Coming Soon to a Monitor Near You

The fall season has begun and viewers around the country are tuning in to new shows, but this year not all of the programs are on television. Some of them are on the Internet.

Kevin Tye, a technical recruiter for Hall Kinion in Seattle, watches videos on his computer at work for about an hour each day--though his viewing is spread out in small doses. One of his favorite programs on AtomFilms (https://www.atomfilms.com) is “Fast Food,” a black-and-white Martin Scorsese-style spoof of life in a burger joint.

“It’s like a quick, 45-second fix,” Tye said. “I watch while I’m waiting for phone calls to be returned.”

Tye is part of a growing audience that is tuning to the Web for short bursts of entertainment. Though the live-action and animated shows resemble TV fare, their offbeat sensibilities and interactive elements make them uniquely Internet. And with the increasing availability of high-speed Web access, the shows are becoming easier to watch.

“The ability to insert little entertainment experiences into our day very efficiently is a very compelling thing,” said John Geirland, a social psychologist and new media consultant based in Studio City.

Indeed, the desire to be entertained has emerged as a primary reason people buy personal computers. According to a survey by Cyber Dialogue, a New York firm that tracks Internet trends, 74% of adults online are seeking entertainment-related content on the Web, making it the most popular category in cyberspace.

The sites are still young--all have been up for less than a year--and the audience is still growing. There is no official tally of Web users who sample the films, but site operators estimate the number to be in the low millions.

Of course, the sites are anxious to see the audience grow because they depend on a large viewership to make themselves attractive to advertisers. Some of the sites supplement their advertising revenue with electronic commerce and other initiatives, but none of them is profitable yet.

Experts have long predicted a convergence of the Internet and television that will turn desktop PCs into high-performance TV sets. Previous attempts to bring episodic entertainment online--most notably Web soap operas such as “The Spot”--have met with some success but failed to sustain audience interest.

Now a new generation of would-be cybermoguls are confident they will fare better with Web viewers, thanks to a new technology in their arsenal: video.

“If we were just broadcasting words, forget it; they’d be jumping around,” said Spencer Huang, co-founder and business development manager of StudioNext.com (https://www.studionext.com) in Florham Park, N.J. “But with video, we do have their attention.”

Analysts say the video clips are more compelling than the still photos and online diaries offered by “The Spot” and other cybersoaps. But they are still a far cry from television quality.

The video windows tend to fill less than a quarter of the computer screen, and the picture is often slightly jerky. Even with high-speed Internet connections via digital subscriber line or cable modem, they can take several minutes to load. Accessing the films with a standard dial-up modem is often so time-consuming that it’s not worth the effort.

Luckily, video is only part of the shows’ appeal. Viewers say they like them because they are more offbeat than standard TV fare. One of the most popular shows on StudioNext.com is “Troops,” a fictional version of the televised series “Cops” starring storm troopers from “Star Wars.” A favorite on AtomFilms is “Micro-Gerbil 2001,” an animated short that lets viewers zap a rodent in a microwave. The sites have steered clear of pornography, which is available in abundance elsewhere on the Internet.

Gary Sun, a student at UC Davis, favors Santa Monica-based Digital Entertainment Network, or DEN, (https://www.den.net) because it offers shows about the hop-hop scene and religion--two things that are important to him.

“In TV, they have to be a little more PC [politically correct] to captivate the audience,” Sun said. “In DEN, they don’t have to target a massive audience.”

The shows’ other big attraction is that interactivity is built into the viewing process. Users can mix and match various shows to create their own lineups.

“It gives the consumer the ability to be the programmer instead of NBC,” said Jim Moloshok, president of Warner Bros. Online in Burbank, which will launch its Entertaindom online network later this month.

That means viewers can watch exactly what they want, when they want to, and that appeals to Adam Law, a USC student who is fond of the shows offered by Digital Entertainment Network.

“I can watch it on demand,” Law said. “I don’t have to schedule it or tape it on my VCR.”

Despite such enthusiasm from viewers, most are still not willing to watch online shows for hours on end, as they would with a TV network’s prime-time lineup. The reason has more to do with human nature than with the limitations of today’s technology.

“It’s easier to be interactive for five minutes than it is for three hours,” Geirland said. “The major attraction is the fact that between deleting my old e-mail and making this phone call, I can watch a little video.”

Even the executives who produce the shows harbor few illusions about displacing television.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to sit at their computer and watch a feature-length film like you would on your sofa,” Moloshok said.

The short Web films aren’t really like traditional TV shows or movies anyway. Much of the content that ends up online was originally intended for more traditional venues such as cable networks and film festivals but didn’t quite fit in there.

Now, producers sell it or send it out for free to Web venues. AtomFilms, for instance, receives between 50 and 100 film submissions each week at its main office in Seattle, said Mika Salmi, the company’s founder and chief executive.

Other sites, including DEN, Entertaindom, and WireBreak Entertainment of Venice, are creating new episodes from scratch. An episode generally costs between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars to produce.

“We need to create programs that couldn’t exist anywhere else,” said David Wertheimer, WireBreak’s chairman and chief executive. “It’s a question we ask every step along the way: ‘Could this show just as easily be done on TV?’ If the answer is yes, we either rework it or we don’t do the show.”

The sites compete vigorously to attract viewers and the advertisers that want to reach them. DEN, for instance, has signed up such blue-chip advertisers as Ford and Pepsi, while WireBreak launched with Compaq Computer, Gillette and Showtime as charter sponsors.

Some sites are augmenting advertising income with e-commerce revenues. At AtomFilms, viewers can buy short films--either individually or in compilations--right on the site. StudioNext.com recently launched a service to digitize home movies and put them on the Internet for free, but the company charges for perks like extra storage space, bigger viewing windows and password protection.

Last month, DEN announced plans to raise $75 million in an initial public offering. But analysts said investors should not expect to make a quick profit. Even television programmers didn’t find a successful formula right away.

“The sitcom took a long time to develop,” said Mark Hardie, senior analyst on entertainment and technology strategies for Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

Times staff writer Karen Kaplan can be reached at Karen.Kaplan@latimes.com.