HBO to Make Comedy Series Available Online for Legal Sharing

NEW YORK, May 16: HBO, in conjunction with the interactive
advertising agency Deep Focus, has teamed up with MySpace and other online
video-sharing sites to make the pilot episode of its new prime-time comedy
series Flight of the Conchords available
for streaming and legal sharing prior to the series’ linear premiere on June
17.

Starting from yesterday through June 17, the entire
30-minute episode will be available online via portals such as MySpace, iTunes,
Yahoo TV, MeeVee, iFilm, Superdeluxe, Blip TV, Movielink, and the affiliate
broadband sites Comcast.net and Roadrunner.com. Additionally, in an HBO first,
users can legally share the full episode, which will be portable via codes that
allow them to embed the episode on blogs, websites, and social networking
profiles. Through May 21, MySpace, which exclusively launched the online
marketing campaign, will feature the episode on a MySpace page, and promote it
throughout the MySpace network, which includes the MySpace homepage, MySpace
Comedy and MySpace Video sections.

Flight of the Conchords, which consists of 12 episodes, revolves around the adventures of the
transplanted New Zealand music-comedy duo of Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie,
who live on New York City’s Lower East Side.

“It was our desire to make Flight of the Conchords available to the masses via multiple platforms and
to let the content move virally,” said Courteney Monroe, the SVP of consumer
marketing at HBO. “Working with
our interactive agency Deep Focus, we’ve been able to identify and execute
engaging online experiences that resonate with consumers.”