OXYGEN SET TO GET AIRING ONLINE
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Lots of ink has been spilled, and there has been much whispering and speculation, but, up until this week, the Oxygen Media product has been about as visible as the element for which it's named. You might call it vaporware, pure 02 in chemical terms.
But, on Thursday, the convergence and women-oriented company quietly launched Oxygen.com - the front door to its network of websites - and a new personal finance destination called ka-Ching. The unveiling shed some light on the ambitions of this somewhat mysterious new Silicon Alley venture, whose websites will eventually operate in tandem with a cable TV network that's set to launch in February 2000.
The whole shebang, of course, will be headed up by the well-connected television executive Geraldine Laybourne, who is probably best-known for bringing Nickelodeon and Nick at Night to prominence in the 1980s. Later, working for Disney as Capital Cities/ABC's head of cable networks, she pushed the idea of spinning off a second cable channel from Lifetime TV (in which Disney owns a 50-percent stake) aimed at younger women.
That didn't happen, and, in May of 1998, Laybourne left Cap Cities/ABC to form Oxygen, "a converged online and cable-TV network," in which ABC, along with AOL, was one of the early investors. Oxygen's leadership and financing team also includes the people behind Carsey-Werner Co., the New York-based producers of TV shows like "Roseanne," and HARPO Entertainment Group, run by talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey.
"We're a really gutsy women's network," said Giselle Benatar, executive producer of Oxygen.com. "We want to do great things for women."
The online portion of the network, so far, has been built on the foundation of three sites Oxygen bought from AOL back in September 1998 - Thrive, a health and fitness site; Electra, a general-interest women's site; and Moms Online, a site about parenting. Ka-Ching adds the personal finance piece, and Oxygen.com ties it all together with links, an Ask Jeeves-powered natural language search engine, and community features.
"I think Oxygen.com's relationship to the sub-brands and the definition of the network will evolve," said Benatar. "We're in the stage of really bringing these brands together."
At least one step in the evolution has already been planned - Oprah Online, the website linked to backer Oprah Winfrey's TV talk show, will join the network later this summer.
The online network will eventually cover more subject areas, say Oxygen execs, although they won't divulge their plans. A look at the URLs Oxygen owns, though, may provide some clues. There's Cultcha.com, which could be developed into an arts and entertainment oriented site. Ladydetective.com sounds like a murder mystery TV show. 02Games pretty much speaks for itself, as do OxygenComedy.com and 02Jobs.com. Oxygen also owns some titles tied to planned TV programs that have been reported on in the last year or so of press coverage - BoudoirCinema.com, and Working-Lunch.com.
It remains to be seen just what the relationship between the online network and the cable TV network will be. You get the sense from talking to Oxygen execs that they're really not sure themselves .
"Everything we do on the Internet we'll do on TV and vice versa," said an Oxygen spokesperson.
Then there's the whole question of getting distributed on cable networks when most channels have been allocated - another big hurdle for Oxygen. So far, TCI cable has agreed to carry the TV network to seven million households. Oxygen says it expects to have a total of 10 million subscribers by the time in launches in the spring of next year.
By contrast, Lifetime TV reaches 73 million households via 11,000 cable and satellite systems.
Certainly Laybourne's track record, along with the promise of programming from the likes of Oprah and the Carsey-Werner folks, will give the new venture leverage. But getting distribution certainly won't be an easy task, and it's clearly critical to the network's success.
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