Tabletop

Part of the Geek and Sundry YouTube network (along with Felicia Day’s Flog and the whimsical Written by a Kid), Tabletop was one of this year’s case models for the concept that web video audiences are ready for longer content.

The Wil Wheaton-hosted series sat down geek celebs like Alex Albrecht, Morgan Webb, Jane Espenson, Amber Benson and Ryan Higa to play a wide range of dice, card and board games, consistently reaching six-figure viewcounts (impressive for a half-hour long show). But what I find especially cool about Tabletop is the gaming community that’s come out of it, showcased primarily via the Tumblr blog Seen on Tabletop, where viewers are encouraged to submit their experiences playing the games featured on the show.

The last new episode of Tabletop was posted November 1st, but “Seen on Tabletop” is still updating regularly: Right now, it’s flooded with posts featuring the post-Christmas gaming adventures of its fans.

The Onion Digital Studios

Some of the best unrecognized serial content this year came from an entity not necessarily known for narrative: The Onion turned out some original scripted shows this year, especially Sex House and Porkin’ Across America, that built on the brand’s reputation for comedy, but in a long-form format.

Both shows begin as your standard reality TV show parody — Sex House riffing on The Real World, while Porkin’ Across America took on Guy Fieri-esque food travel series. But head writer Sam West and the creative team at the Onion take those premises down the darkest and strangest roads you can imagine, drawing funny out of the least-likely subjects, such as crack-addicted nieces, food poisoning and deadly mold. The tone is consistent with The Onion’s predilection towards pitch-black comedy, but while the sicker your sense of humor, the more rewarding these shows are, both shows proved to be smarter and more ambitious than what came before.

The Onion has continued putting out more stand-alone content, such as its TED Talks parody series Onion Talks. But YouTube viewcounts for Sex House and Porkin’ Across America are on par or even better with those videos, so hopefully 2013 contains more of the same.

YOMYOMF

Founded by Fast and the Furious director Justin Lin, YOMYOMF (a very-fun-to-say acronym for You Offend Me, You Offend My Family, the pop culture blog from which the channel was born) used its YouTube funding for some impressively well-produced series, ranging from the very funny 21 Jump Street parody Squad 85 to the award-nominated sci-fi adventure DR0NE.

This Slate piece goes into detail about the network’s approach to content creation with an emphasis on diversity — I also enjoy YOMYOMF’s epic introduction to its unique POV and impressive talent roster, which includes Ryan Higa, Kevjumba, Chester See, Jamie Chung, Rick Fox, Jessica Alba, Amy Okuda, Harry Shum Jr., Gillian Jacobs, Masi Oka and many many more.

Daily Grace and My Drunk Kitchen

“Daily” Grace Helbig and Hannah “My Drunk Kitchen” Hart aren’t just two of the funniest women on the web — they’re two of the funniest women in comedy, flat out. Both bring their unique voices to their individual shows (the Daily Grace vlog appears — surprise — daily on My Damn Channel, while Hart posts weekly on YouTube) while also spreading the love to numerous other series: Helbig co-stars in the Fine Brothers’s MyMusic, for example, while Hart was just interviewed by Rainn Wilson’s SoulPancake.
And when the two appear together, the results are almost painfully hilarious. As just one recent example, here are Helbig and Hart attempting to make egg nog live on What’s Trending‘s #Tubeathon. Note the word “attempt” in that sentence. Both Hart and Helbig broke onto the online scene prior to 2012, but it was this year that they became iconic members of the web video scene.

What’s the lesson I take from all this? That this is an era that rewards collaboration and multiplatform engagement. And the people having success in the space right now are those who aren’t afraid to experiment, and perceive the brand as bigger than the individual show or shows that make it up.

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It’s four hours long, though, which is quite a few hours! There’s some good discussion overall, with folks from AOL, College Humor, YouTube, Blip, MySpace and MSN, but here are the Cliff’s Notes — some of the smarter insights and comments from the day’s panels.

