The network hasn’t had a hit sitcom in years, but as part of its “if you love something, let it go to the Internet” programming strategy NBC/Universal is launching a new subscription streaming service to showcase comedy. The streaming service, which is supposed to launch later this year and will likely cost around $3.00 a month, will stream full episodes of Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, and other things you can already watch on Hulu.
To sweeten the pot, the network is planning on developing original comedy programming for the streaming channel—something it’s hasn’t managed to do for NBC itself. Fortunately, if there’s one comedy-related thing NBC does well, it’s developing sitcoms (The Mindy Project) and talent (Brooklyn Nine-Nine creator Michael Schur and star Andy Samberg) to succeed someplace other than NBC. So stay tuned later this year, when you could be seeing the next Outsourced or Monkey Hospital without having to actually watch NBC.
