This week, news broke that the remaining eight episodes of the ABC sitcom Don’t Trust the B In Apartment 23, which was taken off the air in January, would be posted to ABC.com, Hulu and iTunes.

The announcement is a boon for fans of the show, but they shouldn’t get their hopes up that successful online distribution will mean another season of the show; much of the cast has already moved on to other projects.

However, another show may truly get a second life: Also this week, rumors spread that Microsoft is looking at rebooting NBC’s Heroes, which was canceled in 2010, for Xbox and MSN distribution.

As television continues its evolution from a single box that sits in your living room to a multi-platform experience across many devices, resurrections like these are increasingly common — though sometimes they’re less like Lazarus, and more like zombies.

Netflix is of course a front runner in the rebirth business, thanks to picking up Arrested Development (only one more month, Bluth fans!).

But there’s a deep history to this practice. For instance: In late 2009, producer Ashton Kutcher turned to YouTube to screen the unaired five episodes of model drama The Beautiful Life, which had just been canceled by The CW.

However, while the TBL channel is currently at over five million views, not one of the five episodes on it has surpassed a million views.

They’re all still online, along with a plea posted by Kutcher saying that they’d be able to produce more episodes if the channel’s subscriber count hit a certain, unspecified threshold.

Whatever that threshold was, it was greater than 35,000 subscribers — which is the channel’s current standing, four years later. But TBL does deserve credit for being an early example of a show realizing the potential power of digital distribution — arguably ahead of its time in that respect.

The key is transitioning from digital distribution to actually producing new episodes. The most daring and ultimately successful example of this isn’t necessarily Joss Whedon getting to make a feature film follow-up to Firefly or the return of Veronica Mars as a feature — the real kickoff of digital distribution having real meaning for canceled shows comes from the early 2000s, and DVDs.

The Fox animated series Family Guy first premiered in 1999, and was canceled in 2002. But thanks to blockbuster DVD sales of the first three seasons, it was brought back to the airwaves in 2005, and has remained a key part of Fox’s schedule ever since. Creator Seth MacFarlane has even gone on to create at least two other shows for the network.

(Personal anecdote: I was working as a clerk in a DVD store in 2003, and I keenly remember how we couldn’t keep Family Guy box sets on the shelves; they sold out like crazy.)

Sometimes, things need to end. Sometimes, shows don’t work or don’t connect with a wide audience, and those involved are ready to move on. The Onion satirized this beautifully in the aftermath of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign with this piece headined “Stars Of Canceled Show Terrified Fans Will Raise Money For Movie,” centered around recently-terminated NBC sitcom Animal Practice.

The episodes of Animal Practice left unaired after its cancelation are currently available online, though it’s unlikely to come back — a zombie, for better or worse.

But as the industry figures out how to make original content on the web sustainable and profitable, we’ll see more and more examples of Lazarus.

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That kind of targeting is part of Netflix’s approach to use “a balance of intuition and analytics” for its original content, explained Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos during an interview on the sidelines of the at All Things Digital’s Dive into Media conference in Dana Point, California Tuesday. Netflix is using “really big data,” as Sarandos put it, to evaluate everything from promotion of its original content to the question of which shows it is going to pick up next.

And we are talking not just simply audience size levels, but very fine-grained data, down to the engagement level with each individual piece of content, as well as the mix of content each subscriber is watching. “When you say ten million people watch a show, that really doesn’t tell you anything,” he said.

As a consequence, Netflix isn’t talking about how many people have been watching House of Cards ever since the show went up on the service earlier this month. “We are not doing ratings,” Sarandos said on stage Tuesday afternoon, adding the vague assesment: “We are thrilled with the numbers.” Asked what he would tell if House of Cards star Kevin Spacey called to ask about those numbers, Sarandos replied: “I don’t tell him.”

Creatives, however, don’t seem  upset about such secrecy. Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz and star Will Arnett, who joined Sarandos on stage, pointed to the problems they had with the industry’s love for ratings when their show was on air. Back then, Nielsen wasn’t including catch-up views from DVRs and online platforms in their ratings, and many of the show’s viewers simply didn’t register. “Appliance stores knew we were huge, but Nielsen didn’t give a sh*t about it,” Hurwitz joked. “The Nielsen system I think is incredibly flawed,” agreed Arnett.

