LOS ANGELES Crispin Porter + Bogusky will "probably, likely" be developing content as part of its new equity partnership with Internet streaming media company AmericaFree.TV, said Chuck Porter, chairman. "Everyone in advertising has a screenplay in his desk," he said.

Porter and AmericaFree.TV president and CMO Mike Smith will be in Hollywood this week at the Future of Television conference, wooing potential content providers and presenting the broad strokes of the site's redesign.

The MDC Partners' shop said last week that it was partnering with the technology company and will relaunch the brand, promoting it with a viral campaign.

Porter said that the agency's interest -- "beyond the real reason, which is that [the network] has The Three Stooges" -- is a desire to delve deeper into consumers' online viewing habits. "I think streaming video on computers is the next big thing," said Porter. "Almost everyone is spending a few minutes at work watching video now. They're training themselves to watch a few hours at home."

Porter said that like the agency's partnerships with Haggar and Method Home -- in which Crispin has an ownership stake -- the agreement with AmericaFree.TV is mostly a "sweat equity deal."

"Being inside of this is different than having a piece of a beer or a shoe," Porter said. "This is a media deal, really. It's got us all a little more jazzed."

Porter said the agency would also be involved in the search for the network's new content providers and the effort to make it hip.

"We have one of the best technologists in the world involved in the streaming media: MIT physicist [chairman and CEO] Marshall Eubanks, a genius technologist," explained Smith. "And at the same time, we have no sense of art, design, usability and navigation. Guys like us draw stick figures. We need one of the greatest creative minds today, Alex Bogusky… He's going to make the network cool with a makeover, so that it has consumer appeal."

The five-year-old network has so far relied upon a "secret sauce of semi-automated coding" to feature 1,800 hours of public domain footage, such as old television shows and movies, running on 20 different channels, Smith said.

AmericaFree.TV wants the site to be a landing place for more independent producers offering free video on demand. It's currently in negotiations with a comedian considering his own channel to promote his act and test material, Smith said. Current signatories include the NoisiVision comedy channel, a B-movie channel headed by Echelon Studios and the Frank Citro-produced pseudo-Sopranos series, Tough Guy. The goal, Smith said, is to exploit Crispin's entertainment-industry connections and marketing savvy to build the audience from 5 million to 50 million in three years by adding original content and making the public domain shows cool again.

Neither Smith nor Porter would disclose how much of the network Crispin owns, but Smith said a formula has been established "based on Crispin delivering a larger audience share. The more people watch, the more equity they build."

So far the network has broken even thanks to revenue generated by Google ads on the site, Smith said. "But they take 80 percent and give us 20 percent -- we want to flip that." Smith said the company is setting up an ad-buying firm, Broadband Advertisements LLC, that will traffic for the nascent Internet network as well as others. The goal is to get AmericaFree.TV running essentially like a television network, but with original content partners initially getting at least a 50 percent cut of ad revenue.

An ex-Euro RSCG evp and technology marketer, Smith said the partnership fulfills a desire he's had to work with Bogusky since the first time he saw him stroll into the Grand Hyatt "wearing flip- flops and a Hawaiian shirt among 500 people wearing blue or gray suits. He picked up his Kelly Awards and said he was taking the agency to the Bahamas," Smith recalled. "I thought, 'I've got to meet this guy.'"