So why is upstart streaming-media site Icebox.com so red-hot?

The Los Angeles company’s original Web ‘toons have had more than 5.6 million “show viewings” since its launch this summer, drawing attention not only from Silicon Valley but from a more valuable source of money — Hollywood. Showtime Television has just snapped up the rights to develop Icebox’s “Starship Regulars” into a prime-time animated series; and Artisan Entertainment is looking to turn Icebox’s most popular program, “Mr. Wong,” into a direct-to-video movie. And as the firm debuts three new shows as part of its first “fall season,” it’s in talks with several studios and networks to sell television rights to three additional programs, as well as to develop a “first look” deal for its properties.

To put it simply, Icebox isn’t so much a webcaster as it is a ministudio — so it’s no wonder that its founders have elite Hollywood roots.

“We’re an incubator,” says co-founder and CEO Steve Stanford, referring to Icebox’s potential well of TV and film properties. (Stanford is a former executive at top talent agency International Creative Management, while fellow founders John Collier, Howard Gordon and Rob LeZebnik are executive producers for “King of the Hill,” “The X-Files” and “The Simpsons,” respectively.)

The company’s goal is to deliver “audience-ready” programs to networks and studios, thus eliminating the expensive costs of development. Think of it as a Kozmo.com for Hollywood development execs. It’s a clever move, yoking its business strategy to offline revenue. (The private company, which raised $15 million in financing, wouldn’t disclose how much revenue it has drawn since launching in June.)

And top writers have come on board because Icebox offers them unfettered creative freedom to produce the kinds of shows they want to make, even if the results sometimes stretch the boundaries of taste.

“Mr. Wong,” for instance, features the comic travails of a pastel yellow, hunchbacked, thickly accented Chinese manservant. The show, created by “South Park” writers Pam Brady and Kyle McCulloch, has been denounced by several Asian-American groups as racist. One recent episode had a drunken Mr. Wong urinating on the grave of Elvis Presley.

“T … t … take that, Elvis Ps … Ps … Prezzz-rey,” he moans.

In a recent guerrilla-marketing campaign, Icebox littered college campuses with fake Chinese menus for Mrwongskitchen.com. At the Web site, viewers see Mr. Wong dropping his trousers and screeching, “Suck my litchi nuts, you American bitches!” The company has even plastered posters with Mr. Wong flipping the bird near New York’s Chinatown.

“We certainly don’t encourage our writers to do things that are lowbrow,” Stanford says, but the lewd, crude frat-boy fare is aimed squarely at the 18-to-35 demographic the company aims for.

This fall, Icebox will unveil a show about a flamboyant fowl named “Queer Duck,” who pals around with his boyfriend, “Openly Gator.”

“It’s no different from “Will and Grace,” Stanford insists.

By serving as a testing ground for shows with potential to become television hits, Icebox may have discovered a solution to the biggest Web quandary — how to stay financially afloat.

After all, Stanford says, hit show “Seinfeld” is a $2 billion property. That isn’t dot-com vapor money, whose worth is tied up in the wild imaginations and speculations of investors. It’s cold, hard Hollywood cash.

Hollywood has shown an interest in Icebox because, each season, the networks lose millions to find the next “Seinfeld.” As Stanford points out, of some 100 shows that are commissioned each year, only a few dozen will actually be shot for pilots, and even fewer will actually get broadcast. NBC and Fox are each debuting six shows this fall, CBS has seven new offerings and even “not quite a network” WB is rolling out four shows — all with the hope that at least one show will be successful enough to return next year.

Meanwhile, producing an online cartoon — with no need for sets, actors, trailers or catering — is clearly a more economical proposition, and perhaps a more creative one. As Americans spend more time in front of computer screens, the potential online audience is becoming quite large. Icebox is taking particular aim at the college crowd and office slackers in their 20s and 30s — folks who tend to have fast Web connections.

Avoiding the bloated, cash-eating operations style of its predecessors, of course, is essential. So while a company like Shockwave.com dished out millions to lure names like director Tim Burton and “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Icebox doesn’t pay its creative recruits a cent. Rather, it pays in stock and shares 50 percent of profits from “offline exploitation,” which includes revenues from film, TV and merchandising deals.

As Stanford puts it, “We’re trying to align the incentives of the creatives to the incentives of the deal.”

Indeed, even with dot-com cash (which isn’t so easy to come by these days), Icebox can’t match Hollywood’s prices for writers. “They all make a ton of money already,” Stanford says. “They do incredibly well in television and film. OK, let’s say we could pay them $100,000 for a project. I mean, they could go skiing on that. You know? That’s a weekend of skiing.”

Get ready for AskOJ.com, set to go live on July 27 with a chat with Simpson. For $9.95 a month, mouse potatoes can surf through O.J.’s new, “never-before-seen” evidence surrounding the case of his murdered wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, buy autographed jerseys and helmets ($75 to $400) in the “Juice Shop,” chat live with Simpson and “special guests” and, eventually, see streaming video of the Juice taking a lie detector test. The site’s developers also have approached major networks and cable channels about simulcasting the “event.”

“AskOJ.com will enable me to speak directly to the public without interference,” the maligned football star said in a statement. “The main purpose is to answer questions and to bring out facts that have been ignored. Who knows, it may also open up avenues that could lead to the discovery of the murderer or the murderers.”

So is the Juice feeling squeezed? One has to wonder whether this is a classless attempt to fill his pockets with some extra cash.

After all, the self-styled dot-com entrepreneur still owes $30 million to the families of murder victims Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman after being found liable in a 1997 wrongful death suit. To pony up the dough, Simpson has resorted to selling old football trophies.

Recently, Simpson called Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Live” and accused Denise Brown, a guest on the show, of benefiting from her sister’s death, telling her, “You made money. You’re not on welfare anymore.”

“You are a pig. You are a lowlife,” Brown retorted.

But David Marshlack, president of Entertainment Network, swears O.J. won’t be drawing a dime. Instead, he says, Simpson has promised to donate profits to charities, including the Innocence Project, which provides legal help to inmates convicted on the basis of DNA evidence.

So what does Marshlack himself make of O.J.’s infamous acquittal of double homicide?

“I watched the whole trial pretty closely, and when I met with him, I realized there’s so much stuff I never saw,” he says. “Lots of physical evidence. All I can say is, it really opened my mind.”

Marshlack, however, refuses to go into further detail, insisting on remaining neutral. “I’m nothing more than Geraldo here.”

He got the idea for AskOJ.com in early June, while tossing back a few beers in a sports bar, watching the bitter Simpson-Brown shouting match unfold on Fox.

Now the big question: Will Denise Brown be invited for an AskOJ.com chat?

“That’s a possibility,” Marshlack says.