One of the biggest things Community creator Dan Harmon is looking forward to as the show moves to Yahoo Screen is no more Nielsen ratings - a thought probably echoed by several network TV showrunners out there.

“That’s going to be the coolest thing in the world,” said Harmon at the Winter TCA press tour in Pasadena, Calif., this week. “I’m biased, but those numbers felt bad to me,” adding that he felt Nielsen ratings “were such an odd, weird religion to live under.”

The broadcast series that had such a devoted online following is now headed to an online home. The sitcom premieres March 17 on Yahoo Screen with two episodes, and then will release one episode per week after that.

NBC canceled Community last spring when the show failed to hit linear ratings expectations. That’s when conversations began about a possible digital platform pickup. When talks at Hulu stalled, Yahoo Screen swooped in to sign the show for a sixth season (echoing fans’ campaign of #sixseasonsandamovie).

At TCA, Harmon commented on how ads will play into the new season, writing for the Web and why they steered away from binge-viewing.

Community’s sixth season will be supported by ads on Yahoo Screen, but Harmon said he doesn’t know how or whether Yahoo plans to offer regular ad breaks. Nonetheless, he says he’s writing the show in a similar format to the one he used for NBC “because as a writer, three-act stories are what work for me.”

He added that although going online leaves him with a bit of leeway on length, there was never a plan to make the show all available to stream at once, binge-viewing style. The weekly episode release “feels to me like the right way to do it.”

And when it comes to writing the comedy, Harmon also said he’s now liberated to write outside the stricter broadcast environment. That reflects the cast’s opinion as well: perhaps the show has finally found its true home.

Read more at Adweek.

Brief Take: Harmon and cast may have finally found Community‘s true home on Yahoo Screen. But it’s still unclear what viewer metrics Yahoo will release and how much of that will even matter to the show that just couldn’t be canceled.

[Image courtesy of Yahoo]

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