Reel Pop

Radiohead toons up with Aniboom

By Gretta Parkinson

Would that the good Lord might have given me some artistic abilities. Then I might have a prayer at competing against rabid Radiohead fans for a chance to produce an animated music video for one of the songs from their latest album, "In Rainbows."

Multiplatform animation network Aniboom is offering talented people that chance, provided they can come up with a storyboard, or sketches, or maybe even something more complicated to impress the band. Between now and April 27, animators can submit their entries to a panel made up of people from Aniboom, TBD Records and Adult Swim, which will select 10 semifinalists to produce a one-minute animated video on a $1,000 budget. Fans get the chance to rank the videos and vote for their favorites on aniboom.com and MySpace, but ultimately the members of Radiohead, including Thom Yorke and that crazy eye of his, will give the creators of their favorite video $10,000 for a shot at the real deal ... a world premiere on Adult Swim! Granted, that means a handful of "Space Ghost" fans, but still! That's TV!

Could this be another ploy by Radiohead to cement their status as the coolest band ever? Probably. But they pretty much already did that last year with their decision to offer their seventh album DRM-free digital--allowing fans to pay whatever they felt like paying.

JibJab Returns With '07 Salute

By Gretta Parkinson
Good news for Hollywood’s 15-minute club: America may have forgotten you and your ponyhawk for a time (Sanjaya), but JibJab.com has offered this year’s favorite train wrecks another minute or two in the limelight. The humor site's latest Flash cartoon, “In 2007,” does for the year what the Spiridellis brothers' “This Land” pardoy did for the presidential election in 2004 by exposing its utter ridiculousness...but sugarcoated, of course.
Watch this and and then try to listen to the parody's inspiration, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” without picturing an animated Sen. Craig surrounded by dancing angels in a bathroom. I dare you. With “cameos” by Miss Teen South Carolina, Michael Vick and Britney Spears in disastrous VMA peformance mode, JibJab will make America remember a year that should be forgotten. At least there was the iPhone.

Vuze Ready for Indie TV

By Andrew Wallenstein
IPTV service Vuze is looking to talent agency UTA to help deepen its content offerings, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Here's why Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa thinks he can get the edge over the likes of Joost and Babelgum in the P2P marketplace.
The inspiration came from the International Television Festival in May, where Vuze served as the submission platform for video content producers to have their online videos and TV pilots considered for top prizes in their respective categories. After surveying the 84 different submissions that came in from around the world--two from past Emmy winners--he realized "people were creating indie TV. It costs less and less to produce certain types of entertainment, so why not bring that in order to augment what we already do," Bianrosa said.
Vuze wants to play a role--with UTA's help--in giving producers a place to ply their wares outside traditional distribution channels. "What we need is to raise awareness in teh talet community about the existence of additional ways to monetize content," he said.

One Year of Yahoo's "Live Sets"

By Andrew Wallenstein
Yahoo threw itself a one-year-old birthday party Tuesday night in the Fox Studios' concert space where it has been shooting "Nissan Live Sets on Yahoo! Music." True to the sponsor in the title, guests milled around a parked Nissan GT-R, enjoying cocktails that came with ice cubes encased in plastic molds glowing Yahoo's signature purple. Matchbox 20 (pictured after the jump) were kind enough to stick around to perform a midnight-ish set, just hours after taping an upcoming edition of "Nissan."

The Video Equivalent of a Bread Sandwich

By Andrew Wallenstein

Can't make up my mind as to whether Firebrand, a new TV/online content venture that consists entirely of commercials, is a brilliant pomo masterstroke or a futile exercise in corporate hubris. On the one hand, commercials are those things I used to watch before I got Tivo. But the only reason I skip them is that 97% are awful and have no relevance to me.

But if you curate the best and make them accessible in a slick interface...sure, why not? Just don't pat General Electric and Microsoft, which launched Firebrand, too hard given I doubt they would have had the cojones to try this had Time Warner's TBS not already deployed a variation of this concept, VeryFunnyAds.com, and seen some success.

The New Breed That Never Will Be

By Andrew Wallenstein
LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein probably had the salivary glands of striking writers working in overdrive with his column today predicting the eventual emergence of the "writer-entrepreneur," who will bring his cinematic vision to the Internet without the need of established networks or studios for distribution.
It's a swell fantasy that I would only welcome, but this paragraph offers a clue as to why Goldstein may be offering nothing more than a pipe dream:

Will SyncTV Breed Unicorns, Too?

By Andrew Wallenstein
Is it me or does today's news on SyncTV, a new TV service from Pioneer Electronics, seem utterly, when-pigs-fly preposterous?

It's not the technology that makes me skeptical. I have no doubt this product can execute on its groundbreaking premise: enable consumers to buy individual TV channels for downloading. Launching in beta today, SyncTV also claims to have great video quality, works on both PC/Mac and attractive price points (single-digit dollars per channel).

Just one niggling doubt comes to mind: programming.

First Impressions: Hulu

Hulu, the long-awaited "answer to YouTube" co-venture between News Corp and NBC, launched in private beta this week. You can get a full rundown of Hulu's features from any number of sites. Here, I'd like to draw out the most powerful characteristics of the site:

Hulu vs YouTube
Comparing these two sites is a nuanced proposition. On the surface, they have little in common. Both allow you to view and share videos. But while YouTube offers user uploads, comments, and social networking features, Hulu is almost entirely presentational. Despite Silicon Valley's insistence that social networking features are tantamount to success, I would argue that 80% of consumers simply want to watch free video without comments or clutter. Hulu gives them that, and does it much better than any of the individual network sites. In fact, it does it better than YouTube. The basic competive landscape between then two sites is simple (see graphic below).

The real comparison between Hulu and YouTube is on the business level, i.e., will Hulu be a more profitable advertising machine for the networks than YouTube? I'm willing to bet the answer is yes, but only marginally. What Hulu really does is give the networks self-sufficiency in the online marketplace, thereby freeing them to be more aggressive in negotiations with YouTube, both in and out of the courtroom.

