MSNBC – MSNBC Staff and Wire Reports
09/25/2000
NEW YORK, Sept. 25 — Almost every week a high- profile dot-com entertainment venture seems to shut down or lay off much of its staff. But it’s not all doom and gloom in the world of Webcasting. Sightsound.com will become the online home for past episodes of “South Park,” Tim Burton’s “Stainboy” is set to debut on Shockwave.com, Atom Films is in a content deal with Volkswagen, and the most famous of failures- Pop.com -may live again.
ONLINE CONTENT distribution site Sightsound.com has signed a deal with Comedy Central to sell all of the back episodes of “South Park” as well as the cable channel’s recently canceled “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist” on the Web. The Pennsylvania- based site, which recently gained notoriety for commissioning the $3 million mini-movie “Quantum Project” for a direct-to-Web release, will offer six early episodes of each show starting Monday.
The company expects to offer six more “South Park” episodes within the next four months. All the shows will be available simultaneously on Sightsound.com and ComedyCentral.com.
Sightsound chief executive Scott Sander says the downloads offer a cheaper and faster alternative to buying VHS or DVD copies of the episodes. And for “Dr. Katz,” video copies are not available.
Downloads will cost $2.50 for a two-day rental license and $4.95 for a full purchase. The files will take about five minutes to download with a high-speed Internet connection vs. more than an hour with dial-up access.