This Subway Series Is About Commerce, Not Baseball

By STUART ELLIOTT

A fast-food chain known for its ardent embrace of branded entertainment, embedding its products and restaurants in episodes of television series, is commissioning a series of its own, to be watched on a Web site where consumers watch TV shows.

Subway is introducing this week “4 to 9ers,” a scripted comedy series appearing on hulu.com. Plans call for six weekly online episodes, or webisodes, each running 10 or so minutes, with a new webisode to begin streaming each Tuesday.

The Subway series is branded entertainment in its purest form, with the focus of each show a Subway restaurant inside a shopping mall. The title “4 to 9ers” refers to the young employees of the restaurant, who work there from 4 to 9 p.m. after they finish high school for the day.

The first episode introduces the lead character, Mark (Ashton Moio), on his first day of his new after-school job at Subway. Other characters include a young woman who works at a wireless kiosk in the mall, who becomes a love interest for Mark; her obnoxious boyfriend; a dorky co-worker of Mark's; and a pompous mall cop.

If the characters sound sent from sitcom central casting, it is no accident. The series is being written, directed and produced by two longtime sitcom executives, James Widdoes of “Two and a Half Men” and Tim O'Donnell of “Dave's World,” through Content & Company in Los Angeles.

(Those with long memories may recall Mr. Widdoes played Hoover, the president of the fraternity in the movie “National Lampoon's Animal House.”)

The first episode of “4 to 9ers” reflects its creators' roots, moving along quickly, serving up tasty comic nuggets and including in the dialog references to cultural touchstones like Google and “Star Trek.”

There is also, reflecting a desire to appeal to a younger audience, a sardonic tone to the dialog that includes much irreverence toward authority figures. There is even at one point a mild oath that is sometimes heard in television sitcoms.

“As a quick service restaurant brand, an important audience to us is 18-to-24-year-olds,” said Tony Pace, senior vice president and global chief marketing officer at Subway, so a web series that depicts “what takes place after school” seemed like a worthwhile concept to explore.

Subway has sponsored webisodes before, Mr. Pace said, but none as polished and sitcom-like as “4 to 9ers.”

Marketers “need to be doing things like ‘4 to 9ers,'” he added, because such sponsored content is “the next manifestation” of the branded entertainment trend.

Among the television series with which Subway has made branded content deals are “Chuck” on NBC and “Hawaii Five-0” on CBS.

Although “4 to 9ers” is commissioned by an advertiser rather than a TV network, it is presented by Hulu as if it was a televis ion series, complete with this message on screen before a webisode begins: “The following program is brought to you with limited commercial interruptions by Subway.”

And before the first episode plays, there is, yes, a conventional commercial for Subway.