The Good Stuff for Consumers

1. Custom Embeds. Can't stress how important this is. The very fact that you can embed videos opens Hulu to a wide audience. Even better: You can custom-cut a section from a video to create your own clip (kinda like vidshare site Motionbox). What this does is empower the audience in a way previously accessible only to dedicated video editors. It will create discussions around single moments -- like, say, Miss South Carolina stumbling through an answer, or Jan saying something particularly funny on The Office.
2. Timeline Jumping. Extremely easy to jump to different parts of a video without the inconvenience of buffering.
3. Multiple channels/shows. Good out of the box selection: Fox, NBC, FX, SciFi, Bravo, E!, Fuel, USA, others.
4. Ease of use. A very simple, uncluttered interface that makes browsing and searching for titles easy. This is very important, because basically the networks are competing for the attention of consumers who want something for free. As one of those consumers, I have several choices: Bittorrent, YouTube, a variety of video-sharing sites, download on iTunes, Amazon UnBox, etc. Among those Hulu, hands down, offers the best combination of price and quality.

The Bad Stuff for Consumers

1. Time limits. You can only view the last five shows from a currently running TV program. Probably done to protect syndication revenue and DVD sales. Understandable, but not good enough. Hulu's forcing consumers into a course of action, the options of which include downloading illegally. Why not make it easy to download legally for a price?
2. Few movies. Only ten or so. Although they do have Conan the Librarian.
3. A few anemic features. Especially the "details" option on the player, which offers very little information, just like the "info" button on most cable boxes. Why not provide links to Wikipedia, or an in-house store of information about the video?

And now: Conan.

CBS to spread video content to 400 sites

So says Multichannel news. Content will be available by the fall. Current partnerships with TV.com, Comcast's The Fan, Slingbox and Brightcove have bumped traffic from 21 million unique users per month in May to the current 134 million. Interesting, considering that CBS Interactive prez Quincy Smith deemed the network's prior effort, Innertube, a failure, calling it cbs.com/nobodycomeshere.

A history of Microsoft's TV strategy

The post is a kind of a hummer for Redmond, but it includes info on MSN TV, Ultimate TV, Windows Media Center and Xbox Live.

The Pageantry of Al Gore

There came a point during Saturday's Live Earth webcast, otherwise known as the global effort to canonize Al Gore, when you almost expected the man to levitate off the stage and, in all his tofu-pallored glory, transubstantiate into a higher being. Maybe Bono.

Such was his saintly presence: On the stage at Giant Stadium in New York. On 30-foot tall screens in Brazil, Japan, and Australia. On the penitent lips of Madonna, Metallica, and Shakira. And, wait, are those his hands on the posters and title cards, cradling the globe? So unflagging is Gore in his devotion to climate change, and so ubiquitous on every continent's stage, that you begin to suspect the man himself runs on biodiesel, or at least slicks his hair with it.

And let's talk about biodiesel for a sec. The inescapable paradox of Live Earth is its mixed messaging. The MSN webcast's main sponsor is Chevy. The concert stages, no matter how carbon neutral, are power-sucking sound machines. The rock bands are jetsetting globo-tourists (a fact to which Duran Duran alluded during their set in London). And we all watched in our air-conditioned homes, with our brightly-lit LCD screens, as the world was pumped in through the middle class medium of broadband. Sigh. How conveniently we rage.

The rejoinder: At least the Web experience was more engaging, and thus offered more opportunities to act, than the Bravo television broadcast. The Bravo show skipped from big name act to big name act while relying on Dave Holmes and Karen Duffy -- Who? What? Shut up. -- to comment blandly on what you just saw. The effect was not unlike being a passenger in your grandmother's car. Go faster, turn here, oh hell forget it, I'll drive.

Bravo may have learned from MTV's bungling of Live 8 in 2005 (talk less, play music more), but only just. Bravo's only benefit: By watching both the Web and the time-shifted TV programming it was possible to achieve a media parallax in which Alicia Keys preceded Ludacris preceded Alicia Keys. Instant replay!

It's not hard to see where this is going. Reuters reported Sunday that the concerts were streamed 9 million times, almost double Live 8's day-after streams two years ago. The majority of the streams will come in the following weeks, with the number expected to climb to nearly 300 million. And then: More shows, more events, more everything online.

Live Earth is broadband's biggest event to date. And Al Gore, patron saint and band leader of climatology, its biggest star.

Sony Minisode Network first impressions

Three and a half to five minutes. That's the value, adjusted for inflation, of thirty couch-plopping minutes spent, circa 1976, watching Charlie's Angels. Or Starksy and Hutch. Or What's Happening. Those 70s era shows and twelve others form the videos in the Sony Minisode Network, which debuted this week on MySpace.

Nostalgic much? There's no shortage of bell bottoms, feathered and fluffy haircuts, afros, Lacoste tees, rainbow suspenders, Gran Torinos, thinly-veiled lessons in sugar sweet morality, and laugh tracks that sound about as human as an electrolarynx.

And whereas once you appreciated these shows for their aw shucks schlock -- seriously, was the laugh track of Silver Spoons stuck on awwwwwwww? -- now you can appreciate them for their unabashed shittiness.

Of course. These are shows that were developed according to the "least objectionable programming" model. They're leagues removed from the complexity of something like the Sopranos, the narrative depths of which reach truly Mariana trench proportions, with Tony Soprano the inscrutable coelacanth of televised literature.

There was no literature in Charlie's Angels. Rather: Molasses. Back then you didn't consume television. You sunk into an intrauterine bliss of slooooooow time.

Imagine the army of twenty-something editors at Sony: Raised on Dragonball Z! Armed with copies of Final Cut Pro! Gleefully, they snip out the offending offal. Snip the establishing shots! Snip the scene fades! Snip the character development! Snip snip snip!

Considering how television social networks and narrative arcs have advanced -- read Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You to appreciate the differences -- we must have had a Kubrickian moment when, like apes before the monolith, we understood for the first time that channel changers could be used as weapons. Evolution is ADD.

