'The ABC.com Daily Show' Goes for "Quirky Relatability"

ABC.com wants staffers to throw themselves into their work—literally. The network recently debuted the ABC.com Daily Show, a short-form weekday Webcast written and hosted by a rotating roster of young staffers. The show—shot Monday through Friday in the cubicles of the site’s L.A. offices—is designed to highlight ABC’s programming and ancillary online offshoots, while showcasing young employees who perhaps have their sights set on that other Daily Show.

In the works for several weeks, the Webcasts are an effort to stir more visitor traffic, since it’s impossible to give equal Web time to features, said Alexis Rapo, Vice President, Digital Media, ABC Television Network.

The show is neither ad supported nor promoted beyond its own site for now, but the network is working on ways to integrate sponsors as well as readying versions that would work on mobile phones or personal Web pages, according to Rapo. Episodes posted so far have featured a comely trio of ABC.com producers kicking to clips from new fall shows, press conference interviews, and chit-chat about office politics and, in more than one installment, bathrooms.

The show is going for a “quirky relatability,” says Rapo, that “presents content in a way viewers can connect with.”

If cubicle humor can make Dilbert a star, ABC’s young Web performers might just have a shot, too.

From B&C, 9/17.

By Anne Becker