MTV’s Online Strategy Calls For 24 Sites By Q1 2008

It has been very apparent lately that television networks are diligently working on plans to embrace the internet and everything that it offers.

Viacom's MTV Networks has kept itself ahead of the pack, being one of the first networks to offer full episodes of its television programming online for free, through MTV Overdrive.

Now, the company has much broader plans as it prepares to launch two dozen new websites by the first quarter of 2008, with many shows getting their own exclusive sites.

In today's news from The Hollywood Reporter, Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" is one of the headline shows which will receive a new website, TheDailyShow.com, to be launched by the end of 2007. The upcoming site is set to feature each night's full episode an hour or two after it airs and an impressive archive of the entire video history of The Daily Show.

Other television shows scheduled to receive new sites include "South Park," "The Sarah Silverman Program," "Engaged and Underage" and Nickelodeon's "iCarly."

The idea behind the plan is that, with individual sites for its programming, MTV can offer an expanded variety of content and subject matter that is relevant to each site's focus.

"Consumers, on the whole, use search to find what they want on the Web," stated the president of global digital media at MTV Networks, Mika Salmi. "By having these verticals, we work well with that type of behavior. We see a lot of time spent and people getting deeper into the experience."

"We're accelerating it across the company. It's worked very well and advertisers like it because they can expand their reach in a very targeted manner," said Salmi.

When it's all said and done, MTV Networks will own a total of more than 300 web sites, which should be quite a task to manage and keep track of.

In addition to the sites for shows, expect to see a teenage girl gaming site, a video game cheat/hint site, and niche sites including VH1 Eye Candy, which is already undergoing beta testing but has yet to be publicly launched.