The good news, I guess, is the minisodes flatter you. If we can mentally backfill the details the editors cut we must be smarter, right?  Hmm. There's a gulf between being a smarter citizen and being a more efficient consumer. If there's any virtue to the minisodes, it's that they give you a chance to consider on which side of that gulf we're treading.

Homestar Runner spurns TV for web

How sweet is this: "There was a brief flirtation with Comedy Central and Adult Swim," Matt said. "The whole TV thing seemed creepy. They wanted to plug it into their model -- that all comedy was gag-related -- not character ---driven. They left the door open, but we liked what we were doing and kept doing it on-line."

Reminds me of Virginia Heffernan's review of Comedy Central's Motherload, which describes the site perfectly:   "I opened new windows when the site was funny, which was often. And that's the serious disappointment of ''MotherLoad,'' and so much professional online video. The programming is faster, smarter and funnier than conventional television, but it also exists to please. It's puppyish, in fact, darting around with its slobbery, panting, inelegant style, doing anything to win our affection. Do you like this? Is this hip? How about vegetables that talk, or testicles with eyes, or jokes about breasts, or dumb celebrities, or dumb foreign policy, or how Jesus smokes pot? Are you shocked? Or how about we say a funny word like anus? Anus anus anus."

Sony Minisodes debut next week

The minisode network that Sony announced in April, and which will include five-minute versions of old network staples "Charlie’s Angels," "The Facts of Life," "Fantasy Island" and "Who’s the Boss,"  will debut on MySpace next week. Expect to see my review here or in the pages of the Hollywood Reporter. I'm looking forward to watching these -- they give big ups to Steven Johnson's thesis that older TV narratives are less complicated, and they explore the condensed visual language employed so effectively in Prom Queen.

Bravo announces four new webisodes

Bravo's web site makes me want to stab myself in the eyes. Nevertheless: They're debuting four web-only shows this month. The series feature comedians Billy Eichner and William Sledd, and "Top Chef's” Carlos Fernandez and Lee Anne Wong.

Yesterday, Tuesday, was the premier of "My Life on the Z-List: Jen's Vlog," a companion web series to "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List." The vlog showcases "Jen," (a.k.a. internet comedian and television writer Billy Eichner) Bravo's newest employee, as she attempts to gain fame and become the Web's new "It" girl. Problem is, I can't find the damn thing on Bravotv.com. Let me know if you run across it.

Other shows: "Miami Spice: Hot Recipes with Latin Flavor," features "Top Chef” season two favorite Carlos Fernandez, who will prepare Latin dishes, premiering June 13th. "Top Recipe: The Wong Way to Cook," featuring Chef Lee Anne Wong who will demonstrate the winning recipe unveiled on the previous night's "Top Chef." Streams every Wednesday starting June 13. Last but not least: "Ask a Gay Man," featuring YouTube star William Sledd, which premieres mid-June at Outzone.tv.

Lunch Break

From ye olde inbox: Arby's is sponsoring The Lunch Break, a 30-minute collection of NBC comedy videos airing weekdays from noon to 2PM. Among the featured shows are clips from "30 Rock," "The Office," and "Saturday Night Live," as well as late-night monologues, comedy shorts, Web-exclusive videos and classic sitcom moments. Once logged in, no additional typing is required. According to the press release, the site is geared toward the nearly 60% of office workers in the U.S. who spend their lunch breaks at their desks looking for distractions.

Slate V

WSJ: Slate V, an online video site to be launched June 25 by Slate.com, the daily Web magazine about politics, news and culture owned by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. Slate, which has hosted videos on its site since August, plans to produce at least one new video a day for Slate V. One example: a regular feature called "Damned Spot," consisting of short videos that dissect political ads.

Wallace and Gromit in Joost cahoots

Aardman Animations, the U.K. studio behind "Wallace & Gromit" and CBS' upcoming "Creature Comforts," is the latest high-profile content owner to launch its own branded channel on Joost. Back in October 2005, Aardman lost its entire back catalogue of film and set pieces when its Bristol studio caught fire.

ABC player problems

Traffic logs can tell you a lot about what people are looking for. Recently, a lot of folks have been looking for help with the streaming media player at ABC.com. If you've been having problems watching your shows online, drop me a line at reelpop [at] gmail dot com with details about your trials and tribulations. I'll try and get answers from ABC, but they've been completely uncooperative in addressing problems.

Update: For now, the ABC player doesn't support Linux, and I'm told it won't work outside of the US. Vista users also seem to have problems.

Update #2: If the player hangs while loading, try clearing your browser's cache and restarting the browser. I've found this works for me. Also make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed.

Update #3: According to this AVS Forum thread, some Windows users have experienced problems after upgrading to Windows Media Player 11. If you're a tech savvy sort, try uninstalling or downgrading to WMP 10.

Update #4: If you have a Norton ad blocking application, I've heard that may cause problems as well. Try disabling any blocking utilities, restart the browser, and try again.

TVFace

Oh the horror. If the softcore stylings of Prom Queen aren't enough to convince you that web video offers more than comedy these days, then check out the trailers for TVFace, a new episodic horror vid debuting at tvface.com in July.

The 39-episode series follows comic book artist Mitch, an avid collector of rare horror VHS tapes, who is compelled by his mysterious publisher to battle "unimaginable forces of evil." Each episode is three minutes long. The series is produced by David Britz and directed by Dean Bull. First episode launches July 7. (FWIW, that's one day before the release of Eli Roth's Hostel III in theaters.)

Clark and Michael, 2nd episode

Just a heads up that the second episode of the CBS web only series, Clark and Michael, starring Arrested Development's Michael Cera, went live this morning. It's a hilarious show, highly recommended. My full review will appear later today at hollywoodreporter.com.

Bud.tv may close later this year

You can't say I didn't tell you so. And tell you so. And tell you so. Anheuser-Busch may shutter its failed video content play Bud.tv later this year, though the content may live on on other sites or formats. Success requires accessibility. Simple. True.