That’s why a ratings-free approach is so appealing to creators, and potentially so disruptive to the industry as a whole. “The model is going to change,” predicted Hurwitz. Creatives would have to work with a different economic model, because a deal like the one with Netflix doesn’t include residuals. “The trade-off is that we are encouraged to make a more interesting show as opposed to flattening it out,” he said. Arnett agreed: “It’s very inviting to people in the creative community to have a place like Netflix,” he said.

Sarandos echoed that sentiment when talking to me, admitting that his phone has been pretty much ringing non-stop ever since the company announced that it got David Fincher to do House of Cards. “We became a first stop as opposed to a last stop,” after that announcement, he said.

This story was corrected on Sunday 2/17 with the correct first name of the creator of Arrested Development. His name is Mitchell Hurwitz, not Michael.

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In addition, Netflix announced it will make new DreamWorks movies available for streaming, “beginning with the studio’s 2013 film line-up.”

“Netflix boasts one of the largest and fastest-growing audiences in kids television. They pioneered a new model for TV dramas with House of Cards, and now together, we’re doing the same thing with kids’ programming,” DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said in a statement.

Turbo is an animated film about a snail who competes in the Indy 500. Netflix’ series will focus on Turbo’s subsequent adventures. The show’s first season includes 26 episodes, each 22 minutes long. A Netflix spokeswoman wouldn’t say whether the entire season will be released at once, as it was with House of Cards.

Amazon is also pushing into original children’s programming for Prime Instant Video, and recently announced its first five pilots.

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Arrested‘s rebirth, over four years in the works, has the potential to completely change the game in terms of the way we regard web content in the future. I mean, cult network sitcom gets a literal second life through the largess of a company that began life as a mail-order DVD service? If you time-traveled to 2006 (the year Fox originally canceled the show), and told this story, no one would believe you.

And yet, it’s happening: scripts have been written, producer/narrator Ron Howard’s Tweeting from the set, and David Cross, on a recent press blitz, said no shortage of interesting things about the series’ return, including this to Rolling Stone:

I think it’s going to be 13 episodes, not 10. There’s too much story. Some characters will have two-parters. Everybody sort of participates, sometimes in a bigger way and sometimes in a tiny little thread that goes through everybody else’s stories.

This is the sort of statement that would make a network executive’s head explode, due to the way traditional TV is budgeted and structured on a per-episode basis. But we’re on Netflix’s turf now. Unexplored territory.

Beyond Lilyhammer, which has been renewed for a second season, the industry hasn’t gotten much sense yet of how Netflix’s many high-profile in-the-works projects, such as Arrested, the Eli Roth series Hemlock Grove or the Kevin Spacey-starring House of Cards, will really work out — especially because the question of how to promote a VOD project is still a bit up in the air.

With theatrical releases, you get premiere dates, big galas. But Netflix is so stealthy about announcing what’s available and what isn’t that websites and email services have been created to update people.

Without doubt, I’ll know what day I’m calling in with the Arrested flu next spring — it’s impossible to imagine that not being heavily promoted by both the production and Netflix — but the Netflix experience in general has always boiled down to “Wait, THAT’S available now? Okay, cool.” Seeing how Netflix adapts to accommodate the original programming they’re launching, while still enabling the casual browsing of the user experience, is a fascinating challenge.

The other element is the fact that like Lilyhammer, all 10-13 episodes of the series will be released at once, setting fans up for epic marathon sessions. The term “binge viewing” has been coined to describe how many TV fans now consume shows, gulping up entire seasons on DVD or streaming services. It’s a wonderful way to fall in love with a show — just sinking into it the way you might sink into an epic novel. And Arrested‘s new season, according to Cross, sounds designed with just that experience in mind:

I’m not gonna divulge anything, but I know what the stories are and what Mitch [Hurwitz] is doing, and it’s so layered. It’s really audacious and amazing. I think a lot of people will miss the work that is involved, the story, the Venn diagrams that are being created, the domino effect that characters have with each other in their various episodes. I know what he’s doing, and this has never been done on a TV show like this. This makes Lost look like a Spalding Grey monologue. You’ll have to watch each episode more than once.

