Comcast's NBC unit launches comedy channel. No Joke

With on-demand streamers Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu capturing large audiences for general-interest entertainment, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal has ripped a page from cable's playbook with the niche comedy channel Seeso.com.

NBCUniversal says its model of a specialized online channel with Seeso is like cable networks that cater to sports or music fans.

If Seeso works, NBCUniversal expects to launch other pay-per-month streamed genre channels.

"The consumer is telling us that this is a no-brainer," Evan Shapiro, NBCUniversal's executive vice president of digital enterprise, said Monday. He considers Seeso as supplementary entertainment to Netflix as a "comedy channel for comedy nerds."

Seeso - launched last Thursday and priced at $3.99 a month - comes as Wall Street fears that the Internet could ruin the profitable economics of the pay-TV and media industries.

Media companies could replace high-revenue TV channels with lower-revenue ad-free streamed products as they chase millennial viewers who have been "cord cutters" or "cord nevers," those who cancel pay-TV services or never subscribe to them.

NBCUniversal says that with Seeso, it will protect its cable shows and NBC comedy franchises such as Saturday Night Live, while offering a new platform and content to those who like streaming.

Shapiro said the idea with Seeso was "not to port over an existing cable channel" to the Internet, but to offer something new. Seeso launched with 2,000 hours of content that initially can be viewed on laptops, smartphones, and tablets. This includes NBC reruns and acquired properties, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus shows. There also are original series from the improv group Upright Citizens Brigade and live comedy stand-up from a private San Francisco club.

Seeso's name came from a meeting at which Shapiro said the channel would offer some of the nation's best comedy, "the good stuff." When challenged on this, Shapiro replied that fans could watch the channel and "see so" for themselves.

In recent years, the TV industry's mantra has been convenience with wireless streaming inside and outside houses, on-demand video libraries, and digital-video recorders that let TV watchers record programs and watch them later.

Seeso aims to satisfy those desires. But Shapiro - a former president of the Sundance TV and IFC channels who was raised in South Jersey and Northeast Philadelphia and is still a rabid Philly sports fan - said the traditional programmed channel had kept its popularity.

During Seeso's beta, about half the viewers watched the channel's pre-programmed feed rather than seeking out specific reruns or films to stream.

NBCUniversal conducted about 11,000 online interviews to prepare the business plan for Seeso, and the channel was developed in NBCUniversal offices in Soho, not at the unit's headquarters at Rockefeller Center.

Shapiro described the streaming market today as similar to TV of the late 1970s, when ABC, NBC, and CBS ruled the market. Then along came special-interest cable channels such as MTV and ESPN and, Shapiro said, "cable took 70 percent of the [TV] viewing."

bfernandez@phillynews.com

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