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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The first episode, which went live on Revision3.com earlier today, finds AV Club editor Keith Phipps and his writers Tasha Robinson, Scott Tobias and Nathan Rabin reviewing the top movies of 2010 while sitting around what appears to be a table in their Chicago office.

That setup might not sound very exciting, but consider this: A.V. Talk is based on an audio podcast by the same name that’s been around for two-and-a-half years and is listed in the top 25 of TV- and movie-related audio podcasts on iTunes. The AV Club site itself, which is used to promote the new A.V. Talk show, clocks 1.9 million visitors a month. And then there’s this little newspaper called The Onion, which has been featuring the AV Club as its entertainment section for some seven years now. In other words: Revision3 just launched a project with a pretty decent built-in audience.

And it’s an audience that’s valuable to Revision3. The network has mostly been catering to male geeks in their twenties and early thirties. Extending its reach to movie lovers could help to get access to female viewers as well as less tech-savvy viewers. Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback told us recently that “embracing new demographics is a key part of our 10-year plan of global domination.”

“We loved what they were doing, were big fans of their audio podcast,” said Louderback today via email, adding: “We got together to try to figure out how to make it into a fun, compelling video show without losing the essence of what made it so awesome.” The AV Club crew said via email that it will continue to produce its audio podcast “most weeks,” possibly focusing on topics that won’t work as well on video.

This isn’t the first time Revision3 has struck a deal with some high-profile collaborators. Earlier this month, it picked up The Young Turks, a daily news show that has accumulated some 360 million views on YouTube. Partnerships like these are important for Revision3 especially in light of the fact that it’s losing one of its flagship shows by the end of the year: DiggNation hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht have announced that they won’t be doing the show anymore in its current form in 2011.

However, partnerships with established podcasts haven’t always worked out for Revision3: The online network poached the well-known pop culture podcast Epic FU away from Next New Networks in the summer of 2008, only to drop it four months later amid cost cuts.

As for The Onion, Louderback didn’t want to rule out any further collaborations. “We’re not currently developing anything else with them, but we think this is a great start of what we hope is a long and profitable relationship,” he told me.

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While ONN content is typically free to viewers, this month the network is experimenting with a premium offering available for $1.99. The justification for charging is this: The Onion’s latest news broadcast comes from the future.

Future News From The Year 2137 – Coming Summer 2010

Future: News From the Year 2137 is a 12-minute compilation of news broadcasts from the future date of July 23, 2137, captured via “wormhole satellite” and distributed through iTunes. The world it depicts is both different and similar to today (Miami is now an island, but people are still fighting over gay marriage) and while funny, the short somehow manages to be darker and bleaker than the Mike Judge film Idiocracy (if you’re frightened by that thought, you’re on the right track).

According to ONN director Judy Adler and lead graphics designer Chris Ervine, with whom I spoke via phone, Future: News was produced by a very small part of the Onion team — mostly Ervine — and was in production off and on for about a year. While technically this is the Onion’s first for-sale video offering, Adler likened it to what the paper edition does with its book compilations. “We were originally were going to release it like our other video content,” Adler said, “But as it grew and became more complex, we felt that it needed to be made into its own special project.”

Future: News‘s budget was higher than typical Onion video offerings, but Adler joked that it wasn’t that big a deal, because, “We’re a multi-billion-dollar network.”

Billions of dollars or not, money still has to be earned. Via phone, VP of Business Development Marc Lieberman said the $1.99 price point for iTunes came from looking at other TV content for sale at $2.99. “Because it’s shorter, we went with $1.99.”

Thanks to The Onion’s prior relationship with iTunes (ONN is currently the top podcast listed in their comedy section), Future: News was promoted very heavily in its initial launch week, climbing to the Number 2 slot in the comedy store.

However, Lieberman didn’t speculate on whether the experiment with a pay model counted yet as a major success. “We view this as a six-months-to-a-year-long process, and we’re not even a month in, so it’s too early to tell,” he said.

Future: News is currently available to U.S. and Canadian iTunes users, and will be available in the U.K. by late August. Beyond iTunes, portions of Future: News may appear on the Onion site on an ad-supported basis for two weeks at a time, and it’ll launch on other unspecified platforms this fall. As for iTunes, “It will be for sale for as long as it sells,” Adler said.

For ONN fans worried how Future: News‘s pay-to-view success might affect other episodes, Lieberman says have no fear: “We’ve heard that if this does well, we’re going to make it all for pay, and that’s not the case. We’ll never charge for [our main content].”