Review: Getting Away with Murder

Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be hitmen. Especially nebbish hitmen like Seth Silver, who at 25 still lives at home, takes his mom contra dancing once a week, and always answers her calls, even if he's in the middle of a quadruple homicide. Mom, in this case, is Rhonda "Ronnie" Silver, a Jewish television chef who thinks Seth is a veterinarian. The only person who knows the truth about Seth's true vocation: His womanizing friend with a shoe fetish, Rex.

Such are the Oedipal underpinnings of "Getting Away with Murder," IFC's new web comedy series which debuted on Sunday. The series is at once hilarious, depraved and gory. Happy Mother's Day!

And hello Peter Pan. "Getting Away with Murder" marks yet another take, albeit a brilliantly funny one, on the man-child character with a Peter Pan complex (thank you Wes Anderson). Once a charming expression of boyhood imagination, Peter Pan has become shorthand for social retardation and sexual dysfunction (thank you Michael Jackson). Thus Seth, no good with the ladies -- "I hate girls," reads his latest blog entry -- becomes disturbingly good with guns. And garrotes. And C4. He's found the fountain of eternal youth, but the spigot's spurting blood.

Speaking of: We meet Seth for the first time at the Ponce de Leon Hotel and Spa. Disguised as Randy the bellhop, Seth sneaks into his victim's suite and uses a silencer to dispatch two burly guards, who writhe comically as blood spatters the camera lens. Next up is a half-naked girl in the bedroom, whom Seth drugs with a syringe. Then he pokes at her boob like it's a science experiment. The coup de grace: Drowning an old man in the bathtub. And then his cell phone rings.

"Ma, I told you never to call me at work!" But Ronnie hasn't found him out. She only wants him to pick up some asparagus on his way home.

And so it goes throughout the 13-episode season, with Seth casually greasing old men and avoiding his mom's preening while trying to set a date with a bookstore clerk. On his trail: An FBI investigator and another emotionally vestigial hitman named Pinkie, a sadistic torturer who plays "Hostel" to Seth's "Grosse Pointe Blank." Playing sidekick to the anti-hero is the boy wonder Rex, a foul-mouthed cad who works at a mall store called Pretty in Pumps. Beside this lech, Seth comes across as the good guy.

And isn't that a neat trick. In a hyperviolent world beset by real-life school shootings and daily reports of international violence, a cold-blooded hitman becomes a sympathetic character. Strangely endearing, this killer who loves his mamma.

"Getting Away with Murder" is IFC's first web-only series, with new shows debuting every Monday through August 6. The show is written by Andrew Schwartz and written/directed by Bennett Barbakow. ifc.com/static/sections/gettingawaywithmurder/

***

p.s. The actor who plays Seth, Gilbert John Echternkamp, has also filmed a documentary about his parents called "Frank and Cindy." That doc was featured in episode four of "This American Life" on Showtime.

Natalie Portman, this is your lifecast

Pixie-perfect actress Natalie Portman is hunting for funding in Silicon Valley. Her project: A continuous video feed of her personal and professional life, streamed live to the Web.

Will this be a lifecast in the vein of Justin.tv? Natalie with a minicam strapped to her head? Not a big departure from her Garden State headgear. But still. Not something you expect from the Harvard actress known, in comparison to more vacuous pop starlets, as a discreet personality.

Whatevs. Call this business plan Cam-a-lot: A shiny, new, superpublic lifestyle. Or: Think EdTV meets The Real World, but with a 1st person twist -- Natalie will be the star of the show, but rarely actually in the show. We'll see her life from her perspective, her POV, but our opinions are formed by the reactions of others, the faces that appear in the camera. Like in Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, or Spike Jonze's Malcovich, you become Natalie. It's an exercise in narcissism. It's realism ad nauseum. It's so meta it hurts. And we'll be there with her: All. The. Time.

Maybe this isn't fair. She hasn't even announced the project, and who knows whether it'll ever come to light. But just wait till Paris hears about this idea. Welcome to the new fame, the arms race to ubiquity.

Prom Queen gets roughly 200,000 views a day

About halfway through its 80-day run, Eisner's Prom Queen, which is showing on MySpace (see Reel Pop's review), is getting about 200,000 views per day, and more than 5.2 million views overall.

That's about the equivalent of a low-rated cable show. For comparison's sake:

• ABC's top-rated show, Dancing with the Stars, received about 18.5 million viewers on Monday alone.
• HBO's The Sopranos received about 4 million viewers on Sunday.
• USA"s Law & Order SVU received about 2.8 million viewers on Saturday.
• Alanis Morisette's "My Humps" video on YouTube has received over 6 million views in the last four weeks.
• Smosh's "Anthony Gets a Haircut" on YouTube has received almost 2 million views in the last three weeks.

Perhaps a more important indicator of Prom Queen's success, though, is the 18,000+ friends the show and its characters have garnered.

Super Friends

Challenge of the Super-Duper Friends is the work of Philippine blogger and comic book creator Jonas Diego. A better working title would be "The Super can't form a consensus waffling poll smoking Friends," but we'll let that slide.

For previous parodies of Superfriends, check the classic "Superfriends Wassup" and Superfriends Office Space.

When we said Facebook was an intimate social network, we really meant "TV deal"

You only have seven days left to upload your life story to The Facebook Diaries, a show based on videos uploaded by Facebook users which will debut sometime in May on Comcast cable and Comcast's video platform, Ziddio. The show is being produced by R.J. Cutler, who produced the FOX television show "American High" and "Freshman Diaries," among others.

Looking through the videos you notice that teenage/college language is tag-based: "passion," "life," "dreams." Broad words for what are, so far, narrow lives. Placeholder words for things yet to be done.

Cutler may be trying to produce a series on the complexities of teenage life, but many of contributors, for their part, seem only too interested in casting themselves in familiar roles: The free spirit drama major, the dreamer, the girl who really (no really!) can't be defined in simple terms.

Actually professor, by "porno solipsism" I just meant that I can lick my own wee wee.

