NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- Television serials have never had it so good.

Unlike decades past when getting canceled meant a one-way ticket to oblivion, TV shows are discovering new lives on online video platforms. Reincarnation, they've discovered, is digital.

On March 17, the TV show Community premieres its sixth and final season. But the show, starring comedian Joel McHale, won't be on anywhere near NBC, a unit of Comcast (CMCSA) - Get Report, where it debuted in 2009. Rather, the next 13 episodes of Community will appear on Yahoo! Screen, Yahoo!'s (YHOO) online video-streaming site.

Community's ability to find a new home at Yahoo! illustrates how television serials are turning to Internet-based video-streaming services that are eager for exclusive content as they attempt to attract more viewers either to appeal to advertisers or to bolster subscription-based platforms. Community finished its last season on NBC with an average of 3.6 million viewers an episode, according to data from Nielsen (NLSN) - Get Report.

"There's so much demand for original serialized content that buyers of that content are seeing it in a new light," said Anthony DiClemente, of Nomura Securities. "For example, we're seeing on-demand TV seasons stacking up that maybe didn't lend themselves to a linear platform five years ago but do now."

Yahoo! didn't respond to a request for comment about Community.

Community isn't the only network serial that's found an after-life online.

Arrested Development, which in 2013 was given a fourth and final season on Netflix (NFLX) - Get Report seven years after being cancelled by 21st Century Fox' (FOX) - Get ReportFox network, may have opened the floodgates. AMC's (AMCX) - Get Report police drama The Killing, which Netflix also picked up for a six-episode final season in 2014 after it had been cancelled, is another. Netflix is slated to begin production in March on a new season of the modern-Western police procedural Longmire, which A&E Networks, a joint-venture between Walt Disney (DIS) - Get Report and Hearst, ended in 2014 after three seasons.

When it comes to choosing what shows to resurrect, Netflix spokesman Cliff Edwards said the video-streaming service's subscribers, who pay a monthly fee of between $7.99 and $11.99, allows it to act differently from the traditional ways that TV networks have practiced for decades.

"Linear TV executives tend to cancel shows because they have low ratings or don't fit into the key audience demographic for advertisers, Edwards said. "But because we don't sell shows against ads, we can see that such shows have a good fan base and amortize their costs over a viewer base of 57 million members."

Granted, the number of TV shows that have been canceled and then picked up by online streaming companies pales compared to those outlets' new, original programs such as Netflix's House Of Cards and Amazon's Transparent. But those shows that have been brought back from the dead are names that prove streaming services are willing to consider untraditional options in order to appeal to their customers' desires.

According to data from Nielsen, Arrested Development pulled in 3.9 million viewers a show during its final Fox season. The aforementioned Longmire scored 3.7 million viewers an episode in its last year on A&E, while Nielsen said The Killing averaged 2.3 million viewers a show in its third and final season on AMC.

"It's pretty clear that television series that have broadcast for three seasons have some level of built-in followers," said Michael Pachter, a media-industry analyst with Wedbush Securities. "I think it makes the risk of production pretty low for the streaming service, who has only to pay a portion of the production cost in exchange for the first [broadcast] window."