It seems like everyone is getting into the TV game, but not on the talking box (as Forrest Gump called it) — on the Web. And in some cases, TV networks are trying to take the Web and turn it into television. Good luck to them. Here’s a roundup of some of the news:
— News Corp. unit Twentieth TV is working with Yahoo on a “Web on TV” show, which will no doubt feature the latest hilarious clips of skateboarders hurting themselves or kittens on an icy pond.
— Lifetime Networks is launching a TV-style platform as part of its relaunched website, and will create new shows just for the Web as well as streaming Lifetime content.
— Newsweek says it is going to create a political talk show that will run weekly on its website, and the magazine has hired the former producer of Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC to put it together.
In other media-related announcements, MSNBC’s redesign is live (just in time for Rex “Fimoculous” Sorgatz to leave and an old friend of mine to arrive) and it has a very cool Ajax-y feature that lets you move chunks of the page up or down depending on your interests.
And in the old-time newspaper world, a number of chains have done a deal with real-estate site Zillow to put their ads on the Zillow site and use Zillow features on their newspaper websites. For more, see this piece of commentary on CNET about newspapers and the classified conundrum, and see Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing for a post on the Zillow deal.