Lifetime to Offer Extensive Online Enhancements for New Season of "Project Runway"

Lifetime Television, the channel that poached the popular fashion-themed reality series, "Project Runway," from Bravo (note: the show's sixth season premieres on Lifetime August 20th), has launched a site for the show on myLifetime.com, that offers an extensive line-up of broadband video and other enhancements. According to the channel, the site generated a 19% increase in daily traffic to myLifetime.com immediately after launching last Thursday. Lifetime also plans to launch a similar site for its "Project Runway" companion series, "Models of the Runway," this Thursday.

According to Lifetime, the new "Project Runway" site will offer over 500 exclusive broadband video clips before and during the show's sixth season. The clips will be presented in five categories: 1) "Home Visits," in which the show's 16 designer-contestants will provide tours of where they live and work; 2) "Closet Tours," in which the designers will showcase outfits that inspire them, outfits they plan to wear on the show, and outfits they've designed in the past; 3) "Fashion Tips," in which each designer will provide his or her "go-to fashion tip"; 4) "Casting Session," in which viewers will be able to see how each designer got on the show; and 5) "Home Video," in which viewers will be able to watch the self-made videos that the designers submitted to the show as part of the casting process.

The new "Project Runway" site will also offer an interactive Flash application, called the "Project Runway Designer Portfolio," that Lifetime says "shines the spotlight on the designers' amazing creations like never before and enables fans to immerse themselves in each designer's pre-'Runway' portfolio and inspirations." According to the channel, the app will "evolve during the season as each design and the sketch used to visualize a piece is added to the portfolio following the respective episode." It says that this will be the first time that "a designer sketch for each design created on the show will be posted for fans online."

According to Lifetime, the "Models of the Runway" site will also feature an extensive line-up of broadband content. Other online enhancements that Lifetime is offering around "Project Runway" include an official "Project Runway" blog, as well as various subsidiary blogs that will launch with the show's premiere; polls; a "fan badge" widget that viewers can post on Facebook and other social media platforms and that will offer streaming video of their favorite designer; an official Facebook page (facebook.com/projectrunway); an official Twitter account (twitter.com/projectrunway); and various downloadable items, including AIM icons and wallpaper for each designer, as well as for hosts, Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn.

In other interactive TV-related news from a US cable channel: At 9:00PM on August 20th (i.e. shortly before "Project Runway's" season-six premiere), DIY Network will premiere the third season of its interactive home building series, "Blog Cabin." The show follows the construction of a mountainside vacation home whose design has been determined by DIY Network's viewers: in January, viewers were invited to go to DIYNetwork.com to vote on over 50 design features for the house. According to DIY Network, 4 million votes have been cast since then and thousands of viewers have participated in an ongoing interactive dialog on the house's design via blog posts on the site. "'Blog Cabin' was the first interactive, home-building show on television and we continue to raise the bar both on-air and online," Andy Singer, DIY Network's head of programming, said in a prepared statement. "Since interactivity is in DIY Network's DNA, shows like 'Blog Cabin' are a great example of how we find innovating and exciting ways to offer the DIY audience a rich, multiplatform experience."