Given the show’s pre-established track record for hidden jokes and gags, this sounds more than promising.

The AMC series Breaking Bad is a key example of a show that’s grown its audience thanks to binge viewing, indicated by how its ratings have increased with each season, as new viewers discover the show through Netflix. But Vince Gilligan, in a recent interview with KCRW’s The Business, had this to say about the phenomenon:

It’s wonderful, but I do see the worry — this is a business, it’s show business and if there’s no money to be made, then this wonderful job I have and other jobs like it are going to dry up. So we should all be interested in how they monetize this stuff. It’s wonderful when people binge-watch the show — I say have at it — but I do see the companies, not just ours, the various companies concerned that if you’re binge-watching on a DVR, you’re skipping all the commercials. And if the guys who buy the commercials realize that all their commercials are being skipped, they’re going to stop buying commercials.

It’s an attitude you’ll hear elsewhere in the industry — which may be why Netflix is doubling down on its subscription model. I couldn’t track down the budget for Arrested Development‘s new season, but House of Cards‘s price tag was reported by some as $100 million, and Hemlock Grove, it’s said, is budgeted at $40 million for 13 episodes — otherwise known as about $3 million an episode. That’s real TV money — in fact, it’s the same budget as Breaking Bad.

It’s a long time until the spring of 2013, but looking forward it’s hard to imagine a more important signpost for the convergence of television and the web than Arrested Development. If it succeeds, it’ll legitimize a whole new distribution platform and business model. And if it fails, well, we’ll at least get to see Tobias in his cutoffs again.

The TV singularity approaching us consumers of media is at times a scary one: We’re used to shows that cost millions an episode, but we’re also now used to consuming whatever we want, wherever and whenever we want. Some people think that going forward, these two mindsets won’t be able to co-exist. But Netflix seems to disagree, and the Bluths may be the ones to prove it.

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How quickly things change

This was my fourth or fifth year in attendance, and in many ways, it was shockingly similar to the others I’ve attended. There was (again) a lot of talk but no real movement on stuff like mobile DTV and 3-D TV, as well as grudging acceptance among incumbent content creators that the Internet, mobile and tablets are platforms they need to play on, even if there’s no real money there.

But there was one thing that was very different, at least in the makeup of the show’s keynotes and “super sessions.” In attending a few of the higher-profile sessions, I got the feeling that this year’s NAB Show wasn’t actually about broadcast TV, at least not in the way that it’s sold or distributed. It was instead about the multiplatform piece, and seemed specifically to shine a light on those who were leading the charge in that arena. The only problem is that the creators and distributors it highlighted weren’t broadcasters, at least not in the traditional sense, but those mired in the online-only or online-first world.

While last year’s NAB show featured a keynote speech by CBS head honcho Les Moonves, there were no comparable heavy hitters from the TV world to give their vision for the future. Notably, the show seemed to cater instead to those who were interested in how streaming and multiplatform delivery were disrupting the traditional TV model. NAB brought in speakers like Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, Machinima President Philip DeBevoise, Electus’ Ben Silverman and Revision3’s Jim Louderback, among others.

Even those speakers who are part of the traditional broadcast model seemed to be there not to talk about the business of TV, per se, but about distribution in the bold new multiplatform world. Hell, even Betty White — who we all know of because of her TV career, and who spoke at an early breakfast slot on Tuesday — has seen her career resurrected mostly because of a Super Bowl commercial that went viral online and made her part of the conversation again.

What is a broadcaster, anyway?

I wasn’t the only one who was confused by the whole thing. I facilitated a roundtable discussion for a group of attendees Wednesday morning, leading a wide-ranging talk about a number of topics facing content producers and distributors.

The makeup of the room was impressively diverse: There were attendees who were there at their first NAB show, and others who had been going for decades. There were some present who worked for PBS, others who produced news and other content for local affiliates, and a university professor who was there to comment on the way the behavior of college-aged viewers were changing. There were participants from the agency side, others who created apps, and still others working on new web-original projects. There was even a guy from Brazil who produces surfing shows for the web. He switched from TV distribution to streaming video more than a decade ago.

