Fans addicted to shows such as "Melrose Place," "Party of Five" and television's daytime soap opera fare now have another medium to give them their fix: the Internet.
A new home page on the World Wide Web called "The East Village," located at: http://www.theeastvillage.com, is one of a growing handful of sites that are aiming to turn the World Wide Web into the next big thing in entertainment.
The site, which goes "live" on March 15, will include new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.
A "raw preview" of the first episode, now currently available, consists of a chain of Web pages that incorporate a "diary entry" from one of the main characters, as well as accompanying photographs in a style intended to appeal to a mass audience, like television.
"The East Village," published by startup company Marinex Multimedia, which makes no bones about the site being a "soap opera," focuses on a group of friends living in the East Village of Manhattan.
The first episode introduces the protagonist Eve to Web-surfers. Through her narration they become acquainted with some of the other characters who will presumably be developed further in future episodes.
The publishers use the capabilities of the Web thoughtfully as the episode progresses: when the name of a character is mentioned, the page provides a link to a short biography of the character, presumably so that the reader can keep track of their identities.
But the use of an ensemble cast of friends seems like a familiar formula. The popular NBC television show "Friends" has by now spawned countless imitations, and the Web's Cool Site of the Year for 1995
"The Spot," located at: http://www.thespot.com, is also an Internet-based soap opera.
"The Spot" centers on the lives of a group of friends living in a Malibu, California beach house -- complete with extensive photographs of the cast posing in swimwear.
The sources from which "The East Village" is descended seems to be fairly clear.
If "The Spot" caters to a more laid-back, California audience, though, "The East Village" finds its niche in romanticizing the dark, urbane life found in New York City.
This emphasis carries through to the page's layout -- which is well-designed, though spare, always featuring a black background.
So if one believes readers of "The Spot" are likely to find excesses and adventures of t-shirt-clad Californians appealing,
"The East Village" relies on the viewers' warming up to a group of young New Yorkers whose realm is the harshness under the neon lights of the big city, a locale that might make a Hanover native feel claustrophobic.
The design of the site is calculated in its appeal and its content is direct in its purposes.
The photography seems reminiscent of the blurry montages that opened "Saturday Night Live" in its early-1990s heyday -- slightly out of focus, night-time shots intended to both dizzy and excite the target audience.
The story, meanwhile, will also appeal to the soap opera aficionado. The publishers claimed, "the characters range from struggling actresses on the brink of fame to hopeless romantics sacrificing everything for love to neurotic rock stars."
The opening page sets the scene in the modern-day East Village. It reads, "Manhattan's last bastion of Bohemia is no longer an unhabitable marshland, nor is it merely a crime-ridden enclave of addicts and poseurs."
The page continues, "It's the home of artists, anarchists, businessmen and baby-sitters alike, and now enough of a world-class sideshow to attract the hundreds of visitors who glide up and down Avenue A on double-decker buses every day of the week."
"The East Village" site uses a first-person narrative as an effective crutch to draw the reader closer to the story and situation.
As the narrator talks about her life, the readers feel almost as if she is confiding to them about her deepest secrets.
Yet one of the limitations of the soap opera genre is that because the story runs continuously, little can be resolved from week to week.
Thus, the challenge for the publishers of this internet-based soap opera will be to enable the audience to relate to and care about the characters and their situations enough to "tune in" again next week.
As more sites begin to spring up on the Web, sites like "The East Village" will test whether the Internet is capable of providing the kind of entertainment which television provides today.
There are advantages to publishing on the Web -- readers can surf on their own time and read the parts of the site or follow the links which appeal to them.
The downside to entertainment on the Web is that television-quality video not yet possible, so users will have to wait for the pages and photographs to download.
But there is some allure to be found in "The East Village" formula.
The site is a novel use of the Web and may be worth a visit for the wayward Internet surfer who has been known to watch "Melrose Place" from time to time.
For the rest of the world, though, cracking open a good novel may be time better spent, rather than at a screen at a media-concocted version of New York life.
