• Brandon Hardesty, better known to YouTube as ArtieTSMITW, has joined the cast of CBS’s Livin’ On A Prayer, created by How I Met Your Mother masterminds Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. (On April 15, he was celebrating over “something awesome” having happened — presumably this is it.)

• Olivia Munn, Attack of the Show host and Atom.com’s Star Wars pin-up girl, will play Leigh in the NBC comedy Perfect Couples.

• Nick Thune, whose online credits include Comedy Central’s Nick’s Big Show and who announced the Audience Choice nominees for this year’s Streamys, will co-star with Matthew Broderick in NBC’s Beach Lane.

• Sara Fletcher, who starred in the lonelygirl15-esque RedEarth9988, was swapped just last week for Kristin “Lana Lane” Kreuk on CBS’s Hitched (as first noted by Web Series Today).

• Chris Gethard, who’s made a ton of videos with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and College Humor, is taking over for Jon Heder in Comedy Central’s Big Lake.

You know what’s funny about these, by the way? Going through the press blurbs, there was VERY rarely any mention of these actors having any sort of online presence — not even Hardesty, who the Washington Post pointed to as having directly drawn his success from the web.

The other thing is this: All of these people, even Fletcher (whose role in RedEarth88 definitely had a dramatic spin), are being cast in comedies. That might be more of a reflection on the current network comedy renaissance, but still: If drama’s your game, working in online video might not get you on CBS.

Note that pilot season is full of chaos — many of these shows may not reach the air or will do so under different titles or with different casts. Hat tip for most of the casting announcements to The Futon Critic.

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A critically acclaimed mockumentary TV show from 2004 that died along with the cable network (Trio) it aired on is set to be re-released as a web series by My Damn Channel. Pilot Season stars Sarah Silverman, Sam Seder, Isla Fisher, David Cross, and Andy Dick — actors whose stocks have mostly risen since then.

Though last week’s Streamy Awards showed online video has star power, this is not the kind of cast any of today’s web series could command. The show debuts on April 20 with new episodes (30 total) rolling out every Monday (see the trailer and clips here). Here’s the trailer and premise:

Seder and Silverman play Max and Susan, former sweethearts who made a film together and broke up after it didn’t sell. But reflecting the series’ too-close-for-comfort authenticity, Seder and Silverman dated in real life and made the 1997 film “Who’s the Caboose?” — then broke up, in part because it didn’t sell.

We know that a web series can be oh-so-much more than just a TV series, but hey, there are a lot of great TV series that don’t get seen. Here’s hoping more people will clear up rights issues to bring them online.

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