One of the folks there — whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten — summed up the feeling of the show pretty well: “How do we define a broadcaster?” he asked. “Is it someone who distributes content over the air? Is it someone who does over-the-air and cable and satellite? Is it someone who does that and also does delivery on the web and to other platforms, with a certain number of viewers?”

Barbarians at the gates

Considering who was speaking at this year’s show, I think there’s a clear answer to that: the definition needs to fall outside the traditional scope of the broadcasting industry and needs to include folks who are making content that doesn’t necessarily originate on TV. When Netflix introduces a slate of programming that includes shows from David Fincher, Kevin Spacey, Eli Roth and the return of Arrested Development, you can no longer define content as “premium“ just based upon whichever distribution platform it appeared on first.

I’ve always attended NAB with a view toward the digital future — and over the years, I’ve been frequently frustrated by how the industry doesn’t seem to “get it.” This is the first year where I’ve felt that the show and attendees were having real discussions about the future, the first time someone acknowledged that the big broadcast and cable networks weren’t the only ones who held the keys to the future of video.

But I wonder what that means for everyone else at the show, or, what the people who have been going to NAB for decades think about the barbarians at the gate that are taking up all their speaking slots and shaping the discussion. What does it mean when there are no real broadcast titans speaking at a show for and about broadcasters?

It probably means that the world is changing, and it could mean that smart content creators and distributors are doing everything in their power to stay ahead of that change. And maybe, just maybe, it means that the broadcasters at NAB could learn a lesson or two from those who are doing so, including the folks at Netflix, Machinima and Revision3.

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On Tuesday, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos took the stage at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas to give a preview of the streaming service’s upcoming slate of original programming. It was an interesting moment. After all, here’s the guy who has spent the last several years making nice with cable and broadcast networks, writing big checks for their content. Now, he’s showing that Netflix is seeking to become a bit of a competitor with the very same networks and studios that it currently sources content from.

But if Netflix ends up competing for a greater share of viewers’ attention with its streaming offering, it’s only fair, Sarandos posited. After all, the increasing number of TV Everywhere apps and services are starting to encroach on its turf, he reminded the audience.

The early look at its foray into original content shows that Netflix’s future appears pretty promising Beyond Lilyhammer‘s quirky fish-out-of-water story of a New York City gangster who goes to Norway to enter the Witness Protection Program, Netflix has a slate of content that is star-packed. There’s House of Cards, the David Fincher-Kevin Spacey project that is based on a British novel and miniseries of the same name, appearing in early 2013. There’s Orange is the New Black, the story of one woman’s time in minimum-security prison, being spearheaded by Weeds creator Jenji Kohan. There’s the Eli Roth-led murder mystery Hemlock Grove, starring Famke Janssen. And, of course, there’s the long-awaited return of Arrested Development, five years after the series was cancelled by Fox.

Kohan, Roth, Janssen and a number of the members of the Arrested Development cast were there to tell the audience why they were excited about creating content for Netflix. For Kohan, the opportunity to work with Netflix was a way to show off a great new business model. And Roth talked about how Netflix gives him the freedom to create what will essentially be a long-form, 13-hour feature that will allow him to do what he does best — frighten people — and give his fans what they want and expect from him, something that might not be possible at a normal TV network.

The freedom to make interesting shows — without a network controlling the process or the output — seemed to be an underlying theme, though I don’t think anyone actually came out and said it. In that respect, Netflix could use its newcomer status as a way to recruit more talented content creators who are frustrated by the usual network system. That’s something HBO has long been applauded for — giving artists the creative freedom to build shows that wouldn’t necessarily play anywhere else.

Of course, it’s one thing to announce a bunch of star-studded shows. It’s a whole other thing to have them be good. Lilyhammer was an interesting starting point, but many who saw it seemed a little underwhelmed. And if House of Cards doesn’t hit it out of the park, serious questions could begin to emerge about Netflix’s ability to not just license shows that have already proven to be popular, but to create some of its own. And as the networks begin to increase the cost of the content that they license to Netflix, its future could very well depend on its ability to do that.

