Last week, Warner Bros. brought bet on the defunct WB distribution channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name transmitted from Hollywood. You tooshie watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video serial, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who deliver a Great Dane, deuce chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same lead. You know they're all the same species simply -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?
But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then in that respect was, for a decennium, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' compulsion with social status could somehow await like social justice.
TheWB.com blends those two incorporated identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- practically in the spirt of an old school TV meshing, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps farther than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the one-time TV framework with the new one that's emerging on the Web.
