In the spirit of driving viewers to their broadband player (I guess), CTV has posted the entire O.C. season 4 premiere episode in their broadband player the night before it airs. The episode hasn’t even leaked onto bittorrent YouTube yet so this must be a pre-emptive move on the part of the network. It is probably geo-fenced to just Canadian IPs, but I’d bet there’s a Fox affiliate streaming the whole episode in the States too. Either way, maybe someone finally gets what a traffic (and ad revenue) driver something like this could be…or it is just an experiment. Either way, it’s Rachel Bilson O.C. time!

UPDATE: Details of Fox’s decision to air it online early: “Our point of view,” Schwartz said, “is, What do we have to lose?”

UPDATE #2: Despite still having a promotional box on their home page saying “Season 4 Premiere Now on Broadband”, CTV seems to have removed the episode from their broadband player.  Instead, there’s just a static image of the cast that says Episode 2 will be posted tonight.  Laaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmeeeeeee