MySpace Debuts Today New Post-Collegiate Drama, ‘Roommates’

MySpaceTV, News Corp’s answer to YouTube, announced early this morning that it will today debut a serial program, called “Roommates,” which it will divvy out to the social network’s multi-million-strong viewership over the course of some 45 days (weekdays only) in brief three-minute snippets. Each new episode will be shown on MySpaceTV starting at 4pm EST, Monday through Friday.

The Web-only show follows in the path established by the producers of Prom Queen, a drama which ran over the course of several weeks last spring on the social network. (Prom Queen was the brainchild of Vuguru, a new-media company constructed by the former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner.) “Roommates,” a serial involving four recent college graduates, all female, was produced by Iron Sink Media.

The new drama, will be an interactive one, in that while several episodes have been created for distribution on MySpace’s video platform, it will require the input of viewers to “engage” the show’s characters and to “influence the plot,” as the 45-day experiment progresses. A polling tool will be supplied to Myspacers, as will chat and comments features on the profile pages of all characters. According to information put forth by the general manager of MySpaceTV, Jeff Berman, about the series in advance of its debut, “the information will be scrutinized and the plot changed” as requested by the viewership.

To some degree, at least. While viewer input can indeed be integrated into an ongoing television series, whether it be of the traditional broadcast variety or this new IPTV-based on-demand arrangement (more so, of course, with the latter), any and all suggestions certainly cannot be entered into the equation. User comments can indeed provide added value to the plot and so forth, but there are parameters to which the show’s logical limits must be reasonably set, to “keep the flow,” as it were. If it were to be a free-for-all, well, you can likely imagine what would come of it.

Or not imagine, whichever way you prefer to spin it.

If you’re interested in seeing Roommates for yourself, head on over to its webpage at 4pm EST to catch the first episode. Let us know what you think!