A few months ago, I wrote a story about Afterworld - a made-for-Internet production that looks to be unlike any other in production values, emotional storytelling, and amount of money (something around $3 million) spent on the project.

At the time, Afterworld was set to start rolling out both on its home web site, and on YouTube in early May. The producers were hoping to cash in on YouTube's then-fledgling advertising program, relying on YouTube to sell ads and then send back some revenues. (BTW I'd provide a link but when Red Herring switched to a new web site we lost a bunch of our old stories online, so you'll just have to take my word for it that this story existed!) Observers thought this was a risky bet, but producer Stan Rogow said he had high hopes for the revenue-sharing potential of YouTube. He also had the mother of all backup plans in an international distribution deal with Sony that includes online, mobile, television, and film rights in places other than the U.S. The show has started airing in Australia on the Sci-Fi network.

So fast forward to Thursday, when the L.A. Times ran a story about Afterworld's debut on MySpace. My first thought was, "Huh? Didn't this already happen three months ago...on YouTube?"

 Turns out, things didn't quite go as planned. Mr. Rogow told me the project ended up taking longer to create, and costing more money than the producers were anticipating. The team now has around half of the 130 episodes in the can. The show never rolled out on YouTube, beyond the 10 preview episodes that had already aired.

"Crafting a genuinely compelling three minutes of something is very difficult," said Mr. Rogow. "Every episode has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it's hard to do that in 3.5 pages, and then coming up with compelling visuals that complement the storytelling. That's why what was going to be May is now August."

So why the switch from YouTube to MySpace? Mr. Rogow was a little unclear on this one. He said he's still in talks with YouTube to air Afterworld (a 10-episode preview has already appeared on YouTube), as well as other video sharing sites. One nice benefit of the delay, said Mr. Rogow, is that three months on, video sharing sites and advertisers are more organized and prepared to support a very costly show like Afterworld - or at least, apparently, MySpace is.

"The nice news is that the world continues to move, and opportunities to find ways to monetize are increasing," said Mr. Rogow. "For a show as costly as ours, that's important."

Afterworld actually had its very first debut on bud.tv, a promotional site for Budweiser that has turned out to be a complete dud.

Afterworld's production house is already working on its next series - "The Gemini Division" - which stars Rosario Dawson. Mr. Rogow isn't sure how he distribute that one. Figuring out this online distribution stuff is turning out to be a pretty tricky task.