Chris Hansen wants to go back to catching predators and he is asking the Internet for help doing it.

The veteran network news correspondent, known for the "Dateline NBC" investigative series "To Catch a Predator," is turning to crowd funding to support a new hidden-camera operation to capture men who use the Internet to find underage sex partners. The results will become the basis for a new series, "Hansen vs. Predator."

People can contribute to a campaign that Hansen is launching on Kickstarter, the Internet crowd-funding site that enables people to contribute money to a venture or cause they are passionate about. Hansen's fundraising target is around $400,000.

Crowd funding — now a $5 billion-plus industry — has been used to finance movies, new tech businesses and other projects. But Hansen is the first high-profile TV news personality to use the mechanism to revive a franchise for which he's already well-known.

"There is a pent-up demand from viewers for another investigation," Hansen said in a recent interview from his Connecticut home. "And from a technology standpoint, the landscape has really changed since we did the last one."

The new series will be presented on a digital Web channel before it's sold to a TV outlet.

H/T LA Times