This is amazing news for those of us who don’t want to shell out for an HBO subscription, yet still enjoy the deadpan antics of Bret and Jemaine, everyone’s favorite New Zealand novelty folk-pop duo. According to a missive sent by FunnyOrDie.com’s Weston Green to AICN, the second season premiere of “Flight of the Conchords” will be “broadcast” on their site starting on December 17th, which is some time before the January premiere on HBO.

I wanted to give you, your staff, and readers a heads up about the Flight of the Conchords Season 2 Premiere. It’s going to be happening exclusively on www.funnyordie.com on December 17. We will be getting a new widescreen player and be broadcasting the first episode of the new season for the first week (dec 17-dec 21.)

www.funnyordie.com will have the exclusive Season 2 premiere of Flight of the Conchords starting December 17th at 9amPST/12pmEST. The show will premiere on HBO on January 9th.

As noon isn’t really the best time for a lot of people, hopefully they will air it at many other times - and maybe even put it up on their site on-demand for a short period of time.

This bodes well for both Conchords fans and online TV in general. Although scheduled-streaming-only seems a bit like a leap backward, premium cable content being available online - presumably for free - is a gigantic leap forward.

Now, HBO probably doesn’t take issue with this. After all, it’s just the first episode, and in a very limited way. It can only serve to get more people hooked on HBO and its quality programming, such as The Sopranos Sex and the City Rome some movies that came out five years ago. It’s essentially good marketing for them, as much as it’s breaking the precedent of premium shows only being on premium networks. (The running of edited versions of past seasons, like Dexter on CBS and The Sopranos on A&E, is a totally different matter. It doesn’t pre-empt the programming’s availability on the network, and is, at best, a consolation prize.)

In my dream world, every episode of Flight of the Conchords is available online to view for free. (Legally.) I know that won’t happen anytime soon, but hey, I can dream.

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