Warner Designs a Web Service for TV

Seeking to provide local television broadcasters with an easy way onto the Internet, Warner Bros. Online announced Monday that it has designed an online service for local television stations that will allow them to combine their own local stories and local advertising with national news, entertainment information, and software technology from Warner Bros. Online.

The service, dubbed CityWeb, will supply local TV stations with content for their Web sites--including national news, entertainment, weather, sports and games--and with software to build or improve a site on the Internet’s World Wide Web.

Local stations can then add top local stories of the day and will have the ability to include news they don’t have time to cover now, according to Jim Moloshok, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Online.

For Warner Bros., CityWeb offers a way to make money online. And it could enable TV stations to hang on to an audience that’s vulnerable to inroads from new media.

“About 58% of all online users say that their online use comes directly out of television viewing,” Moloshok noted.

Warner Bros. plans to make the service available to the No. 1 news station in major TV markets across the country, Moloshok said.

The company hopes to have about 70% of the nation’s homes covered by a CityWeb affiliate, for a total of about 60 stations.

CityWeb, which counts CNN Interactive, People Online, Lycos Inc. and Netscape Communications as technology and content partners, will require that each TV station provide Warner Bros. with five 30-second advertising spots a week during evening newscasts. Warner will then sell these spots to national advertisers.

Local affiliates will try to generate revenue from the service by selling local retail and classified advertising.

“The classified advertising market could be very significant to TV stations. It generated about $13.7 billion for newspapers in 1995,” Moloshok said.