Pornstar Ron Jeremy, famous for his athletic feats of self-gratification -- and whose new tech review show on Heavy.com debuts this Thursday -- is causing a lil' kerfluffle on the campus of Simmons College, where he's scheduled to debate feminist author Susan Cole as part of his Porn Debate Tour.

Those poor girls. So passionate. So conflicted. They hate Ron for being sexist. They hate Susan for being simple. They hate each other for not recognizing the deep complexities of this issue. How to solve this? Talk to local news reporters.

Meanwhile, on the Internets, reaction: "Bonus points goes to the silly 4-year, Eva Rae, who said of Jeremy "He is a white privelidged [sic] male who makes his living off of racism, sexism, and classism." Quoth the white privelidged [sic] female who makes her living off of racism, sexism, and classism. You idiot, what do you think made your Mommy and Daddy the money they're spending to send you to such an expensive school?"

The good news, sir, is that we have a great sketch comedy troupe. The bad news is, the audience likes cartoons.

Last Friday saw the return of Acceptable TV along with the previous week's winners, Homeless James Bond and the animated skit Mr. Sprinkles. The second Bond skit bombed, though -- I'll wager Sprinkles and one of the new skits, Operation Kitten Calendar, carry on to next week. So far I'm 1 for 2. I voted for Who Farted and the Homeless 007 sketches.

Who screams for Prom Queen?

The first episode of Prom Queen debuts today on MySpace. The show, which is the first series from the Michael Eisner-financed video site Vuguru, will unfold over 80 episodes, each 90 seconds in length.

Dramatis personae: Nikki (hearts Chad), Chad (hearts Nikki), Sadie (hearts Morissey), Lauren (has daddy issues), Curtis (has anger issues), Nolan (is Stifler), Danica (is British), Ben (plays sports), Courtney (plays grown-up), Josh (is from juvie).

Prom Queen Episode 1: The Long Walk

Max Attack

(via) Full episodes of the 1987 TV series Max Headroom are now available for viewing online and for download at AOL Video.

The '80s were rife with cyberpunk cinema -- Bladerunner, Brazil, Akira -- but Max Headroom was the first American TV series to present a dystopic vision of our technology-gone-wrong future. Unfortunately, the show was canceled after less than two seasons, and a DVD set has yet to be released. Below, a few clips from YouTube. Related: Max Headroom hijacks Chicago's airwaves.

Before coming to ABC, Max had a talk show in the UK. Below, he interviews Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran:

The BBC's Terry Wogan interviews Max:

Canadian actor Matt Frewer portrayed Max Headroom. Here he is introducing the show to David Letterman, circa 1987:

The show came to ABC in March, 1987. Here's the promo:

 

After his TV series, Max Headroom found work as a spokesperson for Coke:

Moderating NYC panel: Traditional media meets the digital challenge

This is late notice, but if you're in NYC tonight I'm moderating a panel discussion hosted by the International Radio and Television Society foundation. The panel is called "Traditional Media Meets the Digital Challenge," and includes the following panelists:

• Betsy Frank
  Chief Research and Insights Officer
  Time, Inc.
• Terry Mackin
  EVP, Director of Digital Media
  Hearst-Argyle Television
• Michael Steib
  Director, Television Advertising
  Google
• Michael Zimbalist
  VP, Research and Development Operations
  The New York Times

The panel will be held at Leela Lounge, 1 West 3rd Street (corner of Broadway) near the 6 at Bleecker Street and the N, R, W at Prince St.

I've got plenty of fun questions to ask the panelists, including (broadly) the importance of video in terms of revenue, the place of affiliate television stations in an online video world, Google's importance/threat to the online video and advertising markets, other forms of digital initiatives (USAToday's focus on social networking, Time's recent purchase of FanNation, Sports Illustrated's VOD channel), metrics for understanding the success of video, the place of videoblogging and reporting in traditional media sites, and the importance of mobile content. I might also ask them about Twitter, just for kicks.

If you have any suggestions for questions, leave 'em in the comments.

 

Review: Acceptable TV

Television was once for the lazy, the slouchers and the ploppers, the exhausted folk who found catharsis in a change of channels. Then American Idol, then YouTube, and suddenly TV is all about participating, about voting has-beens off dance floors and wouldbe's onward to pop stardom. The trope: America has fallen in love with democracy. The truth: To the boob tube polity, democracy is just a fancy way of saying "you suck."

Thus: Acceptable TV, the new VH1 series that brings suffrage to sketch comedy, letting you decide what skits are good and which deserve to be canned.

The show debuted Friday at 10pm. Each 30-minute broadcast contains five three-minute skits, each a proposed TV series, and you, the viewer, are asked to vote for your favorite on Acceptable.tv. The three skits with the fewest votes are canceled and replaced with new skits the following week. Jack Black, stentorian goofball, is the executive producer. Producers Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab, creators of the short film competition Channel 101 and original producers for the Sarah Silverman program, are comedians pro tempore of the 10-person cast.

My full review will appear on the Hollywood Reporter's web site later this week. What I don't talk about in the review, however, is the show's approach to the Web audience, which absolutely rocks. Take a look at the site: You can vote on the show, upload your own skits for consideration (the producers show one user upload per show), and embed the show's skits.  Very cool. Looks like the site has drawn around 40 comments per skit already. Except for Mr. Sprinkles, which has 102, and looks destined to return next week.

Below, one of the premier skits, Homeless James Bond:

Bud.tv only had 253k visitors in February

Tony Ponturo, VP at A-B, to the New York Times, February 4th: If after a year, between two million and three million people between the ages of 21 and 34 are visiting each month, "It would put us in high cotton," Ponturo said. (An audience of that size would tower over what sites like Heavy.com and Break.com see.) But if that traffic figure is stalled in the mid-six-figures, "then I would think that we’ve missed the mark," he said.

Tony Ponturo to the Hollywood Reporter today: "The first week after Super Bowl, the site got an average of 20,000 visits a day, but only about 800-1,000 a day were registering -- we think because of the registration process," Ponturo said via e-mail.

