NEW YORK Isaac Freeman, better known in the hip-hop world as Fatman Scoop, and his wife, Shanda, are leaning up against the headboard of their king-size bed, computers on their laps, answering viewer questions about relationships. But this is not your average chat show. Manandwife.tv is raw, riddled with profanity, and the content is undeniably adult. And if the buzz about this weekly online series is any indication, it may just become MTV Networks' next reality hit.

Like many other creative types seeking fame and fortune—from budding musicians and filmmakers to amateur animators and authors—the Freemans are leveraging the momentum their show has generated on the Web to muscle into mainstream media. Not that Freeman isn't already in the public eye. He is a two-time Grammy winner and a former DJ on New York City's Hot 97, and she is a former HIV/AIDs counselor. Together their witty, bare-all banter has produced one of the more popular relationship and sex advice shows on the Web. It is the top podcast for health and sexuality on iTunes and was voted the seventh best podcast of the year. The show, a little over a year old, received more than 800,000 views in December, according to producer Alex Lasky, president of Lasky Media, New York, and has more than 2.5 million page views on MySpace.

Although the Web is becoming as important a distribution vehicle for entertainment as traditional TV, the goal for many is still to end up on the good old boob tube. With its racy, yet educational content and guest appearances from celebs such as Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown and Russell Simmons, Man and Wife is primed for a larger broadcast vehicle. "Our intention was always definitely to get to TV," says Lasky.

Last summer, the show came a step closer to hitting national TV, signing a development deal with MTV. "Man and Wife is something that has a following and success in short form on the Web, and it seemed like a cool thing to try to develop for long form," says Tony DiSanto, evp, MTV series development and animation. "You are going to see a lot more of that happening."

It wouldn't be the first creative property to get its start on the Internet. Everyone from first-time bloggers to established filmmakers have exploited the direct distribution and community building of the Web to catapult their careers onto larger stages. Singer/songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, whose music has been featured on Grey's Anatomy, was first discovered on MySpace. Sketch comedy troupe Human Giant built its fan base on YouTube and thehumangiant.com before landing a show on MTV, as did comedian Andy Milonakis, who became an Internet sensation with his home webcam recordings before launching The Andy Milonakis Show on MTV three years ago.

"It's almost like Lana Turner being discovered at Schwab's [Drugstore in Hollywood]," DiSanto says. "The Web is now the virtual place to get discovered."

Traditional media has been gobbling up Web content with hit potential and paying big money to bolster its multiplatform reach. Last year, CBS bought Wallstrip.com, a daily show about the Wall Street subculture, for $5 million, and Discovery Networks bought Treehugger.com, a site that features eco-friendly video segments, for $10 million.

"Show creators will look at the opportunity," says Dina Kaplan, COO and co-founder of Blip.tv, which hosts Wallstrip online. "The question is will the dollar amount make it worthwhile?"

Much like other industries that use the Web to test products, Internet platforms offer prospective buyers properties that have already proven attractive to audiences. "With the instant returns from working online, the ability to see results so quickly from the testimonials you get from your fans, the core base of fans and loyalists, you are not just coming in with a pitch, a half-hour pilot," says Lasky. "For a fraction of the cost, you produce a steady flow of content, and when you are packaging it, you are walking in with hard results," says Lasky, who calls the Web "the new way to package programming."

Even TV veterans like Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, creators of My So Called Life and thirtysomething, are experimenting with online content development. After a failed attempt to develop a show about twentysomethings with ABC, the producers took their idea to the Web, calling it quarterlife.com.

For Herskovitz and Zwick, the Internet provided an escape from a business model they felt had become too restrictive. Herskovitz takes care to note it was not ABC's involvement that specifically disenchanted him with the TV business; rather, he says, it was the creative control the networks exert over their shows by getting involved in everything from wardrobe to music. "This is stuff that never took place before. We were really spoiled. We never used to get notes from the networks. We felt increasingly that the type of material we do on TV is not welcome there," he says.

Herskovitz and Zwick became fascinated with all the film activity on the Internet and "the mythical idea" of the recent film grads who took their story to the Web, circumvented the system and prospered. "We said, 'Let's go be those kids,'" he explains. They decided to scrap the original pilot and develop it into an online series with an attached social networking site to help grow an audience and community around the show.

"We set about trying to figure out how to create a business model for doing a series on the Internet," Herskovitz says. "There is a lot of scripted content on the Internet but no one had tried to do the same level of storytelling, production values, emotionality that you would find on TV."

In November, quarterlife, which follows the story of six friends and roommates in their 20s, debuted on MySpaceTV. The deal gave the producers a revenue split from ad sales, with no loss of control. Pepsi and Toyota supported the series with advertising, the influx of cash needed to keep it in production. "Had we had the third advertiser, we would have been very close to financing all the production through the advertising money," says Herskovitz, who adds the cost for the show is less than half the average cost of an hour of scripted television, which experts put at $2 million.

Ironically, this month, quarterlife will make its network premiere on NBC, a circuitous path back into TV that began with the support of co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio Ben Silverman, when he was still at independent production company Reveille. Herskovitz says Silverman teamed with the producers to develop the concept as a silent partner when he joined NBC in the spring. "They wanted to see how it worked," says Herskovitz. The possibility of it being turned into a network show, he adds, "was gravy."

