NEWS: Burnett, MySpace get political

Social Networks/Myspace/Politics
Found on: variety.com

Emmy-award winning television producer Mark Burnett has teamed up with Myspace to launch "Independent" a new hybrid online-reality-social network-television show.

A quick shout out to my boy Yau Man - hope you win!

Variety's post:

Mark Burnett Prods. is partnering with MySpace to discover the modern-day Mr. Smith.

The two entities are behind “Independent,” an online project targeted to become a full-fledged TV series built around a search to find the next great politician.

The show, timed to the 2008 elections, hasn’t yet been pitched to networks. It comes with a $1 million prize … and a catch: Winner must donate the money to a political cause or use it to run for office.

“This is the ‘American Idol’ of political action,” said Burnett development head Roy Bank. “We’ve been exploring for a while how to do something in and around what is going to be the topic on everyone’s tongues next year — the elections. We wanted it to be legit, and there’s no greater democracy in play right now for people in their 20s than MySpace.”

NEWS: Ex-Disney chief launches Web video company

News/Web Culture/Video
Found on: news.com

Ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner launched a new web video company called Vuruga this week - it's mission: deliver "high-quality, story-driven content" on par with all the other crap on television.

Vuruga's first series will be a mystery drama called "Prom Queen," the first of 80 (90 second long) episodes will begin airing next month.

Cnet post:

Vuguru, officially a project of Eisner's investment firm Tornante, debuted Monday along with its first production and set of sponsors. According to a statement from the new company, Vuguru aims to focus on "high-quality, story-driven content for the Internet" on a par with professional television and cinema productions.

The inaugural Vuguru series, a mystery drama called Prom Queen, will release the first of its 80 episodes on April 2. The 90-second clips, aimed at a tech-savvy teen audience, have been produced in conjunction with Web video company Big Fantastic--best known as the team behind the video podcast Sam Has 7 Friends. Among Prom Queen's sponsors is the magazine-turned-webzine Elle Girl, which stopped print publication last year to focus on online and mobile distribution.

NEWS: Viacom lands video deal with Joost

News/Web Culture/IPTV
Found on: reuters.com

If you don't know what Joost is by now, here's the skinny: the boys that started Kazaa and Skype recently launched a new Ad-supported internet TV service, leveraging the P2P technology that they used to make Kazaa what it was back in the day (totally sucks now) and Skype what it is today.

Fast forward to this story; earlier this week Viacom agreed to provide video content to Joost and it's users in return for a piece of the pie - huge!

Reuters post:

Viacom Inc., engaged in a public copyright battle with Google Inc.'s YouTube, has agreed to offer videos to Joost, the Internet video service created by the founders of Skype and Kazaa.

Viacom said on Tuesday hundreds of hours of TV programing from its MTV and BET Networks and feature-length films from Paramount Pictures will be available to Joost users for free under a revenue-sharing deal between the two companies.

It did not disclose financial terms, but an industry source said Viacom was likely to have secured a slightly better agreement than its traditional deals to receive two-thirds of advertising revenue.

Do They Still Want Their MTV?

News/Web Culture/MTV/David Carr
Found on:nytimes.cm

Last week, MTV Networks laid off 250 people, cutting and trimming their television rank and file to make room for web savvy interactive hires at the same time bulking up their internet business - sounds like Viacom, which owns MTV, doesn't want to be caught with their pants down when the next generation of viewers will be spending more time on the internet then on the couch watching TV.

NYTIMES post:

MTV prospered for decades because it looked like what a network might look like if a 16-year-old were doing the programming. But now the music channel is trying to make its way in a multidevice, multiplatform, multichannel world, most of which is being programmed by a
16-year-old.

The velocity of change has left MTV occasionally looking as if were being programmed by an 83-year-old — namely Sumner M. Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, which owns MTV. The network, itself a stately 25 years old, has suffered a decline in ratings and cultural cachet.

NEWS: YouTube for Hipsters

News/Web Culture/IPTV/Videos
Found on: vbs.tv

Hipsters all over the world rejoice -- you now have your very own internet TV channel. A joint venture between Vice Magazine and MTV has given birth to VBS.tv, a full fledged online broadcast network.

VBS.tv post:

VBS is an online broadcast network. We stream original content, free of charge and 24 hours a day. We carry a mix of domestic and international news, pop and underground culture coverage, and the best music in the world. People have used words like eclectic, smart, funny, shocking, and revolutionary to describe VBS, but we kind of just snapped our fingers in their faces and went, “Whatever. Tell us something we don’t know.”

NEWS: Facebook and Comcast's Ziddio Partner to Create User-Generated TV

News/Social Networks/Facebook
Found on: prnewswire.com

Facebook inked a deal last week with Comcast's video site, Ziddio.com to enable Facebook users to create and share videos. Facebook is hoping to drive up usage by giving users the chance to have their videos included in a new television series which will appear on Comcast's On Demand menu.

PR NEWS post:

Facebook, the Internet's leading social utility, and Ziddio.com, a national multiplatform user-generated video site recently launched by Comcast Interactive Media, today announced a partnership that will allow Facebook users to create and share user-generated videos and give them the chance to become part of a new television series titled "Facebook Diaries."

Beginning in March, the companies will kickoff a program that includes contests asking users to submit short video segments about their lives. Throughout the contests, Facebook users will be encouraged to upload, view, share and rate the videos. Selected videos will be featured prominently online on Facebook and Ziddio.com and on television including Comcast's ON DEMAND service.

NEWS: Web buzz-wise, the Hot shows this Fall

News/Web Culture/Television/Diego Vasquez
Found on: medialifemagazine.com



I got about 2o minutes to write this post before the new season premiere of my favorite television show Heroes airs, so here it is: NBC's hit series Heroes is generating a lot of Web-based buzz but what does that really mean for ratings?

Media Life Magazine post:

Most media people agree that NBC’s new fall shows look the most promising among the five English-language networks, and apparently web users agree with them. According to a new report released by PropheSEE, the online buzz monitoring arm of Interpublic’s Consumer Experience Practice, four new NBC shows rank among the top five in amount of buzz generated online about the new season. In fact, NBC generated a dominant 57 percent of online buzz, compared with second-place ABC at 18 percent. NBC’s “Heroes,” the drama about people who think they have special powers, ranked No. 1 at 26 percent of all buzz, followed by the network’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” with 20.4 percent. Fox’s “Vanished” was No. 3, followed by NBC’s “30 Rock” and “Friday Night Lights.” But the question is whether that actually means anything good for NBC.