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“We would like to extend our deepest apologies to each and every one of you,” announced CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking from the company’s Googleplex headquarters. “Clearly there have been some privacy concerns as of late, and judging by some of the search terms we’ve seen, along with the tens of thousands of personal e-mail exchanges and Google Chat conversations we’ve carefully examined, it looks as though it might be a while before we regain your trust.”

It goes on:

“I’d like nothing more than to apologize in person to everyone we’ve let down, but as you can see, many of our users are rarely home at this hour,” said Google cofounder and president Sergey Brin, pointing to several Google Map street-view shots of empty bedroom and living room windows on a projection screen behind him.

Picture is part of a composite image from The Onion; please click through to see the whole thing and their full text.

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Comedy Central announced today that it is partnering with The Onion to create a scripted half-hour show based on The Onion Sports Network. The series doesn’t have a title yet, but according to the press release, it will “take on the whole universe of modern sports — teams, players, leagues, sycophantic fans, ridiculous products and over-hyped sports coverage.”

Ngyuen Thi Buch Thuy: ‘Just Give Me The Damn Sepak Takraw Ball’

The Onion consistently puts out the funniest video programming on the web. Period. Don’t argue with me on this. But while the site has successfully transitioned its satire into the world of sports, taking its brand of humor from web to another medium isn’t guaranteed — anyone remember The Onion movie? Not good.

But given how polished (and awesome) the video on The Onion Sports Network currently is, stitching together existing segments like “The Steam Room” and “Sports Dome” should make for an easy creation of a SportsCenter-like show. Embedded is one of my all-time favorite clips from The Onion’s sports “coverage,” “Ngyuen Thi Buch Thuy: ‘Just Give Me the Damn Sepak Takraw Ball.”

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Webby Artist of the Year: Trent Reznor
Webby Person of the Year: Jimmy Fallon
Webby Breakout of the Year: Twitter
Best Actress: Sarah Silverman
Outstanding Comedic Performance: Lisa Kudrow
Film & Video Person of the Year: Seth MacFarlane

ANIMATION
Webby Award Winner: Stickman Exodus
People’s Voice Winner: Stickman Exodus

BEST REALITY/VARIETY HOST
Webby Award Winner: NYTimes.com “Pogue’s Posts”

People’s Voice Winner: EPIC FU

BEST WRITING
Webby Award Winner: Onion News Network
People’s Voice Winner: Onion News Network

COMEDY: INDIVIDUAL SHORT OR EPISODE
Webby Award Winner: Prop 8 The Musical
People’s Voice Winner: Prop 8 The Musical

COMEDY: LONG FORM OR SERIES
Webby Award Winner: Children’s Hospital
People’s Voice Winner: The Office: Outburst

DRAMA: SERIES
Webby Award Winner: The Ten Commandments of La Vida Loca
People’s Voice Winner: Heroes: The Recruit

HOW-TO AND DIY
Webby Award Winner: IndyMogul
People’s Voice Winner: IndyMogul

VARIETY
Webby Award Winner: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
People’s Voice Winner: The Best Short Films In The World

VIRAL
Webby Award Winner: The Website Is Down: Sales Guy VS. Web Dude
People’s Voice Winner: Shiba Inu Live Puppy Cam

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Howcast Gets $2 Million; how-to video company had kept a $2 million allocation in the first round open for individual investors, total raised now $10 million. (VentureBeat)

Elemental Launches Video Conversion Tool; Badaboom Media Converter taps unused power from the graphics chip to speed up delivery of video from PC to another gadget. (VentureBeat)

Onion News Network Going Global; deal with MyVideoRights.com will put the satirical news show across the UK, Europe and Asia. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Streaming Video for the Blackberry Bold; Next2Friends comes up with streaming app for the device, says it will release one for the Motorola Razr next week. (TechCrunch)

Tina Fey Impacting the Election? A study finds Sarah Palin’s favorability rating drops across party lines with people who have seen the SNL skits. (Freakonomics Blog)

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She leads the story off using the John Edwards webisodes shot by Rielle Hunter as an example of a web series. Wait, huh? Edwards’ use of video may technically be a web series in that there is more than one episode, and you can watch it on the web — but classifying this bit of politicking as a web series seems misguided. This was basically an ad — or a cool way to pick up chicks, depending on your point of view. But I wouldn’t put Rielle Hunter’s work in the same story with Marshall Herskovitz’s.

She also cites webisodes for hit TV shows like The Office and Battlestar Galactica as almost tacky examples of web series. But while these may be more serial in nature, they wouldn’t exist without their TV counterparts (Why do you think studios wanted them classified as “promotion” during the writers’ strike?). As she points out, they were made to embrace viewers from the TV show — the fans. But so what? Fans get obsessive, why is the opportunity to create a bigger fictional world online so bad in and of itself?