Oh, Vuguru. That's like some Web 2.0 word for soft porn, right?

Mikey has a dirty mind. Michael Eisner, the former Disney exec, fresh from financing Veoh -- that's the vid share site being sued by gay pornographers for copyright infringement -- is now financing video site Vuguru, the name of which sounds like some cross between holistic therapy and viagra. The site's first wouldbe hit? Prom Queen, a lace and daggers sexcapade. Sweet kittens, Mike, you motorboatin' skin-a-max Jacobite, you old hound dog you!

 

Final Four of Online Video

Click the image above for a full screen view.

In celebration of the 2007 NCAA tournament, and with a hat tip to "The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything" (which we haven’t read but hear is super good), Reel Pop presents the Final Four of Online Video. Collected here, part one in the four-part series, which we're calling "Pain and Simple": Among the various ways to amuse yourself online, watching people maim themselves (and others) ranks well for lowest effort and highest reward. From nut shots to happy slaps, errant trampoline bounces to face plants on concrete, the Internet, it seems, was made for schadenfreude.

We'll be pubbing three more of these brackets before March 16th, when the NCAA Final Four starts. Whereas this bracket concentrates on stupid and painful videos, the next brackets will feature famous folks' faux pas, rapping/karaoke/cover bands, and insane stunts involving expensive machinery.

Veoh's XXX copyright problems

CNET's Greg Sandoval has an article up today about Veoh's potential copyright problems, nothing that the site is filled with infringing clips. Sandoval notes that Veoh's strategy, which is to remove infringing videos but not filter uploads, is dangerous at a time when even YouTube is suffering from a media backlash.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention the fact that Veoh was already sued for copyright infringement in June 2006 by Io Group, a publisher of gay adult videos.

See my recent post A brief guide to online video lawsuits for more info.

Veoh relaunches, looks pretty

P2P vid-sharing site Veoh relaunched today with an updated familiar Web 2.0 design today (horizontal stripes! shiny buttons!).

According to Reel Pop friend Marshall Kirkpatrick over on Techcrunch, new features will be rolling out this week and include:

• Veoh will start automatically recommending videos to users; the algo was developed by MusicMatch's Ted Dunning.
• Pro users will be able to charge other users for downloads (sure to please the networks and studios)
• Pro users will also be able to cross-post videos to Google Video, MySpace and YouTube.

Veoh recently partnered with US Magazine and United Talent Agency. Former Disney maestro Michael Eisner is on the board. We briefly reviewed Veoh last year.

Veoh is one of my favorite video clients. Not only does it provide full-length, high-quality vids, but the site also allows you to download vids to multiple computers. IOW, if you install the client on a home computer and a work computer, you can specify which client each video goes to.

Veoh was sued last year by Io Group, a publisher of adult videos, for copyright infringement. Veoh has denied the allegations. A settlement conference for that lawsuit was scheduled for yesterday in San Jose federal district court.

Bud.tv wouldn't let me register, so I lied

Last night, while I was averting my eyes from the pasty-faced shambles of Rex Grossman's career, I decided to waste some time by checking out Bud.tv, Anheuser-Busch's $30 million branded entertainment project.

But no go. The Web site, which is protected by an age verification system that checks your data against driver's license records, wouldn't let me sign up. The log-on screen asks for your e-mail address, first name, last name and zip code. I tried no fewer than four different zip codes and three different spellings of my name. Eventually I found myself in the awkward position of sitting at a friend's house laptop in one hand, wallet in the other, as I doublechecked the spelling of my own name against my license. All to log onto a Budewiser Web site. During the Super Bowl. Sigh. Eventually I used my dad's name and birthday. Thanks dad.

Budweiser provides a 1-800 number to call if you're having logon problems, but c'mon -- who's gonna take time to do that? It's easier to do what I did, and I'm not a very smart man. I'm pretty sure teenagers can figure that trick out.

My point is this: Bud.tv is going to have a hard time achieving success when they make it this hard to get into their site. If they want to go viral (whatever that means), they've got to remove the age verification system.

Jeff Pulver's $40,000 Challenge

Voice-cum-video evangelist Jeff Pulver is giving away $40,000 in a contest to see who can create the best online video show about watching TV on the Web. "Take five minutes to show the world how to watch Internet TV," Pulver says in the video announcing the contest. The official rules are here.

灵魂排挡: The Chinese version of "Friends"

Among the many dubious benefits NBC's long-running show "Friends" bestowed upon our culture -- lessons in how to bang your best friends notwithstanding -- was a certain level of media ubiquity typically reserved for truly unparagoned events. Like, say, the unveiling of Britney's bojangles, or nuclear war. I mean, really. "Friends" may as well be syndicated onto the inside of our skulls.

But as bad as Ross and Rachel's omnipresence became, I had hoped that the show, like football, NASCAR, and most of the population of Alabama, had been contained on our shores. Alas. I give you 灵魂排挡 (Soul Partners), the Chinese version of Friends, in which six friends (three guys, three girls) buy the same apartment after a real estate swindle and are forced to live together.

The series is being distributed via the Chinese video-sharing site Mofile and has one advertiser: The real estate company who loaned the video makers an apartment.

Side note: Mofile is slooooow. Don't know if that's my connection, their servers, or the karmic comeuppance of revisiting Friends upon us. OMG! You're so like Rachel! OMG! You're so like Chandler! OMG OMG OMG!

Hey advertisers: Rich yuppies watch TV online

TV networks are tapping into a younger, more affluent demo when they make their shows available online, according to a recent study from Nielsen Analytics and Scarborough Research.

Among the "findings" are items you already know: People who pay $3.50 for a small latte also pay to download movies and watch them around other people who have also paid $3.50 for their own small lattes. Causing those of us who steal movies and watch in the comfort of our own home to have no place to sit when we buy our own $3.50 lattes. But then, I guess that's the karmic circle of life.

Related: There's this homeless dude at the Astor Place Starbucks who hangs out in the window and watches Grey's Anatomy on his portable DVD player.