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Before a press screening of the network’s newest original movie, Game Change, HBO Co-President Eric Kessler gave some details about viewership on the company’s streaming service. According to Kessler, original programming makes up about 75 percent of all viewing on the platform, with movies contributing another 20 percent and sports programming taking the final 5 percent.

It might seem obvious that HBO original programming would be a big draw on the service. After all, HBO Go allows viewers to catch up on current shows like True Blood, Boardwalk Empire and the recently introduced Luck just hours after they air on TV. It also has every episode of every series that the network has ever produced, meaning that viewers can re-watch classic HBO series like The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under whenever they want.

But HBO also has a pretty large film library for its subscribers to choose from, including a large number of new release films — those that have been released over the past two years or so. And when viewers do watch movies on HBO Go, it’s those new releases that they’re drawn to: Kessler said that about 80 percent of all film viewing comes from new releases like Rio or Something Borrowed.

In that respect, HBO is clearly differentiated from streaming services like Netflix, which relies almost entirely on long-tail content for viewership. That will be even more true in the coming days, as Netflix sees new release movies from Disney disappear along with the expiration of its long-running Starz streaming deal.

Of course, Netflix has begun to take a page out of HBO’s playbook, by creating original programming of its own. The streaming service released its first original series, Lillyhammer, this month, and has two or three other projects in the works, including the return of Arrested Development and a U.S. re-creation of the British miniseries House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and produced by David Fincher.

Netflix still has a large lead in the device world, however, which is something that HBO is trying to change. HBO Go recently became available on Roku streaming players and Samsung TVs, and Kessler announced that the service would launch on the Xbox 360 on April 1 — which coincides with the season opener of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

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Netflix has already committed billions of dollars to new streaming deals over the next few years, which would be fine if the company had ample cash in the bank or was still on an outstanding growth trajectory. Netflix finished the third quarter with just $366 million in cash and short-term investments, however, and with $200 million in long-term debt.

The company is hoping to bolster its international business with a planned launch of services in the UK and Ireland in the early part of 2012. So far, Lionsgate, MGM and Miramax are on board for launch in the new market. This move follows Netflix’s international expansion in Canada and Latin America. Those deals are necessary to keep international growth going, but they come at a cost: For each new market Netflix has to pay up front licensing fees for the right to stream titles before it launches there.

Meanwhile, the company has embarked on a series of costly agreements for exclusive content — like two seasons of the upcoming David Fincher-Kevin Spacey project House of Cards and the return of Arrested Development, which will appear only on Netflix. Even when it has signed up catalog titles from content owners like Disney or CBS, Netflix has been rumored to pay in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars for each of those deals. But few have asked how Netflix will fund those additions to its library.

It looks now like Netflix was betting on future domestic growth to help pay for its streaming library. But growth in its home market has stalled, thanks to a series of missteps that included a price hike and the announcement of a new DVD service called Qwikster, which Netflix later backed away from. That’s an unfortunate turn of events that senior management likely didn’t anticipate and one that might have left Netflix in a bit of a cash crunch.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Netflix has squandered cash through a series of stock buybacks over the past nine months when it could have been hoarding cash for expansion. Instead, Netflix spent nearly $200 million on buybacks, at an average price of $222 per share — about three times the stock’s current share price.

This could be a temporary bump in the road, but Netflix will have to show some returned growth and financial stability in the fourth quarter if it’s going to get investors back on board. It will also have to show that it can afford to pay the license agreements it signed over the past year, as it has planned aggressive expansion both in new international markets and in its catalog at home.

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Details are scarce, but the parties are looking to introduce new episodes of the series in early 2013, Variety reports. How many episodes would be produced, and how many of the original cast members would be involved, remains unknown. Currently, Arrested Development stars Will Arnett and Portia de Rossi are both working on series at NBC.

Netflix has long been rumored to be in the bidding for a Arrested Development revival. It’s also been widely expected to at some point bring back one popular cancelled show or another, whether it be Arrested Development or maybe Friday Night Lights.

The company, which has about 24 million subscribers in the U.S., is increasingly seeking to differentiate itself with original and exclusive programming. Earlier this year, it announced a major deal to license two seasons of the David Fincher-Kevin Spacey project House of Cards, and is reportedly in talks for a new series from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan.

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