Entertainment and Arts

CollegeHumor finally announced the details of its new show, "The College Humor Show," which will debut on MTV Feb. 8. The office comedy will be a longer version of the site's "Hardly Working" series, which executive producer Sam Reich told us off the record back in August. You can read Chris Albrecht's story about the […]

Sony Music Entertainment has licensed Kyte's digital media platform for use by its artists in the U.S. and Germany, Kyte announced today.

The creative team behind the successful Barely Political franchise is going to unleash their funny on tech world, Next New Networks announced today. The digital network launched a new comedy site called Barely Digital, which will be adding videos about “gaming, gadgets, websites and comptuers” over the next few weeks, according to the website.

Video search engine Truveo has released an updated version of its  iPhone application, Beet.TV has learned. The application, first launched in July, allows users to access videos in Apple-friendly formats from major sites including CNN, NBC, HBO, The Discovery Channel, and YouTube. In November, I interviewed CEO Peter Kocks about the then-forthcoming updates, and he […]

Video SEO EveryZing will power search and discovery for Revision3, the digital web studio created by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the company announced today. Andy interviewed CEO Tom Wilde in the Beet offices last month about the company's speech-to-text technology, which creates rich, searchable metadata for videos. 

Digital studio Eqal, the brains behind LonelyGirl15, Kate Modern, and LG15: The Resistance, has teamed up with CBS to create a new, multi-platform show called Harper's Island, which will premier online March 18 and on TV April 9. I discussed the role of interactivity in online video with Eqal CEO Miles Beckett in August, before […]

Jimmy Fallon won't go on the air as NBC Late Night Host until March 2, but he's been building an online presence through his video blog, www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com, since early December. In his most recent video, he's goofing around at the CES conference — a logical stomping grounds for a videoblogger trying to build a fanbase […]

Boxee, the social media center that brings online video to the living room TV, has opened its alpha to all Mac, Ubuntu, and Apple TV users and added the BBC iPlayer and Joost to its library, the company announced from CES today. It has moved its Windows version into private alpha and will be releasing […]

Comedy site JibJab has raised $7.5 million in Series C funding from investors including Overbrook Entertainment and Sony Pictures, Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch reported. Andy interviewed JibJab CEO Greg Spiridellis at the TimeWarner Politics ’08 Summit in October about politics and comedy on the web, and I republished the interview today.

Famous angel investor Ron Conway called product placement "the next multibillion dollar industry" at TechCrunch50 earlier this summer. But there needs to be a standardization of the buying process before that happens, according to Paul Kontonis, CEO of the web video studio For Your Imagination.

Leading online media studio For Your Imagination introduced two new networks in 2009: personal finance network GEQ and fashion network Glampede, CEO Paul Kontonis told me at the Mogulus studio in SoHo last month. Video social entertainment platform Joost will begin distributing the new shows, as well as shows from existing FYI networks The Green […]

Hollywood is still “dawdling” over DRM, film rights and downloadable media, according to a Business Week story by Steven Wildstrom.  In June, I interviewed Sony Pictures CTO Mitch Singer about plans to make motion pictures more easily shared between devices.  We chatted on the Sony lot in Culver City.  I have republished the interview today. […]

On-demand web video service Joost’s new (and free) iPhone application, launched Monday, streams its entire online library of 45,000-plus videos to users on WiFi networks, according to CEO Mike Volpi. A large portion of the library will be available on 3G within a month: “The technology is basically ready,” he says. Volpi spoke to me […]

Consumers planning to buy a Wii Fit or Blackberry Storm this holiday season should act fast: Those are some of the gadgets that will disappear first this holiday season, according to the great Sold Out Guide on shopping blog Shefinds.com. Last month, I interviewed SheFinds.com founder Michelle Madhok about the Web 3.0 concept behind the […]

Microsoft has gained exclusive rights to the second season of web series "The Guild," Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee reports today. The show will be shown across the Xbox, MSN and Zune platforms, but creator Felicia Day, who TV Week’s Daisy Whitney interviewed at SXWV 2008 with Beet, will retain intellectual property rights. So if the […]

As YouTube expands its offering of professionally produced–and advertising-appropriate–videos, its analytics tool YouTube Insight will become increasingly important. YouTube’s Strategic Partner Development Manager Laura Lee explained the value of YouTube Insight for both content creators and marketers at the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable last month. “That tool I think has been really powerful especially to […]

Global ad network Adconion acquired production studio KTV Digital Media today and officially entered the branded entertainment game, driving home the point that product placement in online video is here to stay. Angel investor Ron Conway called it "the next multi-billion dollar industry" at TechCrunch50 in September, and more and more ad networks are getting […]

MySpace just announced a program to allow users to pull premium content from Hulu and other 150 other licensed video sources onto their MySpace pages.  It’s called the Primetime Application. In June in Beverly Hills, I interviewed Jason Kirk who heads up MySpaceTV.  He spoke about the role of MySpace as "home" — a destination […]

HOLLYWOOD, CA — “Bloody Disgusting,” which bills itself as “Your Number 1 News Source for All Things Horror,” is proving the viability of vertical publishing.

Two thirds of the videos on MySpace are viewed on user profiles and are discovered primarily through social referral, MySpaceTV Director of Content and Marketing said during the Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable today. The MySpaceTV toolset makes video a part of the social media experience, he explained to Andy in an interview yesterday evening at […]