CBS Television Distribution (CTD) has picked up Katalyst Media’s animated gossip web series Blah Girls, for distribution as one-minute interstitials between segments of its daily entertainment show The Insider.
Katalyst, headed up by founders Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, has roots in television and film along with its more recent moves in new media. Most notably its long running hidden camera TV series Punk’d ran for eight seasons on MTV before its finale in 2007. Somewhat appropriately, they are actually re-imagining the hit series with a live internet take on it via UStream.
The CBS deal could be a major coup for Blah Girls sponsor Vitamin Water who has been with the series since the launch last fall with display ads and product integration directly inside the animated cartoon. The Streamy-nominated series (for ad integration no less) will now be along for the ride to TV. No word whether this step-up was baked into the original sponsor deal or not.
Either way, the promo spots should raise mainstream awareness of the series and presumably drive some residual traffic to the site. The real score here for Blah Girls fans will be when The Insider snags Stewart’s Hot Minute for a regular gossip gushing spot.
Related News:
Comments
Cool, but continues to show the future is all celebrity and professional content, the indie creator would never get this deal.. again this is cool for web video as an incubator for those types of people but people need to stop thinking that their web series or web content will ever get anywhere without someone larger behind it.
Thanks for the article, sweetheart! Loads of kisses and love! xoxo
@ jamie – Clearly having a big star behind this venture made it possible because it’s only “pretty” good. But I think if you can create a series (animated or otherwise) that catches on and gets serious traffic on youtube, blip, viddler, and any other site out there that shows video, you could find people who want to talk to you about it. But it has to be a professional venture. It has to be really good quality and done in a professional way–if you have representation, that will help immensely.
If you get ten million pageviews on youtube, and consistently bang out good episodes, that will help. But I really think that if someone has a really good show, they can get a deal for it, or once they establish an audience, they can get that “larger someone behind it.” But don’t say that people’s content will never get anywhere. That’s just not true.
The truth is 99.9% of web video makers don’t have GREAT ideas and they aren’t willing to put in the work necessary to gain viewers and get their message out–making the series isn’t enough. The real work is promoting and hoping people like your stuff. This game can be broken into. You just have to have the idea, the chops, the ability to execute, and the passion to get in the trenches and promote it.
Vacae? Ughhh. You lost me with vacae.
Leave a Reply