NBC Entertainment head of scripted development, evp Teri Wienberg explains, "When we first saw quarterlife we knew Marshall and Ed had created something special. We wanted to be the first in line if it did make its way to broadcast."

Although Herskovitz says he went to the Web looking for a way to do business outside of the traditional media realm, the partnership with NBC affords the producers the creative and financial freedom they wanted. They retained all rights to the show. "The result was a hybrid model," Herskovitz says. "That's where we are now. It's intended to be an Internet show, but we have a network distributor that enables us to cover the expenses. What I'd like to prove over time is you can make enough just on the Internet to justify these kinds of costs."

The upcoming TV exposure will help the online program and social network to grow. "I'm very happy as a businessman that my Web site and show are going to get promoted," says Herskovitz. "There is a long way to go before there is an adequate method or gestalt on how you promulgate the Internet. It's not there yet. It's very important to me as an artist and a citizen that we prove that the Internet is a viable platform, that you don't need TV to make it work."

Despite the enthusiasm that the veteran TV director/producer shows for the possibilities of online entertainment, the Holy Grail for most content creators today is still traditional media, for the national exposure it offers as well as the cash. The Web is still in its infancy, and advertisers have yet to show serious financial support for online entertainment. "The money that you can make [online] is not as reliable," says Blip.tv's Kaplan. "But it is changing."

For advertisers, "It's still considered a little bit of guerrilla marketing. We're at the very beginning," adds Mark Grande, head of development at Hungry Man Entertainment, a unit of commercial production company Hungry Man. Plus, online cachet is no match for a blockbuster. "Telling someone you have a really cool Internet series is different than saying you have a movie in the theaters."

The company is developing an online series, Undercover Cheerleaders, the story of a group of blonde cheerleaders exploring various social issues, for a cable network. The show, created by Hungry Man partner and director Bryan Buckley, caught the attention of network executives on HungryManTV, a Web channel the company launched last spring to showcase original series. "The traditional model is still viewed as the better one, the flashier one, the cooler one," adds Grande. "At least for now."

The allure of the big corporate seal of approval, however, isn't going to last much longer, say experts in Web video development and distribution. "The tables are really turning," says Kaplan. "People who are creating Web shows see the power of owning 100 percent of the rights to their content and making a lot of money by staying on the Web."

For some content producers, staying on the Web brings the greatest benefit of all: creative freedom. Miles Beckett, who with Greg Goodfried co-created Internet sensation Lonelygirl15 and its U.K. spin-off, KateModern, says that expanding the show's distribution with a TV deal is "appealing, but it's not our primary focus." He notes they received two offers from studios when Lonelygirl first hit in 2006 but declined both of them. "We really wanted to have the opportunity to maintain creative control over Lonelygirl and the future direction of the shows that we are creating," Beckett says.

Maintaining creative control is the mantra of the independent content community, which is seeing the Web invaded by traditional media channels hungry for material.

"Right now there is a diminishing supply of new content out there," says Rob Stone, founder and co-president of Cornerstone Promotion and Fader Films, which produces Bornreadytv, an online documentary following the story of New York high school basketball star Lance Stephenson. "It's not just the networks that are going to grab content. Microsoft's Xbox is an incredible distribution channel. The landscape of competition is changing, the way people are consuming movies, TV shows is changing. The Web is allowing us to be creative and get the eyeballs that would warrant networks and other distribution [channels] to take a serious look."

Although there has been some network interest expressed in the series, Stone says the goal is "to tell a story, regardless of whether we go to network or not."

Kent Nichols, improvisational comedian and co-creator of Askaninja.com, an online comedy series featuring a ninja who answers user e-mails, says there's no incentive for him and his partner, co-creator Douglas Sarine, to consider taking it to TV. "We met with all the major studios about Ask a Ninja. It doesn't make sense in terms of money," he says. "We gross about $100,000 a month in revenue. These were early offers, but they were a fraction of what we could make in a year."

With support from advertisers such as Doritos, the producers of Ask a Ninja are in no rush to make a network deal. "They think we should all be flattered to receive offers from major networks and the cachet of signing with a network," says Nichols. "Why would we kill off an established business just for the pipe dream of telling someone, 'I got a show on basic cable?' I have better demographics than Adult Swim. Turner is not going to send that to MTV for tiny dollars. It's too valuable to them. It would be for big money, so why should I be any different?" In fact, he says, it would take "a mid-eight-figure deal to get us to the table."

As with other content producers, Nichols says ownership rights are another significant stumbling block to a network deal. "We control every creative decision. We don't get notes from clueless suits. We're our own business, and it has many charms," he says.

Sean X Cumming, director of marketing at Ask.com, an Ask a Ninja advertiser, says the danger in trying to take an online success story like Ask a Ninja to TV is the negative impact that network and advertiser involvement could have on the content. Plus, you lose the interactive elements that make those properties so unique to the Web. "You have to let the program be a program," he says. "As an advertiser, I agreed to no creative restraints on the ninja." That kind of arrangement may not be so comfortable for a mainstream TV advertiser. "They are so worried about the associated damage," Cumming says.

As the old media guard increasingly collides with the online vanguard, distinctions between the two will soon begin to fade, experts say. "In a few years, there won't be this huge distinction," says Blip.tv's Kaplan. "There will just be shows. And the best content will win."