How will we ever get any work done?

NBC and CBS have reached deep into their program vaults and are flooding the web with free streaming offerings of couch-potato classics, including "Star Trek" (the great 79); "Hawaii Five-0" (a personal fave); "Emergency" (Gage and DeSoto rule); "Miami Vice" (love the one where Frank Zappa guest stars); "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" (great host); "Kojak" (great Telly); "MacGyver," "Melrose Place," "The A-Team," "Simon & Simon" and the original Lorne Greene-in-a-robe-and-toupe version of "Battlestar Galactica."

There's especially good news for fans of the Rod Serling oeuvre. CBS is offering the first two seasons of "The Twilight Zone," and NBC.com and SciFi.com are beaming out "Night Gallery." "Night  Gallery," produced by Universal TV for NBC from 1970-1973, is not as consistently mind-blowing as "Twilight Zone," but the best of the episodes, mostly the Serling-penned segs, are very, very good indeed. Steven Spielberg famously made his directorial debut on a "Night Gallery" seg starring Joan Crawford as a blind woman with a very high sense of entitlement.

Interesting that these separate initiatives from the Eye and the Peacock were announced about a week after the majors inked the new deal with the Writers Guild of America that calls for them to pay scribes 2% of the distributor's gross on web streaming of library TV shows, library being defined as anything produced after 1977 and streamed more than a year after its initial telecast.

With library product, the 2% of distrib's gross formula kicks in right away, not in year three of the WGA contract as is the case for contempo programs. So the timing of the majors' push to offer on-demand access to their libraries is a good thing for scribes, on paper. The real question is, how do you calculate  the distributor's gross for online distribution of an old "MacGyver" or "Miami Vice" seg?

In theory it will be based on whatever the license fee that the owner (aka distrib) of the program receives from the exhibitor, aka NBC.com and CBS.com. But valuation matters get even more complicated when you're talking about vintage product owned by the same conglomerate that also controls the Internet exhibition. This is the kind of stuff that will keep lawyers for the guild, the studios and top creatives fully employed during the next few years.

"Playhouse 90" -- what a legacy. If Martin Manulis had only produced Rod Serling's "Requiem for a Heavyweight," he would forever have earned his place in TV history books.

But as the creator and chief steward of CBS' high-end dramatic anthology series, Manulis, who died last week at the age of 92, presided over many more great hours of television, most of them live, though "Playhouse 90" also ran "filmed presentations" about once a month. (Click here for Manulis' Variety obit.) Thanks to the Archive of American Television, click here for vid of a comprehensive 11-part interview of Manulis in 1997.

It's maddening that those of us born long after the skein ended its 1956-61 run have had scant opportunities to see these smallscreen gems. I've seen a kinescope of the original "Requiem," and it lived up to every inch of its advance billing. (With all due respect to Anthony Quinn and the 1962 feature version, once you've seen Jack Palance as the hard-luck boxer, you can't never go back.) I've also seen a beat-up copy of another breathtakingly good Rod Serling teleplay, "The Comedian," helmed by John Frankenheimer with a fearless perf from Mickey Rooney. And that's about it.

I'd love to see the original "Days of Wine and Roses" starring Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. I'd love to see Serling's "A Town Has Turned to Dust," with Rod Steiger and James Gregory. And I'd like to see at least some of the "Playhouse 90" segs that I've never heard a thing about. If I can turn on the tube any time day or night and find a repeat of the Ultimate-Fighting-Xtreme-Street-Skate'n'Spandex-Challenge semi-finals from 1997, why can't we have the Ultimate-Badass-TV-Dramatists-Showdown airing once a week or so on an artsy channel? Or how about a comprehensive, anotated DVD set? A "Playhouse 90" download-on-demand website?

(Pictured above: "Requiem" stars Keenan Wynn, Jack Palance and Ed Wynn. Pictured right: Manulis in 2004.)