MSN's The Big Debate Disappoints

Last Fall, Reveille Productions -- the studio owned by Ben Silverman, who Americanized the British comedy "The Office" and imported "Ugly Betty" from Columbia -- partnered with MSN to produce 10 Web shows. The Web programming marks MSN's return to video entertainment, ten years after its first and failed foray into the market.

Unfortunately, the first show to be produced, The Big Debate, is a bit of a disappointment. In my review for The Hollywood Reporter, which appears in print tomorrow, I laud the two-and-half minute daily gossip show's high energy, but the comedy falls flat. The actors who debate the topics of the day -- is Madonna a better mommy than Angelina, should JT date Britney again -- are good talents on their own, but the show forces them into a "rehearsed extemporization" formula that's too clever by half.

What I don't mention in the review is that Reveille and MSN are, without a doubt, onto a hot video strategy. Simply take MSN's most trafficked subject matter -- gossip, cooking, travel, etc. -- and create a quick, low-budget show that will be promo'd on MSN's super visible home page.

In a world of traffic stats, it's not hard to see what people are interested in. But the trick is providing them content in a way they want to see it. Because FYI: If you go check out the show now, you've gotta load a popup window and sit through an ad. And that ad -- it hasn't changed in a week. Making the show embeddable and using product placement and in-frame ads would be more amenable to my browsing habits.

DayZLoop: Teen Girl Mag with video

Via Anastasia Goodstein's excellent YPulse, news of a new online teen girl magazine called DayZLoop, which describes itself as "the first online infotainment television network that touches on all facets of teen girls' lives."

The site offers a paid subscription, so I couldn't sample the video myself. I'm automatically cynical about for-fee sites, especially when they're aimed at a demographic that doesn't have their own income. But the video shows, about topics such as yoga, art, gadgets, music and situational hypotheticals -- "what would you do if you ruined your best friend's shirt?" -- look like well-produced, hip and non-risque fare.

Taking a tip from NBC, CBS offers behind the scenes footage of "The Class" on the Web

NBC said last December they were mulling whether to webcast rehearsals of Saturday Night Live. NBC hasn't pulled the trigger on that plan yet, but CBS is beating them to the punch by webcasting the table read and run-thru sessions for "The Class." The first webcast begins today at 11am PT/2pm ET.

"The Class" debuted last September and was created by David Crane, executive producer of "Friends" and "Mad About You," and Jeffrey Klarik, who has written episodes of the "Mad About You," among other TV series.

"The Class" won the People's Choice Awards for best new comedy earlier this month.

Apple TV announced, but only offers 720p

The Apple Store is still down for updating, but the news is out: Apple officially unveiled its ITV concept product that wirelessly streams video to your TV, and its called Apple TV.

Apple TV is a small(ish) box that can connect to five computers, offers USB, ethernet and HDMI inputs, a 40GB hard drive, and transmits at 802.11 b/g and 802.11n. The video sent is only 720p, which is quite a step below the 1080i that HD TV sets come equipped to broadcast. Apple TV costs $299.

The good news is that Apple TV looks like a great solution for those who have a large video library on their computers. And given that Apple is increasingly signing more content to iTunes, it looks like a convenient way to view movies. The bad news is that Microsoft's Xbox also offers great movie content, is already hooked to your TV, and offers HD content in 1080i. Of course, Xbox doesn't have an HDMI port, but rumor has it that port is coming soon.

Meanwhile, if you're not satisfied with Apple's or Microsoft's gear, you have a bevy of other options.

CBS Really, Really (No, Really!) Wants You to Think They're Hip

Does the "C" in CBS stand for cheerleader?

The network, which has been very, very bullish on digital media prospects -- especially since Quincy Smith was named president of interactive -- just released another "survey" that reiterates what should be a well-known fact: As the public at large becomes more connected to digital media, the more engaged they become in primetime television programming.

Well, I'm not so sure about the "primetime" part, but we're definitely interested in good content. And while the best content tends to rise from primetime slots, I can't remember the last time I actually watched a primetime show I hadn't Tivo'd.

The survey goes on to state (I won't bore you with their internally-generated numbers) that people are interested in online video and interested in HD content. Of course, given that CBS is already censoring comments on YouTube, I wonder if their interest in HD is just a euphemism for interest in controlling high-quality picture content that won't look good in today's Web-based Flash players. Just a thought. Maybe the "C" stands for "cunning."

One other thing: CBS prez Moonves will be a keynote speaker at this year's CES show. There's a lot of press noise that this is the year that big media is going to take back entertainment from the Web and technology companies. Or, rather, that they're going to take advantage of the disruptions that tech companies ushered in and regain their dominant position as producers and controllers of content.  Right now, I can see that happening, but not to the extent the media companies want. If you think otherwise, let me know in the comments.

Screenshots from the Venice Project

Screenshots from the Venice Project are circulating online, but if you haven't seen them already check the shots below.

No, I'm not talking about Robert Dornhelm film of the same name. The Venice Project I'm talking about is a double secret probation affair being developed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the creators of Skype. The project is a P2P distribution network for television shows.

FWIW, it's almost impossible to find the movie called "The Venice Project" when you search on Google. Usually, searching for a movie title leads you right to IMDB, because IMDB has been SEO'd out the wazoo. But the P2P Venice Project is the topic of so many prominent blogs' posts -- GigaOm, Techcrunch, etc. -- that IMDB is nowhere to be found.

"Starring Amanda Congon" debuts tomorrow

Amanda Congdon, née of Rocketboom and current ABC news correspondent, will debut a new online show tomorrow. The show, "Starring Amanda Congdon,"  will be a behind-the-scenes look at Amanda's life in LA "as she juggles new projects in the  traditional and new media."

Congdon's show will be sponsored by a new Dove product and by video chat company Paltalk. Blip.tv, which we profiled here, is hosting the show, and they'll be splitting ad revenue with Congdon 50/50.

