My So-Called "Quarterlife" Crisis at NBC

Perhaps looking to bolster its scripted slate for midseason (especially since its only scripted midseason offering, The IT Crowd was, you know, shelved), NBC has signed a deal with Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick (My So-Called Life) to air six hourlong episodes of Internet drama Quarterlife.

Second window of the series, culled from the 36 eight-minute installments streaming online on MySpace and quarterlife.com, will air sometime in 2008 after Quarterlife finishes its first season run online. NBC will also have the right to stream the episodes at NBC.com and help with DVD and foreign sales.

It's been a long strange road for Quarterlife, which was originally developed as a TV pilot at ABC three years ago. Disney's Touchstone Television ultimately gave creators Herskovitz and Zwick the rights back and they ended up developing it for MySpace, producing the episodes with WGA and SAG talent. Ben Silverman expressed interest in the series in March, prior to becoming the swaggering Svengali at the Peacock.

Given the current situation with the WGA and online content, the producers will "begin conversations with the guilds about how to compensate those staffers now that the show has made the leap to TV" and, should a second season be ordered during the strike, Zwick and Herskovitz will draft deals that will give the WGA the internet and DVD residuals that they have been asking for from the studios.

As for Quarterlife (the internet series), new episodes appear online every Sunday and Thursday nights at midnight here.

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