GigaOM » Veronica Belmont

Podcast: What aspiring new media stars should know about agents and managers

Chris Albrecht — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:01:05 +0000

As a talent agent and manager, George Ruiz has helped launch and guide the careers of some of new media’s biggest names: Felicia Day, Veronica Belmont and Dane Boedigheimer (The Annoying Orange). In this special edition of the Commutist podcast, Ruiz explains what aspiring YouTube stars need to know to attract representation, what to expect when working with an agent or manager, and most importantly, he declares once and for all who is the handsomer Albrecht, his client Alex or myself.

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PREVIOUS EPISODES:
Holiday Gadget Gift Guide

War Tweets, Google TV and Nexus 4

Director Jay Duplass on low-fi movies through high-tech

Election Dissection, Ditching DSL and Dumping the iPad

Sandy’s Social, Infrastructure Impact and Forstall

Windows 8 Surfaces, and disruption eruption

iPad Mini, iMac gets skinny

Boxee Cloud DVR, Apple Rumors and Chromebook

Commutist interview: Joy of X author Steven Strogatz

Commutist podcast: Patent trolls, Costco ban and Passbook’s home run

Commutist, meet Nerdist, and interview with Chris Hardwick

T-Metro, Broadband Caps, Remembering Steve Jobs

Apple’s iO-Mess, Dirty Data Centers and Tesla

News from the Mobilize Conference

Paul Tough: How Children Succeed and what you can learn from them

The iPhone 5 Event

Come on, Kindle, Light My 4G Fire

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Hanging Out at CurrentTV With Al Gore

Om Malik — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:46:53 +0000

With the U.S. Presidential elections likely to be held in November 2008, two major candidates, Senators John McCain (Rep.) and Barack Obama (Dem.) debated issues around foreign policy yesterday. To mark the occasion, Current.tv, a citizen journalism-based TV network, teamed up with San Francisco-based Twitter to host a special event that allowed folks to participate in real time as the debate unfolded.

Before the debate kicked off, Al Gore, former U.S. vice-president and a presidential candidate who co-founded Current TV along with Joel Hyatt, stopped by the TV network’s fancy digs. They are right across from AT&T Park and a stone’s throw from our more modest offices.

GigaOM Network Managing Editor Carolyn Pritchard and yours truly stopped by. Twitter team was in attendance as well, and so were my friends Tekzilla co-host Veronica Belmont and Gdgt co-founder Ryan Block. David Galbraith, who is in town for a personal visit, was in attendance as well.

I got a chance to exchange a few words with former V-P Gore, who was extremely warm and gracious and generous with his time. You can check out my photos from the event on Flickr, though they are not as good as Scott Beale’s always excellent photography.

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Quasi-Famous People Pile Into Web Series

Chris Albrecht — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:45:29 +0000

When it rains, it pours. A host of new online original series were announced in the past 24 hours, most of which are professionally produced content featuring semi-famous people — or the siblings of semi-famous people.

Lloyd Braun, the former Yahoo exec who was supposed to bring Hollywood-style content to the portal years ago, only to be booted from the company, is back, kinda. AllThingsD reports that Braun will produce The Lunacy Report, a daily show devoted to “weird news” for Yahoo, as well as a celebrity news content portal for MSN. Lunacy will be hosted by Ellen DeGeneres’ brother Vance.

Two former producers for That ’70s Show are launching Dan’s Detour of Life, a new comedy that will run on Cinsay.com. The show stars Michael Kostroff (The Wire) as a guy whose wife, played by Gabrielle Carteris (Andrea from the original Beverly Hills 90210), leaves him, so he moves in with his son.

Sony is launching Qore, a new monthly series about gaming on its Playstation Network this week. The series is hosted by Veronica Belmont and looks at upcoming games for the Playstation and interviews.

And, in much classier news, the Olly Girls of Sunset Tan are hooking up with Charlie O’Connell (Jerry O’Connell’s brother) to host Trivia Trio, a daily pop-culture trivia show for RipeTV.

Between Carteris, O’Connell and Pauly Shore, just to name a few, the web is becoming one big “Where are they now?” file.

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Vid-Biz: PS3, lg15, HD TV

Chris Albrecht — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:57:21 +0000

Sony to Launch Video Service Through PS3; company hopes third time is the charm for piping movies and TV shows directly into the home. (The LA Times)

lonelygirl15 and KateModern Characters to Meet; crossover event kinda like the Internet’s version of when Magnum P.I. met Simon & Simon. (emailed release)

People Buying Smaller HD TVs; credit crunch has people shifting to 30- to 34-inch sets, taking a bite out of the 40- to 49-inch models. (Bits Blog)

Fix8 Adds Candidate Avatars; now you can have a web video chat as Barack Obama. (TechCrunch)

Revision3 Signs Deals with Hulu and Joost; just in time for the arrival of Veronica Belmont, new media studio expands its reach. (MediaWeek) (Disclosure: Revision3 produces the GigaOM Show.)

Rambler Media Set to Launch Rambler Cinema; video service will use Hiro Media for ads, signed content from TNT and Starmedia; holding company also owns Russia’s second largest portal. (Quintura)

Edelman Launches UGC Ad Studio; aspiring filmmakers can compete to make ads for the likes of Burger King, Expedia and Butterball. (USA Today)

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Mahalo Daily Featuring Veronica Belmont Launches

Liz Gannes — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:46:49 +0000

Mahalo, an upstart search site, today launches a video show hosted by Veronica Belmont called Mahalo Daily. The show promises to publish four short episodes a week — “we’re ‘daily’ like The Daily Show,” said Belmont — and will include how-to guides, events and conventions, company profiles, and web site reviews. Here’s the first episode, a visit and test ride at Tesla Motors.

Belmont left a gig as a video host and producer at CNET (CNET) in July, news we broke on NewTeeVee. Belmont — a geek girl who really talks the talk and walks the walk, rather than coming off as having been hired for her headshot — already has a significant fan following, and we’ve selected her as a contestant on our web video celebrity game show at NewTeeVee Live.

“I think a lot of people are going to be surprised it’s not technology-focused,” Belmont said of Mahalo Daily in an interview last week. She mentioned “deep-frying various food items,” how to play guitar, and Leeroy Jenkins of World of Warcraft as upcoming show topics (update: actually, the Jenkins vid was already posted on Belmont’s personal site). A spoofy preview for the show released last week showed off Belmont’s impersonation talents.

The show will be distributed on blip.tv and iTunes. Mahalo — which differentiates itself from other search engines by having paid contributors curate results — is led by outspoken entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. He wrote last week that Mahalo Daily is “not a commercial for Mahalo,” but rather standalone entertainment. However, Belmont said as far as she knew the show was not expected to run advertisements or make its own money.

With little to no focus in its subject matter, Mahalo Daily‘s success will be highly dependent on Belmont’s charisma. But then again, with Mahalo’s millions in funding, she may not be under too much pressure.

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