BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. Remember all those years ago when cable took off, along with CNN and HBO? Suddenly we saw channels we never thought could make it, devoted solely to food or the weather or:

QVC ANNOUNCER: These are our graduated crescent dangle earrings, all done in 14 carat yellow gold. They're QVC-priced at $86.50. They are brand new..

BOB GARFIELD: Cable TV opened the doors to all those channels by opening bandwidth. But now, with HDTV, the Internet, and even phone service all jammed into that same cable wire, bandwidth is a limited commodity again. Soon, though, it may not matter because Video on Demand or VOD doesn't use the same bandwidth as regular cable. Instead, video is stored on a computer server. All you have to do is use your remote control to navigate through a few menus and pick out what you want. Nowadays people usually use it to pick up special events, movies or shows that they missed on HBO. But wait, VOD may soon be the door through which all new channels must pass.

ALEX GOLDMARK: has more.

ALEX GOLDMARK: What does this -- [VIDEO CLIP]:

MAN: You can barely even defeat a pathetic little Solenoid.

MAN: Oh no, not another one!

ALEX GOLDMARK: -- have to do with this?

MAN: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik hosts "Faith to Faith."

ALEX GOLDMARK: The rabbis want what those Solenoids have, a cable channel, and they plan to follow the path of the Anime Network's Solenoids in getting one. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

ANNOUNCER: You're watching Shalom TV, celebrating Jewish culture.

ALEX GOLDMARK: It took him over two years of planning, shmoozing and compromising before Rabbi Mark Golub could launch what he calls, "the nation's first Jewish focus TV channel" earlier this month.

RABBI MARK GOLUB: There's no place on American television where if you're a young family and you have children you can set a child down in front of a television to see lovely Jewish programming for children. [SINGING, MUSIC FROM "MR. BOOKSTEIN'S STORE]]

ALEX GOLDMARK: Now for the kids, there's "Mr. Bookstein's Store." [SINGING UP AND UNDER] And for the grownups, a dating show--movies, news--the whole gamut of a typical cable channel, just Jewish themed.

And like any niche channel, Rabbi Golub thinks this programming will fill a void and build a loyal audience, of say 200,000 homes. Now, that's small for a national cable channel, but big enough to make a profit. The problem is convincing the cable companies.

JOSH BERNOFF: In a typical catch-22, you can't get ratings about how great your channel is until you're carried a bunch of places.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Industry analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research:

JOSH BERNOFF: So,they basically have to come in and say, look, you know, we've determined that 18 percent of consumers in your area are interested in horses, so the Horse Channel really ought to be on the air in your area. And that's not a theoretical example. There is a channel called the Horse Channel.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Beloved farm animals aside, he says almost nobody is launching new channels right now.

JOSH BERNOFF: There's a pretty strong desire not to use up channel space for anything that's not essential.

ALEX GOLDMARK: But if channel space is irrelevant, there's plenty of room for experimenting with new channels. Enter Video on Demand or VOD.

PAGE THOMPSON: Last year our Comcast customers alone watched 700 million hours of television in a way that didn't even exist three years ago.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Page Thompson is Vice President of Video Services at Comcast, and he is thrilled about the new way to watch TV. True, there isn't even a proven ad model yet, and at this point, there isn't much original content available.

PAGE THOMPSON: But with On Demand, somebody who has a great idea or who can reach a small niche audience now suddenly has a distribution vehicle. [WRESTLING MATCH HUBBUB]

ALEX GOLDMARK: So far the loudest launch on that new vehicle is the WWE Pro Wresting Channel. Now, pro wrestling's been on TV for decades, and sometimes Pay for View might seem like the wrestling channel. But this is the first time they've had their own network, for now, on VOD. WWE's Executive Vice President

TOM BARRECA:

TOM BARRECA: We are much more mass market, I think, than you'll see a lot of the sort of sliver services that are out there. We're broad and we're deep. Everybody you meet, even the NPR listeners, has a wrestling story.

ALEX GOLDMARK: And he's banking on that nostalgia to bring in the business. For $7.99 a month you'll see an ever-changing twenty hours of past fights, like the classics for any fan old enough to rent a car without parental permission. [VIDEO CLIP: WRESTLING MATCH]

ANNOUNCER: Oh slam! Andre picked him up with ease!

ALEX GOLDMARK: Ah yes, Hulk Hogan versus Andre the Giant.

ANNOUNCER: Right in that lower lumbar region, that kidney area that's already been damaged. [CLIP AUDIO CONTINUES]

ALEX GOLDMARK: If Hulk and his cohorts can prove they can consistently draw an audience, then maybe, just maybe, Comcast will seed them the bandwidth they crave.

JOSH BERNOFF: This is sort of like the minor leagues of television channels.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Again, analyst Josh Bernoff.

JOSH BERNOFF: So you get yourself in Video on Demand, and then you just see if you can get people to have a look at it. And if you can become successful as a Video on Demand channel, then you can try and take your place among the broadcast channels, the hundreds of broadcast channels that are already out there.

ALEX GOLDMARK: That's exactly what the Anime Network did with its video archive of Solenoids and other Japanese favorites. And that's what Shalom TV, the Jewish channel is trying to do, only it wants to be the first to produce a whole new line for video on demand, not just reused archives.

RABBI MARK GOLUB: They said to us, Shalom TV, Jewish programming? We don't have space for you.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Rabbi Mark Golub.

RABBI MARK GOLUB: But, you know, the idea you're pitching us sounds so interesting, we will put you up on our server and let's see.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Now they're testing the subscription model at $7.99 a month for fifty regularly updated hours of TV.

JOSH BERNOFF: We're entering a world where anyone who can pull together an audience of 100,000 people, will be able to get on television.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Josh Bernoff for Forester Research.

JOSH BERNOFF: It's just that instead of being famous for 15 minutes, they'll have their 15 megabytes of space on the cable company's server, and then they have to go out and actually reach that audience.

ALEX GOLDMARK: Right now, Video on Demand might be that place you get movies from when you're too lazy to go to Blockbuster, or while you're waiting for your next Netflix, but pretty soon when you hear VOD, you might think of it as where all your new favorite channels got their start. For On The Media, I'm

ALEX GOLDMARK: in New York. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER