NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - On the night that the movie "Brokeback Mountain" won four Golden Globe awards, including the one for best drama, it could not be seen in Peoria, Ill., or Montpelier, Vt.

When Felicity Huffman got the award for best actress for her work in the movie "Transamerica," you could not watch her performance in Atlanta or Cleveland.

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Scary movie Hollywood goes to war over simultaneous release of film and DVD. (Read the column)

Smaller independent films like "Nine Lives" and "Grizzly Man," which made some critics' Top Ten lists, never reached most of America. And many indie films, including some featuring directors and stars whose names you would know, and even those getting buzz right now at the Sundance film festival, never get distributed at all.

Josh Sapan is aiming to change that. Sapan, 56, is the president and CEO of Rainbow Media, a division of the New York-based cable operator Cablevision (Research). His job puts him right in the thick of the indie movie scene because he oversees the Independent Film Channel, a company called IFC Productions that makes movies, a smaller unit called InDiGent that makes digital films, a film distribution arm and the IFC Center, a three-screen art house in Greenwich Village. IFC companies have produced or distributed such movies as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Touching the Void," "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Transamerica."

Sapan's newest idea will use technology to expand the reach of independent movies: It's called IFC First Take and it is, in effect, an electronic art house, available over cable today and, in the future, probably over the Internet.

Beginning in March, IFC First Take will release independent films -- at least 24 in 2006 -- for video-on-demand on cable on the same day as they are released to theaters. Because IFC owns the IFC Center in lower Manhattan, it can guarantee at least a New York opening, which brings reviews and media attention.

"Thanks to technology," Sapan said, "we have the opportunity to create an electronic art house, available on demand, for a discrete, defined audience in every village, town and city."

This is not a revolutionary idea. For one thing, it's unlikely that there are a lot of great films being made that are not getting seen, in part because so many mediocre movies do get distribution. But this is one more example of the way digital technology allows for cheaper and wider distribution of niche programming -- including blogs and podcasts on the Internet, gay-themed channels or minor sports networks on digital cable, and now independent films on video on demand, or VOD.

Sapan has long been a proponent of VOD. "Video on demand is the future of entertainment viewing," he says. Already, Rainbow distributes Mag Rack, a collection of on-demand video magazines that includes such titles as "Motorcycle Freedom," "Smart Carb Gourmet," "Guitar Xpress," and "Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts." Did we mention that this is all about niche content?

Among the movies that IFC First Take will offer in the months ahead are "CSA: The Confederate States of America," a satire from executive producer Spike Lee that looks at what American would be like if the South had won the Civil War; "American Gun," a series of stories about gun violence starring Forest Whitaker, Donald Sutherland and Marcia Gay Harden; "Sorry, Haters," a thriller with political overtones starring Robin Wright Penn; and "Land of Plenty," a political post-9/11 film from director Wim Wenders.

Filmmakers, of course, are happy to have a new way of getting their movies out. Wenders, an acclaimed German director, told my FORTUNE colleague Devin Leonard that "Land of Plenty" is a film with "very explicity political intentions...with a lot of concern about cultural and moral developments in America" and so he wants it to reach as many Americans as possible.

It has already been distributed in Europe, but it is said to be too controversial for theaters in the U.S. That is also, evidently, the case for "Sorry, Haters," which failed to get theatrical distribution despite the efforts of Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn's husband, to lobby the major studios.

IFC First Take faces some distribution challenges of its own. So far, Rainbow has not announced deals with major cable operators. But Cablevision, its parent company, will carry it to about 1.8 million digital homes and Comcast (Research), the nation's biggest cable operator and the leading backer of VOD, which has nearly 10 million digital cable homes, is likely to go along as well. Although details remained to be worked out, cable subscribers will be able to buy all of the IFC First Take movies in a monthly subscription package or just pay for the ones they want to see.

IFC First Take is one of those ideas that ought to work. There are surely people between Manhattan and LA who would like to see more offbeat, adventurous or political movies -- just not enough of them to support art houses in most cities and towns. First cable, and then the Internet will connect those films to those viewers. The result will be a healthier and more diverse independent film business than the one we have today.