USA: "THETHRESHOLD.COM" IS AMERICA'S SPECIALIST WEBSITE DESIGNED FOR YOUNG MEN AGED 12- 35

Record ID: 390994

  • Title: USA: "THETHRESHOLD.COM" IS AMERICA'S SPECIALIST WEBSITE DESIGNED FOR YOUNG MEN AGED 12- 35
  • Date: 6th February 2001
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU LARRY KASANOFF (SOUNDBITE) (English) "So you bet there's a lot of babes and sports and race cars and games and fighting. Everything a guy could want. Our motto at TheThreshold.com is "no crying, no hugging, no learning." We just want you to have fun." VARIOUS, LARRY KASANOFF GIVING TOUR OF THETHRESHOLD.COM PRO
  • Embargoed: 21st February 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Business,Entertainment,General
  • Reuters ID: LVAEW3OIDYHBZVX4V22Z9DAOBV4X
  • Story Text: Bikini-clad women reading Shakespeare? Risque
    cartoons? Car racing and Kung-fu fighting? Guess what
    demographic this website is aimed at. The Threshold.com
    serves all of that up and more. Promising "everything a guy
    could want", the site is aggressively aimed at men between the
    ages of 12 and 35. Created by a man with experience in the
    testoterone arena -- "Mortal Kombat" producer Larry Kasanoff
    -- the site looks like it will accomplish its goal. But what
    happens to its web traffic when all those boys "grow up?"


    You've heard of babes in bikinis.. strutting their
    stuff via the internet. But scantily clad women, reciting
    lines from Shakespeare's plays? That's right, it's Bikini
    Masterpiece Theatre, courtesy of web entertainment mecca
    TheThreshold.com. It's not exactly mainstream programming,
    but CEO Larry Kasanoff believes, he's just filling a niche
    that others have overlooked. "The audience of
    TheThreshold.com is guys ages 12 to 35," says Kasanoff. "And
    why? It's because TheThreshold.com is a network, just like
    NBC, Fox or the Discovery channel, and we have to aggregate
    one audience for that network and program to them."
    Kasanoff should know plenty about teenage boys. His
    production company scored a huge hit with the Mortal Kombat
    movies, along with more than a dozen spinoffs including
    CD-ROMs, DVDs and an animated TV series. Now, thanks to the
    internet, he's found a new way to bring his vision to the
    masses. Says Kasanoff: "You're always frustrated as a
    producer, because no matter how successful you are, you always
    have a middleman between you and the audience-- a TV studio, a
    movie theatre chain, a TV network, somewhere, there's a thing
    between you and the audience -- a record store. The internet
    takes that away."
    One internet watcher -- Andrew Robins of Electronic Media
    Magazine -- thinks Kasanoff's strategy is shrewd, and will
    likely reach its target audience of teenage boys: ""It's
    definitely a sound strategy to target Gen-Y, to target boys
    and teenagers because again, they were raised on the internet.

    These are the people that consider the internet their own.

    Market research shows a lot of these people are somewhat
    rebellious and a lot of them don't want to do what their
    mother or father did. So the internet gives them something
    they can do in their own time, not in the living room, but in
    their own little room."
    For now, these writers and animators are not looking to
    put Hollywood out of business. What they want is a loyal
    group of fans -- and it looks like Larry Kasanoff has found a
    formula to achieve just that: Babes, sports, race cars, games
    and martial arts. As Kasanoff puts it: "Our motto at
    TheThreshold.com -- no crying, no hugging, no learning, we
    just want you to have fun."
    But will the kids keep returning to the site as they get
    older? Andrew Robins isn't so sure: "Girls and guns are
    something that Gen-Y teens are fascinated with. They may see
    it as something rebellious. It's sort of there on the edge.

    So it's probably a sound strategy. Whether its going to keep
    these boys attention when they get older is open to debate."
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