In May, Amazon Studios invited developers to submit proposals for original children’s and comedy shows. The program is an effort to create original content while cutting out the middleman — big studios and networks. Creators get $10,000 if a show is optioned, and “a $55,000 payment, up to 5 percent of Amazon’s net receipts from toy and t-shirt licensing, and other royalties and bonuses” if a series is produced. In addition to the pilots announced today, Amazon previously optioned 14 other projects.

The pilots will be posted on Amazon Instant Video, where customers can watch them for free, and “viewer feedback will help determine which series Amazon Studios should produce. Completed seasons will be exclusively available to Prime members through Prime Instant Video and Lovefilm in the U.K. for free.”

Here are the six pilots:

Alpha House

Alpha House was written by Academy Award nominee and Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury, Tanner ’88). Alpha House follows four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC.

Browsers

Written by 12-time Emmy-winning comedy writer David Javerbaum (The Daily Show) and to be directed by Don Scardino (30 Rock), Browsers is a musical comedy set in contemporary Manhattan that follows four young people as they start their first jobs at a news website.

Dark Minions

Written by Big Bang Theory co-stars Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie, Dark Minions is an animated workplace series about two slackers just trying to make a paycheck working an intergalactic warship. The pilot will be produced by Principato-Young (Reno 911).

The Onion Presents: The News

The Onion Presents: The News is a smart, fast-paced scripted comedy set behind the scenes of The Onion News Network that shows just how far journalists will go to stay at the top of their game. The Onion Presents: The News is from The Onion’s Will Graham & Dan Mirk (The Onion News Network, The Onion Sportsdome).

Supanatural

Supanatural is an animated comedy series about two outspoken divas who are humanity’s last line of defense against the supernatural, when they’re not working at the mall. The series, written by Lily Sparks, Price Peterson and Ryan Sandoval, will be produced by Jason Micallef (Butter) and Kristen Schaal (The Daily Show).

Those Who Can’t

Written by Andrew Orvedahl, Adam Cayton-Holland and Benjamin Roy (Grawlix), who were discovered through Amazon Studios online open door process, Those Who Can’t is a comedy about three juvenile, misfit teachers who are just as immature, if not more so, than the students they teach.

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An internet-only TV subscription with smaller, more customized bundles would be great news for cord cutters. However, one of the biggest issues that needs to be resolved seems to be the pricing. From the article:

“Dish wants to reach consumers around 18 to 28 who would rather pay $20 a month for a smaller package of channels to watch on computers or mobile devices, CEO Joseph Clayton said in an interview this month… Negotiations bog down because programmers aren’t willing to sell Dish the rights for a low enough price to make a service viable, he said.”

It makes sense that the price of any such offering would be a stumbling block. If it’s too low, Viacom won’t sign on. if it’s too high, consumers won’t bite. Of course, the question is: how much is too much? We figured we should ask our readers to find out.

Let’s assume, for now, that Dish would sell this type of internet-only offering with a much smaller bundle, which would mainly consist of Viacom channels. You’d pay $10, $20 or $30 a month in return get the ability to stream new episodes of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report and the MTV Music Awards live, when they air on traditional TV. How much would you pay for it? Please let us know by answering the poll below, and feel free to elaborate in the comments!

Want to learn more about watching TV without paying for cable? Then check out my book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

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(Stewart and Colbert are on summer break so no new episodes of their shows are being blocked this week.)

The takedown, which was first spotted by BTIG’s Richard Greenfield, seems to affect a wide range of content: Clips and older long-form episodes are still available but most current or new full episodes aren’t being offered at Comedycentral.com, MTV.com or the other network sites. “We still have hundreds of long-form episodes remain online, for free, but we have temporarily slimmed down our offerings as DirecTV markets them as an alternative to having our networks,” Viacom spokesman Carl Folta explained during a phone conversation; more than 4,500 episodes are still up, he told us after checking. Folta also said Hulu and other partners who pay Viacom for its programming will continue to get it and be able to serve it up as usual.

Hulu.com’s offering is good news for anyone who wants to catch up on Jon Stewart’s latest election coverage, but it’s also notably different from the last retrans conflict that took a toll on online content: Back in late 2010, Fox made Hulu.com block access to its content for Cablevision customers, in addition to blocking Cablevision subscribers from accessing full episodes on its own website.

Viacom doesn’t have that kind of leverage this time around, simply because DirecTV isn’t a broadband provider. In other words: Viacom can’t single out people who subscribe to DirecTV for their TV programming online. Instead, if it wants to make a point to DirecTV subscribers, it has to cast its net much wider.

