Indiantelevision.com's Digital Edge: NBC to make webisodes for sitcom 'The Office'

Indiantelevision.com's Digital Edge

NBC to make webisodes for sitcom 'The Office'

Indiantelevision.com Team

(20 March 2006 2:00 pm)

MUMBAI: In a move to further leverage the internet US broadcaster NBC has announced that its sitcom The Office goes digital with 10 stand-alone webisodes premiering on NBC.com this summer.

The serialised arc will star the accounting staff of the Dunder Mifflin paper company in a whodunit.

When the Dunder Mifflin accountants -- Angela (Angela Kinsey), Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) and Oscar (Oscar Nunez) -- discover that $3000 is missing from the Scranton office, no one is above suspicion, as the crack team of numbers crunchers tries to solve the mystery before turning on each other. Rainn Wilson, Melora Hardin, Phyllis Smith, Kate Flannigan, Leslie David Baker and David Denman also star.

Earlier NBC had announced a deal with MSN to stream to stream the entire first two episodes of the upcoming drama series Heist on the Internet. NBC will also provide MSN Video with a 16-minute special sneak-peek presentation of the debut episode from 14 March until the 22 March broadcast premiere

NBC says that since moving to Thursday nights in January The Office has averaged a 4.5 rating, 11 per cent share in adults 18-49 and 8.7 million viewers overall. That represents a 22 per cent increase over the show's 18-49 average for Tuesday telecasts earlier this season (3.7/9 in 18-49, 7.7 million viewers overall) and an 80 percent increase over The Office's average for the 2004-05 season (2.5/6 in 18-49, 5.4 million viewers overall), when it also aired on Tuesday nights.

The Office takes a funny look at the interactions of the desk jockeys at Dunder Mifflin paper-supply company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Golden Globe winner Steve Carell The 40-Year-Old Virgin, whom E! Online said, "might be the funniest man alive" stars as unctuous regional manager Michael Scott who hosts the documentary crew on a tour of the workplace. Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson and B.J. Novak star as the employees who tolerate Michael's inappropriate behaviour only because he signs their pay checks.