iMediaConnection: Yahoo! and “The Contender” Partner

Yahoo! Inc. announced it has teamed with Mark Burnett Productions to offer a series of online-only fights from the NBC boxing reality show “The Contender”.

The online-only boxing event will be shown May 24 on Yahoo!, the official site for “The Condender.” Yahoo! says the content that will air online will be completely separate content from the TV show. Voting and the webcast are available to all internet users.

as they say on PSFK:

Could this be the start of a wider trend: will we see other television shows doing online-only spin-offs or one-time events? Imagine if a major brand sponsored a mini-one-off-series of Friends to be shown exclusively through a major ISP? What if a current popular show aired its seasons-end through AOL or MSN?