The online blackout comes after DirecTV told its customers where to watch their favorite shows online. It’s Viacom’s way of putting an additional layer of pressure on DirecTV, which also is likely to see campaigns from competitors Dish Network, Comcast and others hoping to peel off customers irked by the situation. It’s a reminder that streaming rights are part of the modern licensing deal — and a warning that while Viacom has promised to provide its distributors with on-demand broadband programming, it doesn’t have to do it for everyone else. The spigot can be opened, shut or set to a trickle any time Viacom chooses to do so.

The question is, as always with these kinds of stand-offs: Who does it hurt more? Viacom is risking some negative feedback from non-DirecTV subs, but that’s dwarfed by the huge revenue potential of higher carriage fees. DirecTV could lose subscribers; that risk is higher every day that this goes unresolved.

The damage this will do to both companies’ image is another matter entirely. DirecTV customers could get further riled up against their TV provider, and Viacom is using all of its web properties to stir that sentiment. However, customers of other TV service providers could feel like Viacom is unjustly dragging them into a fight that they’ve got no beef in.

The good news is that this could be a very temporary online blackout: Viacom and DirecTV are back at the table after an interlude where the two sides only talked to each other through the media.

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And Part II

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VidTrim: Simple, Free Video Editing on Android; VidTrim isn’t going to turn you into the next George Lucas. But if all you want to do is trim a video, you can do that with this free app. (Zatz Not Funny)

New iTunes Features Aim To Outdo DVD; Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is quietly testing new features with an eye on a future in which digital distribution offers a more compelling product than physical discs. (paidContent.org)

CES: 3D TV Will Try, Try Again; industry hopes aggressive pricing, more content will finally get people to use those funny glasses. (Broadcasting & Content)

Another $180 Million Raised by Video Companies in Q4 ’10, Capping a Banner Year; private video-related companies raised at least $179.8 million in Q4 ’10, bringing their total raised in 2010 to just over $750 million. (Video Nuze)

uTorrent & BitTorrent Hit 100 Million Monthly Users; on an average day 20 million users from over 220 countries fire up one of the two BitTorrent clients. (TorrentFreak)

Connected TVs Forecast to Account for 21% of Global TV Shipments in 2010; emerging markets will play a key role in the future growth of this segment, with Eastern Europe forecast to grow from 2.5 million connected TVs shipped in 2010 to over 10 million in 2014. (press release)

Hulu announced yesterday that it won’t be able to carry The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and other Viacom shows anymore and that existing shows will disappear off the site next Tuesday, March 9. Viacom apparently wasn’t happy with the ad revenue Hulu was bringing in; the network is going to exclusively distribute the shows through its own web properties going forward. Garner said that advertising on over-the-top delivery platforms like Hulu would continue to be a problem going forward. “We conditioned people to expect fewer ads, which I think was a huge mistake,” he said, adding that over the top was leading the charge on this.

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen struck a more optimistic tone, saying that the industry should stop holding on to existing models. He called the current move to online delivery “the best thing that happened to the media business,” adding that many of the existing problems like ad skipping on DVRs would disappear with online delivery. “The DVR is dying,” he said, “but that’s good news.”

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The two parties struck a deal sometime after midnight, which means no disruptions for TWC customers. The two parties refused to give details of the new arrangement. Well as long as there are no new surprises at the end of the month for TWC, a couch-potato crisis has been averted. According to a report by the Associated Press:

“We are pleased that our customers will continue to be able to watch the customers will continue to be able to watch the programming they enjoy on MTV Networks,” said Glenn Britt, president and CEO of Time Warner Cable Inc. “We are sorry they had to endure a day of public disagreement as we worked through this negotiation.”

At the close of the year two parties had failed to reach an agreement where Viacom wanted Time Warner to pay it more per-subscriber fees for carrying its content. This would raised monthly bills for the TWC customers by about $3 a month. This would have amounted to about $39 million a year on top of $300 million Viacom already gets from TWC. The decision would have impacted about 13.3 million Time Warner Cable customers along with 2.4 million Brighthouse Networks customers.

TWC customers quickly shared their displeasure on the web and Twitter.

Of course, if you just want to say no to cable forever — I have been living cable free for over a year now — we have a cheat sheet to tell you where to watch your favorite Viacom-owned shows online.

Full Time Warner Cable statement:

Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) and Viacom (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) jointly announced this morning that they have reached an agreement in principle to renew carriage for Viacom’s MTV Networks. The companies expect to finalize the details of the agreement over the next several days.