It's a testament to Amanda's stature as a video personality that she's already corralled sponsors for a show that, apparently, isn't about anything except her day-to-day life. That's not to belittle Amanda's 24/7, which is surely a hurly-burly hodgepodge of media interactions. On the contrary, the show is attractive because it is essentially a user-generated paradise.

Think about the ideal that Amanda represents: Not only can you become a star creating your own videoblog, but that stardom is so interest-worthy that you can parlay it into a show that's about nothing more than -- you guessed it -- creating shows. Amanda Congdon is a matryoshka doll of marketability. She's the Seinfeld of videblogging.

Amanda Congdon Chats the News at ABC

You can learn a lot about a woman by the t-shirt she wears. On her first day as an ABC news correspondent, Amanda Congdon, former hostess of popular videoblog Rocketboom, wore a t-shirt that read Steely Dan.

You remember Steely Dan, right: That '70s jazz and funk band named after the steam-powered dildo in William Gibson's S. Burroughs' seminal piece of Beat literature, Naked Lunch. Or, if you're less inclined to salacious factoids, you may remember that Steely Dan was founded by two young men who met in New York, traveled across the country to Los Angeles, and found work as staff songwriters for a little company called ABC Records.

Sound familiar? You'll find that career's echo in Amanda Congdon, who also left New York, town-hopped her way across the 48 contiguous states with her producer boyfriend Mario Librandi, and landed her current deal in Los Angeles at ABC News.

And what a deal it is. No longer consigned to indie status, Congdon is now a bona fide newscaster sans newscaster bona fides: No schoolmarmish pant suit, no practiced gravitas. Just the Barbie Doll looks and that karate chop delivery. Pretty moments done quickly. It's almost as if she's flirting with the news.

In Congdon's first segment, which aired today, she chats -- and yes, she chats the news, she doesn't recite it -- about the Nintendo Wii, javascript (a nod to her nerdcore roots), virtual snowflakes, spam and the new blood substitute oxycyte. She does it all while sitting at the requisite newscaster desk, which looks positively anachronistic below Congdon's hotter-than-thou bust. If videoblogging is so new, why are we still confined to the same old news format and props?

So if the delivery seems a bit forced, it may be the hottie's hipness chafing against the staid ABC container.

Congdon will be videoblogging several times a week (I believe, there's no notice on the site), and she's already asking for audience participation. So go ahead. Join the fun. Just remember the wise words of ol' Steely Dan:

I stepped up on the platform
The man gave me the news
He said, You must be joking son
Where did you get those shoes?

- Pretzel Logic

Know any Sexy Chefs?

Apparently I'm the last person to hear about this. TasteTV is accepting nominations for a new series called Sexy Chefs. Quick, somebody nominate Chris Farley:

Dailymotion is Removing Illegal Videos

Last month the spotlight was on France-based video-sharing site Dailymotion, which Forbes magazine noticed was a magnet for copyrighted videos. Forbes even pointed out how an entire secondary market of Web sites had grown around Dailymotion, sites which simply collated and pointed to the illicit clips.

But now it looks like Dailymotion is cleaning up its act. Several sites that collate copyrighted clips on Dailymotion, such as the Simpson's-centric allsimps.com, have shut down. And searching for several different types of copyrighted material on Dailymotion returns no results.

A quick scan of the tags page shows that most tags are French, and several formerly popular English tags have been removed. Heck, Dailymotion used to be a hotbed of salacious webcam videos too, but even those are gone.

Is Dailymotion running scared of copyright police? Could be. Dailymotion has been gaining visitors, and France (and Europe in general) has been a hotbed of copyright activity lately. Last month a French video producer sued Google Video in France to have his documentary removed. And French press association Agent France Presse sued Google this year for copyright infringement through Google News. Google was also sued by Louis Vuitton for showing ads for Vuitton rivals, and sued by French publisher La Martiniere for digitizing its books without permission.

While none of these lawsuits speak to the Dailymotion situation directly, they certainly suggest that France is quite the stickler for copyright law. If anybody has more info on the French legal system in this regard, hit me up on the e-mail.

A Brief and Amusing List of Alternative Endings to Movies and TV Shows

Once upon a time I thought movies only had one ending.

Obviously, this was a time before DVD extras. And, poor naive soul that I was -- what's a focus group, dad? -- I thought for every single movie there was a single script, and the writers protected that script by, I dunno, shellacking it with wood stain or freezing it in carbonite. It was comforting, the idea that the writers had created a single, inviolable piece of art. I just figured it was kinda like the Highlander, y'know? There could be only one.

Then came DVDs and their bonanza of plot-smashing alternate endings. And while it was discomfiting for me to discover that scripts were the collaborative product of competing interests, I had to admit: It was nice to know that Kevin Smith considered offing that pudgy guy Dante in Clerks. Seriously. What a nancypants.

Of course these days, the alternate ending isn't just confined to studio-produced DVDs^[1].  Fans create edited scenes and alternate endings and post them online, networks post alternate endings to seasons, and advertisers make alternate endings for commercials. Studies show consumers dig the choice.

Below, a few amusing and edifying alternate endings to a few movies and TV shows. Warning: Spoilers follow.

Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness
In the original ending to this comic gorefest, Ash pulls a Rip Van Winkle for a few too many years. Instead of sleeping through the Middle Ages and returning to his own era -- the plaid-happy grunge nineties -- he drinks too much of a magic potion and finds himself in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, screaming to the heavens "I slept too long!" An alternate ending (the clip below includes both) shows Ash returning to his own time period and to gainful employment at the S-Mart Superstore, only to find himself in a gun battle with a blonde zombie in casual business attire. Ash: "Hail to the king, baby."

Terminator 2: Judgement Day
It is a wonder of profundity that James Cameron even shot this dreadful scene, which shows an octogenarian Sarah Connor in a park reminiscing about killer robots and atom bombs. I hope when I'm 80 I have as entertaining an internal monologue. Or at least a better makeup artist.

Little Shop of Horrors
Everyone dies in this version, which sees the film return to the play's Faustian roots. After you watch this clip, check out the second and third parts.