New SVOD Service BroadwayHD Brings Stage to Stream

Viewers can pay to watch a specific show, or can buy subscriptions by the month or by the year.

BroadwayHD plans to continue to add high-definition captures, using HD and 4K technology cameras, to capture additional shows, but it remains to be seen whether they will be able to bring any big Broadway hits to the service that are not of public domain works such as “Romeo and Julie”.

The live broadway experience is coming to your computer and smartphone via a new streaming service BroadwayHD that launched today with a variety of plays and musicals that have already on television or in theaters. BroadwayHD may get out of the starting gate more successfully than a long line of would-be competitors, including Broadway Near You, founded by Wall Streeter Ed Greenberg, which hoped to stream the revival of Driving Miss Daisy, with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, but is still raising capital, according to its website.

BroadwayHD is the brainchild of Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley, the Tony Award-winning producers behind shows including Legally Blonde and On Your Feet!

Available for computers, smart TVs and mobile devices, BroadwayHD grants theatre enthusiasts access to an archive of 120 productions for $169.99 a year. Lane and Comley believe that it will grow to the point that opening nights will be streamed live on BroadwayHD. “We’re looking for this to be the landing place”.

To those who sneer at reducing a live Broadway show to the size of an iPhone screen, Lane responds by pointing out that people also said the theater experience would be diluted when microphones were introduced. The streaming service is their next step in bringing live theater to audiences beyond the Theater District.

Upon launch, the BroadwayHD library boasts original content from Broadway Worldwide’s Direct From Broadway catalog, BBC Worldwide North America, WNET/New York and more, including performances from Dame Helen Mirren, Anthony Hopkins, Dame Judi Dench, Daniel Craig and Carol Burnett.

On Broadway, there remain significant challenges in convincing stage producers that digital distribution is a good thing for individual shows and for live theater overall.

“This is part of an evolution”, he said.