Glenn Britt, President and CEO of Time Warner Cable said, “We are pleased that our customers will continue to be able to watch the programming they enjoy on MTV Networks. We are sorry they had to endure a day of public disagreement as we worked through this negotiation.”

Philippe Dauman, President and CEO of Viacom said, “We’ve been partners with Time Warner Cable for a long time, and we’re happy to be renewing that partnership for the benefit of their customers and our loyal viewers. It’s gratifying that we could reach an agreement that benefits not only our audiences but that is also in the best interest of both of our companies.”

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At the crux of the problem: Viacom wants to increase the rights fees to its 19 channels. Time Warner Cable says this is a bad time to be asking consumers to pay more money to watch television. Given the state of the economy, TWC seems to have a point. To this Viacom counters in a press release:

The renewal we are seeking is reasonable and modest relative to the profits TWC enjoys from our networks. We have asked for an increase of less than 25 cents per month, per subscriber, which adds up to less than a penny per day for all 19 of MTV Networks’ channels. We make this request because TWC has so greatly undervalued our channels for so long. Americans spend more than 20% of their TV viewing time watching our networks, yet our fees amount to less than 2.5% of what Time Warner generates from their average customer.

The increase is going to be about $3 a month for the subscribers. TWC says that Viacom is trying to get more money out of its pockets because the advertising market has tanked. “The root of this is that the advertising market has gone soft and Viacom is desperate,” Alexander Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable, told The New York Times.

Dudley wasn’t shy about spanking Viacom in public. He told The Los Angeles Times:

They are holding our customers hostage for a bunch of networks with sagging ratings and only one or two good channels. We have to hold the line for our customers.

Snap! There have been troubles between content owners and carriage providers recently. Echostar and Viacom got into each other’s faces in 2004. TWC and ABC have tussled over price issues. Except this time around, Viacom has Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on its side.

Time Warner Cable says it is going to respond by telling people where to watch these very channels online – using, of course, its broadband pipes.

“We will be telling our customers exactly where they can go to see these programs online,” Mr. Dudley said. “We’ll also be telling them how they can hook up their PCs to a television set.

Viacom Networks’ Full Statement:

The move by Time Warner Cable to force such channels as Nickelodeon, COMEDY CENTRAL and MTV off the air is another example of a cable company overreaching for profit at the expense of its viewers.

The renewal we are seeking is reasonable and modest relative to the profits TWC enjoys from our networks. We have asked for an increase of less than 25 cents per month, per subscriber, which adds up to less than a penny per day for all 19 of MTV Networks’ channels.

We make this request because TWC has so greatly undervalued our channels for so long. Americans spend more than 20% of their TV viewing time watching our networks, yet our fees amount to less than 2.5% of what Time Warner generates from their average customer.

Throughout the country, we have negotiated equitable license agreement renewals, or are in the final stages of renewals, with virtually every cable and satellite carrier. Nevertheless, Time Warner Cable has dismissed our efforts at a fair compromise and has effectively chosen to deny its customers some of the most popular TV shows on the air.

As a result, we are sorry to say that for Time Warner Cable customers our networks will go dark as of 12:01 on January 1st, denying Time Warner customers shows like Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, and The Hills.

Ultimately, however, if Nickelodeon, COMEDY CENTRAL, MTV and the rest of our programming is discontinued — over less than a penny per day — we believe viewers will see this behavior by their cable company as outrageous. Time Warner Cable subscribers who are being handed a January 1st $3 monthly increase in Raleigh, Orange County, Los Angeles, and New York City are simultaneously facing the removal of beloved shows across 19 channels.

We find it a shame that Time Warner Cable remains unreasonable at this time. We hope its leadership will have a change of heart and will seek to negotiate a fair renewal agreement. “

See our additional coverage:

Where to Get Your Daily Show Fix and More Online

Time Warner: No Colbert? Count me out

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The two shows, which are Comedy Central’s most popular, are Viacom’s first participation in Hulu, something it’s been hinting at for a while now. They are also full episodes, something Viacom only recently started offering on its own site and with partners. Cable operators were none too pleased about that.

Sadly, there’s no South Park on Hulu. And it’s unclear how soon the clips will air after they broadcast — we will have to see when Monday’s episode goes live.

Hulu also said it would be showing PBS programs NOVA, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, and Wired Science starting later this month.

Hulu’s other partners include its founders FOX and NBC Universal, plus MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. Television Group, and a variety of smaller networks as well as some independent content.

Sorry for those international readers who can’t view the Hulu embed above. But keep complaining and hopefully that will change.

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