For such a savvy reporter, Herffernan seems woefully out of date. She references Afterworld, lonelygirl15 and quarterlife as name-brand serials. Too bad all those series ended (technically, season one of Afterworld ended, but its producers have gone all Hollywood with Gemini Division and Woke Up Dead). She does reference Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, but incorrectly says that iTunes is the only place to watch it (you can also sing along at Hulu). As the folks at Tilzy.TV point out, Heffernan’ post doesn’t even mention The Onion News Network, You Suck at Photoshop, Ask a Ninja or CollegeHumor’s Hardly Working.

Heffernan basically calls web serials the slower cousin of viral videos. Why she feels the two need to be exclusive of one another rather than complementary is unclear. True, Chocolate Rain is fun to pass around, but sometimes people need more substance. That’s why CBS carries both Big Brother and 60 Minutes.

Where Heffernan does make a valid point about web series is when she says that she doesn’t like to watch web serials as serials. I don’t think the web has spawned a “must-see-newteevee” show yet that has people marking their calendars either. This could be for a few reasons:

1. There is a ton of content out there, not to mention all the other media we consume, so keeping track a particular show is tougher.

2. With the three-to-five minute episode length of most web series, it’s more difficult to engage the audience as fully as you can with a half hour or hour-long drama. Plus watching web series is usually not done in a vacuum. On a PC, instant messaging, email and even other web browsing are all just a click away.

3. The content hasn’t reached a mass audience yet. Watching web video is just now becoming a more mainstream activity, and web series as an art form are really young. Give us a minute to get some decent acting and special effects, will ya?

Overall, I’m just not sure what Heffernan was going for in this article. She bounces around from political scandal to viral video to quoting Jean Cocteau about art and film. Heffernan nears the end of her piece with the following:

So where’s the true art? I’m not sure. I know I continue to prefer the strange, beautiful, comical and mysterious stuff of YouTube — the unclassifiable stuff — to the laudable efforts at nouveau serials by bona fide directors. But I still believe that, one day, another serial — not called a serial, maybe, and certainly not webisodes — will exploit the eccentricity of the virals and manage to make new and serious jokes about the truth-illusion-truth-illusion of cinéma vérité, which is what “lonelygirl15” once did. With that, the thrill of filmed “reality” will be returned to viewers, as it was in the early days of film, radio and television.

We’ve already written about why there won’t be another lonelygirl, but maybe Heffernan should just relax and enjoy the web show (I’d recommend the genius adaptation of Get Your War On), though I wouldn’t expect many more from John Edwards, anytime soon.

Update: Heffernan said in a post online that space constraints kept her from adding more web series to her rundown. She recommends series like 2/8 life, Drunk History, and Squeegees among others.

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The big fun on Saturday was at NewTeeVee correspondent Steve Bryant’s Wiimbledon, a fast-paced Wii Tennis challenge held at the uber-cool Barcade in Brooklyn, and a perfect way to dive into 4 straight days of geekery. Lots of cameras circulated at the event, but the best round-up was definitely by the gentlemen at Bush League.tv, who interviewed the finalists and did a great job of capturing the furious action:

Sunday night Gannes and I took a break from double-checking NTVS show pages to check out the Next New Networks/Tumblr Rock Band party. While our attempts to get streaming video were somewhat successful, we sadly had to leave early. You should imagine, though, that if we had gotten a chance to play, it would have looked something like this:

Monday, the Film & Video Awards were an intense but fun two hours. If you’re interested in seeing Judah Friedlander’s 20-year-old super-gross short film, Aaron Acne And His Uncomfortably Colossal Zit, it’s available at Judah Friedlander’s website — it won’t embed, but maybe that’s for the best.

Perhaps because they serve food during the Webbys Gala event on Tuesday, the videos screened that evening were a lot more tame. BarelyPolitical’s Incredible McCain Girl premiered and fell a little flat — possibly because people were expecting another music video, not a trailer parody hybrid:

But VH1′s Best Week Ever produced a special Internet Week clip reviewing recent web video memes like Corey Worthington that was full of hilarity. And the Onion News Network proved why they won approximately twenty thousand Webbys this year with this delicious piece about the upcoming World of World of Warcraft:

And the perfect capper to the evening? Despite our concerns that Stephen Colbert wouldn’t make it, he swept in at the last minute to accept his Webby:

If I had to describe my Internet Week in five words or less? Magical merriment, not much sleep. Thanks to the New York technorati for organizing a great time. Next year, we’ll make sure not to launch new sites the same week.

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You can listen to it here (interview starts about three minutes in).

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