WB showing old, new shows online

Before “the” CW, there was “the” WB, America’s first pretentiously named TV network aimed exclusively and unapologetically at viewers under the age of 35.

And now it’s back. On Wednesday, TheWB.com will launch online with a menu of old and new shows.

Among the series it owns the rights to stream over the Web: “Angel,” “Babylon 5,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Everwood,” “Firefly,” “Friends,” “Gilmore Girls,” “The O.C.,” “One Tree Hill,” “Roswell,” “Smallville” and “Veronica Mars.”

To augment those youth-culture classics, TheWB.com will throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see which ones stick.

They include “Sorority Forever,” a sexy mystery described as “Prom Queen” meets “The O.C.” in college (filmed in Spokane, featuring local native Mikaela Hoover); “A Boy Wearing Makeup,” starring newcomer Mathieu Francis (they’re all newcomers) as “a boy who wears makeup and looks fabulous”; and “Whatever Hollywood,” which looks like the girl version of the old Web favorite “Nobody’s Watching.”

There will be a musical from the creator of “Chuck” and “Gossip Girl”; a new show from the creator of “Laguna Beach”; a high school musical-type show; and a show that Brent Poer, the general manager of TheWB.com, calls “the 90210 of Australia.”

Poer says the site will have widgets and apps galore for kids to take WB shows and place them on their Facebook and MySpace pages.

Bloggers will not only be free to embed full episodes or clips from favorite shows onto their blogs, they’ll be able to slice and dice scenes and dialogue and other elements and make their own mash-ups. TheWB.com will even give them editing tools to work with.

You also can set up “online viewing parties,” where invitees watch the same video, streamed in sync to everyone’s computers, with a chat window on the side.

For people who like watching TV shows on good old TV, WB shows will be available on networked TiVos and Comcast video-on-demand systems.