• Research matters — apparently, people are pitching content to the CW Digital department without actually knowing what the CW is. Don’t be that person. “Nothing is more frustrating than when someone comes in who haven’t been to our website, don’t know who our audience is, but know they have the perfect show for us. Not gonna happen,” CW Digital EVP of marketing and digital programs Rick Haskins said during the Development: Building a Foundation panel.
• The great content creators, according to everyone on the Development panel, understand more than just making content — specifically, how to market that content on a social media level.
• Celebrities don’t always click on the web, according to Ran Harnevo, AOL Senior Vice President of Video, but casting someone with, say, four million Twitter followers will be significantly more meaningful than a celebrity who has less of a following. And web celebrities like Ian and Anthony of Smosh may have a lot more draw online.
• “A lot of well-known stars want to do it for the money — they don’t give a rat’s ass about digital, and to me that goes nowhere. You want to find people who understand digital and are passionate about it,” Haskins said.
• My Damn Channel CEO Rob Barnett urged people to avoid exclusivity initially, but then focus on finding a company the best deal as your development grows — especially when it comes to promotion, not just money. “You gotta look for promotion — the sea we’re all swimming in gets more and more crowded every day,” he said. “If you’re just upload to one of those huge places, the odds are getting the push that you need are getting scarier by the minute — you’ve got to be as judgmental of a home as we are of your content.”
• Barnett also recommended people check out the YouTube Creator Handbook: “90 percent of it is awesome — 10 percent, I don’t like, but we’re using 90 percent of it and our videos are getting more views.”
• During the Talent Debate panel, Innovative Artists head of digital David Tochterman revealed that breakout web series Lizzie Bennet Diaries has partnered with DECA — big news for the homegrown web series from Hank Green and Bernie Su.
• Also revealed during the Talent Debate panel: Mark Malkoff’s life is now much more difficult since Facebook removed email addresses from user profiles, as he now has to work much harder to book celebrities for his Celebrity Sleepovers series.
• Going back to the web celebs point: Despite Celebrity Sleepovers‘s impressive roster of names (including Camryn Manheim, Steven Weber, Ed Begley Jr. and Rob Corddry), Malkoff said that the iJustine episode was by far the most viewed of the series.
• Blip CEO Kelly Day laid out the company’s shift in approach over the last six months — specifically, a shift from its previous “Blip vs. YouTube” mentality, and a new focus on helping creators distribute their content through a variety of means, including YouTube as well as other partners. “I don’t think it’s a binary conversation. YouTube can be a great way to build your audience, but it’s not the only way to build your audience,” she said.
• Lee urged creators to “play the whole field” when it comes to putting content out there. “Go out and experiment and see what you get out of it.”
• MySpace Entertainment president Roger Mincheff stepped up big time to discuss MySpace’s recent relaunch, and defended keeping the MySpace name despite the brand’s rocky recent years, especially given the comedians and musicians who attribute MySpace to their success — making MySpace the ultimate farm system. MySpace nostalgia? That’s apparently a real thing.

This is just some of the interesting stuff discussed over the course of the day: It’s a fun mix of folks discussing how creators can use the current state of entertainment to thrust their content into the world, and the challenges they might face in the process. Go watch it yourself if you have a minute to spare.

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The show is going to be hosted by Beth Hoyt, and feature interviews with Hollywood stars and YouTube celebrities alike. Viewers will also get to see the premiere of videos from the 30 or so original web series that My Damn Channel is currently working on, and there will be some tie-in of comments from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. “It’s the spawn, the love child of television meets the Internet,” explained Barnett, again only half joking, during a phone call Tuesday.

My Damn Channel Live, as the show is going to be called, is part of YouTube’s new original channel line-up, and it’s a big deal for the video site: Comedy and entertainment formats have worked really well on YouTube, but it hasn’t quite cracked the code of successful live programming yet – which is one reason why the average YouTube viewer only spends 15 minutes a day on the site, and not hours as in front of the TV.

Barnett’s show, which is going to be broadcasted live every weekday at 1pm PT, will be 60 minutes long. Viewers will be able to catch up on archived episodes immediately afterwards, and My Damn Channel will also serve up sliced up clips for consumers who are still more attuned to watching short clips online. But the show isn’t just a big bet for YouTube; it’s also a huge deal for My Damn Channel, which will roll out a new website design just for the occasion. Barnett went as far as to call it “an entire relaunch of this company.”

When asked why the time is ripe for a format like this, Barnett credited two factors: Advertisers are increasingly willing to dole out big bucks for online video, and the audience is starting to raise their expectations beyond watching short viral videos. “The days of uploading a video, pushing out a couple of tweets and hoping that the video will go viral have largely ended,” he told me.

