Joining an increasingly crowded field of non-TV-networks producing original content, Yahoo, the web site you used for everything before Google came along, has ordered its first two full-length original series.
The first is Other Space, a half-hour comedy from Freaks And Geeks writer/producer and Bridesmaids director Paul Feig about “a misfit group of space adventures” who stumble into an alternate universe. The second, from veteran TV producer Mike Tollin—who’s been involved in everything from Smallville to The Franchise to All That—will be producing Sin City Saints, a sitcom about a basketball expansion team in Las Vegas.
Both shows will debut later this year or in early 2015 via the site’s Yahoo Screen portal, which has already run several shorter-length series—including Burning Love, a show that was eventually successful enough to make the move to regular TV. But these two new series will be Yahoo’s first full-half-hour offerings. Yahoo insists that stepping up its original programming game is part of a “multi-pronged content strategy” that’s just overflowing with synergy, horizontal integration, and incentivized paradigms, only more proactive. (Which is all a fancy way of saying you can also watch the shows via Apple TV and Roku.)