaves the question of whether a television program that struggled to find an audience will perform any better online. "If all they're doing is taking the TV show and maybe cutting it up in different ways, but using the same logo and the same theme songs, that doesn't make sense to me," said Todd Chanko, an analyst at Jupiter Research. The WB version of "Smash" was conceived as a showcase for live performances by as many as five big-label artists over the course of an hour in front of a studio audience. It also included segments with artists backstage. WB officials said the program averaged 1.8 million viewers in its first run, and declined to 1.3 million in its run last summer. For the Internet, "Smash" is, in essence, being revived as a cluster of short segments provided on demand, many clocking under four minutes. "You're sitting at your computer, you can click away, you can do other things, you think short and to the point," said Dave Goldberg, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Music. "People getting it right away is really important." The "Smash" page lets users choose from segments like "100 Concerts/100 Days," a daily series that depicts two music fans chosen by Pepsi to travel around the country to see up to 100 performances. They will commemorate their travels in online video and diary writings.
http://www.nytimes.com
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