But despite all the lessons My Damn Channel has learned from the traditional TV world – Barnett calls it “stealing from HBO and Showtime” – viewers can still expect the show to look different from network comedy. “We started with the philosphy that you always could do more with less,” said Barnett, adding that this gives My Damn Channel “a punk-rock feel that just doesn’t exist in a three-letter media company.”

Update: A spokesperson for My Damn Channel sent us the following clarification: “The show will not be 60 minutes each day. Wednesday episodes will be 30 minutes, and Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday will be 10 minutes. Total of 70 minutes per week of live video.”

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There’s a fair amount riding on the IAWTV Awards, as the show is not only a potential money-maker for the organization, but the final step in the IAWTV’s separation from the Streamy Awards, the organization that was the IAWTV’s original reason for existence and is now an independent ceremony that will be co-produced by Dick Clark Productions.

But looking at the nominees, one thing stands out — if the goal is to celebrate web originals, then the IAWTV Awards are a step in the right direction. No awards show ever gets it exactly right (especially given how subjective taste can be), but the spread of shows recognized represents a pretty good mix of productions backed by major players and genuinely independent shows.

Looking at the Best Comedy Web Series category, for example, you have the category’s shoe-in nominee, The Guild (Microsoft), as well as Video Game Reunion (Atom/Comedy Central) and Gigi: Almost Pretty (My Damn Channel/BBC Worldwide). But Pretty and The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour are both independently produced and distributed.

And if you look at the Best Drama Web Series category, it’s even better — RCVR is distributed through Machinima, and Pioneer One by Vodo, but both companies are web-native and the other three nominees are completely independent. This means that there are many nominated shows that will genuinely benefit from the greater exposure being offered by being nominated.

The emphasis here is definitely on web series as opposed to the more nebulous and hard-to-define content being produced by YouTube creators (beyond stray nominations for The Phil Defranco Show and the Fine Brothers’ Kids React). And because the eligibility period stretched from January 1, 2010 to October 31, 2011, many of the nominated shows have been dormant for some time — it’s a personal favorite, but it’s been almost a year since the last episode of Fanboy Funhouse was released, and it may not represent the current web video culture as well as another nominee might.

Also, the IAWTV Awards need a better name. Or any name at all, really. The Emmys were named after “the image-orthicon camera tube,” according to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences website — surely there’s an equally obscure web equivalent to that.

Still, as a voting member of the organization, I’m looking forward to making some tough decisions as I fill out my ballot, and watching the live-stream this January. For years, I’ve heard the argument that the web series world may simply be too young for us to start handing out awards, but I’ve decided to be positive about this. After all, as long as the focus stays on the shows and creators, something that inspires people to work harder, make better shows and watch more web content can only be a good thing.

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“Cable television expanded our viewing possibilities from just a handful of channels to hundreds, and brought us some of the most defining media experiences of the last few decades– think MTV, ESPN and HBO. Today, the web is bringing us entertainment from an even wider range of talented producers, and many of the defining channels of the next generation are being born, and watched, on YouTube.”

YouTube will use the new influx of celebrities to launch a number of high-profile channels, including a new dance, a comedy and a Hispanic channel, which will feature Modern Family star Sofia Vergara. These channels will consist of a mix of short- and long-form content, and everything will be published with a TV-like schedule, meaning that new episodes of a particular show may be published every Tuesday afternoon at 3pm. Some content, including a show produced by My Damn Channel, will even be broadcast live.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today that content makers will get some significant advances, and keep 55 percent of YouTube’s ad revenue after these advances are going to be recouped.

Content will be available globally and on any device – which of course includes the Google TV platform that is going to receive a much-needed update in the coming days.

I’ve heard from people familiar with the project that YouTube folks see it as additive to cable, but the timing in conjunction with the Google TV relaunch and the direct references to MTV and HBO could also be seen as a bit of a muscle flexing towards the traditional broadcast and cable networks. Almost all networks decided to block Google TV from accessing their web content when the platform launched a year ago. With YouTube attracting major talent for its own site, Google also seems to signal: Thanks cable, but we’re doing just fine without your websites.

