Lifetime Launches Video-Enhanced Site
Web Presence To Expand With Original Series Content, Strategic Alliances
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 11/12/2007 5:21:00 AM
Lifetime Networks will take a larger leap into cyberspace with the development of new scripted and reality Internet-exclusive series as part of Monday’s launch of its myLifetime.com Web site.
Along with new shows, the site – formerly lifetimeTV.com – will benefit from strategic alliances with such companies as Glam Media, Realarcade, Revolutionhealth.com, about.com, and Hearstdigital to create female-targeted Web content revolving around games, activities, relationships, health, beauty and style and entertainment areas, according to Dan Suratt, executive vice president, digital media and business development, Lifetime Networks.
The site will also continue to stream episodes from such Lifetime shows as Blood Ties or Lisa Williams: Life Among The Dead that were video mainstays of the lifetimeTV.com site, which Surratt said experienced a 260% increase in unique users compared to the same period last year. Lifetime has averaged around 3 million unique users per month thus far in 2008.
The revamped mylifetime.com site will offer seven Webisode series by year-end and at least 16 original Internet shows during 2008. Among the new programming: Mommy Madness, a 12-episode series featuring comedian Angela Hoover as a mother raising two young children in Las Vegas; and Gift Intervention, a 10-episode series developed by The Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead, which follows the recipients of bad gifts who confronts their gift-givers.
Non-scripted fare set to launch later this year will offer content from the beauty and style, home and crafts, health and astrology genres.
“It’s a huge opportunity for us given what the Lifetime brand and programming means to women from a broadcast perspective to extend that relationship on the Web,” Suratt said. “We’re offering original programming on the Web that we think our audience will find entertaining.”
Relative to partnerships, Lifetime’s will team with Glam Media to create a new vertical network develop a new co-branded vertical network some 20 distaff-focused Web sites and blogs within the Glam Media publisher network.
Lifetime will build upon its successful relationship with leading casual game provider, RealArcade, by launching the Lifetime Games Club on myLifetime.com starting in Second Quarter of 2008. Suratt said Lifetime under the partnership will offer more than 50 casual games – at least one new online game per week -- for play on the site or to download to computers.
“It’s an incredible space for us because our users have shown us repeatedly that they are avid gamers,” he said. “It’s a real growth area and it something that really resonates with women – when they get those 20 minutes to escape for a while it gives them a chance to decompress and have some fun.”
Leading online heath site RevolutionHealth.com will power the myLifetime.com health channel with articles, features and other tools, while content from about.com will back a mini-site within myLifetime.com’s Home & Crafts channel.
Hearst Magazines titles, including Country Living, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Quick & Simple and Redbook, will syndicate content to myLifetime.com in the Beauty & Style, Home & Crafts and Relationships channels within the MyLife section, according to the network.