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But the good times, they keep on rolling for the site. I caught up with CEO Rob Barnett after a presentation at the New York Television Festival last Friday (but before the subsequent party). On stage, Barnett not only discussed cord-cutting and the freedom granted by the Internet to create one’s own material with Harry Shearer, but also announced some new additions to the My Damn Channel team, including Status Kill creator Jesse Cowell.

In the below video, Barnett goes into detail about what adding Cowell means for the SITE, describes what’s kept My Damn Channel sustainable over the years and calls out industry naysayers as being “cynical.” He also mentions what piece of technology he believes may be a game-changer — not just for My Damn Channel, but for the entire online video industry. Hint: It rhymes with “oogle.”

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Created and written by Will Janowitz and Ryan Homchick, SUPEREGO stars Janowitz as Dr. Charlie Knight, an unconventional therapist whose approach to treating his patients might be considered psychotic. The series uses a framing device of a Charlie Rose-style interview to link together episodes, but the bulk of its laughs from Dr. Knight’s outrageous behavior, which pushes the boundaries of believability but does include a few good punchlines. It helps that the patients are just as ridiculous as their doctor.

Janowitz should look familiar to fans of great television — he played Meadow’s boyfriend Finn on The Sopranos, and just this Sunday guest-starred on Mad Men as the stand-up comedian heckled by a drunk Lane Pryce.

In the video interview below, Janowitz (in person) and Homchick (via phone) discuss the series’s development with 15 Gigs, the relationship with My Damn Channel and what the future might hold for the Charlie Knight character.

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“We focus on controlling costs and earning real revenues from repeat customers. We work with the best partners to offer the most powerful monetization force ever created: great content,” CEO Rob Barnett said in the announcement.

That $4.4 million will go towards adding additional sales and business development personnel, including a new VP of Business Development and a Director of Advertising and Branded Entertainment. This will increase the total size of MDC’s staff to, in Barnett’s words via email, “Something insanely huge like TEN people! We never wanted to overdo it before we knew we could make this work. It’s working. We’re growing. Amen.”

MDC’s slate of content has created a reputation that draws in high-level talent. As Easy to Assemble creator Illeana Douglas, who launched the second season of her IKEA-sponsored series on the site, said in a Q&A last October:

Rob Barnett, the president, takes it very all personally, and he cares about the artists and we get to have ownership. A lot of places don’t allow you to retain ownership, which is really unfair, because when you do these web shows it’s obviously a bit of a sacrifice financially. Plus, they had all my favorite people: Harry Shearer, Wainy Days and You Suck at Photoshop were actually my favorite shows on the web.

This announcement coincides with the site’s third anniversary, as well as the launch of a new slate of shows, which includes promotional shorts for the Paramount content Dinner for Schmucks, a yet-to-be-premiered series by former Colbert Report staffer Mark Malkoff, and original web content to support the Adult Swim launch of Childrens’ Hospital. In addition, Easy to Assemble returns this fall with even more celebrity appearances (including Patricia Heaton and Fred Willard) and plenty of Swedish accents.

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Vevo Traffic Has Grown 62 Percent Since Launch; the online music video site says it attracted 62 percent more monthly viewers in the United States than it did at the start. (VentureBeat)

My Damn Channel Ramps Up New Programming; the web video entertainment hub is in the midst of rolling out an aggressive new programming slate buoyed by ten custom channels, including three set to debut this summer. (MediaWeek)

Bloomberg is Now Using Taboola’s Video Recommendations; Bloomberg.com is now incorporating videos throughout its site from Taboola, the video recommendations engine. (VideoNuze)

5min CEO: No ROI in Producing Videos for Just One Destination; Ran Harnevo says that without a syndication strategy, there is no direct ROI around video for content producers. (Beet.TV)

That library, just as a reminder, includes classic web content like You Suck at Photoshop, Illeana Douglas’s Easy to Assemble, the recently launched Celebrity Autobiography, Harry Shearer’s video experiments and recent Streamy winner Wainy Days. To coincide with the app’s launch comes a new episode of Days, embedded below. The series created by David Wain has racked up over 15 million views over the 36 episodes since its launch.

This is just the latest service added to Boxee’s functionality, increasing the diversity of its content. The service connecting TV to web content may also be developing apps for mobile and tablet devices, including the iPad. Given that web content is increasingly being watched on the TV, Boxee’s efforts to streamline the process may be the right move.

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