Electus, the IAC-owned “next generation studio” from Ben Silverman that just teamed up with MySpace to produce reality dance competition Jerk All-Stars, has also partnered with Facebook and SUBWAY to produce another reality competition: SUBWAY High School Heroes.
It’s time to meet the bad guys, the villains that justify this paragon of dance warriors even coming together in the first place. The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers (The LXD) dazzled us with an origin story this summer in its breakout first season on Hulu, making it the new most popular web series in the network’s history. It even cracked the top 10 of all shows on Hulu, including TV, during its summer release.
But now comes the conflict that the first season was missing. Season two debuts this Wednesday, dubbed “Secrets of the Ra,” an allusion to the mysterious energy force that the dancers harness as their primary weapon. But now we’re getting a look at the dark villains of Organization X, the storied antagonists to The LXD, which get their own origin plotline. That and creator-director Jon M. Chu has crafted some mind blowing battle sequences as these two groups finally collide.
Hulu’s Andy Forssell (SVP of Content Acquisitions and Distribution) called the series “a bit hit” adding that it caused viewers to “reach for the ‘share’ button to let their friends know they simply had to check out this show.” Ad revenue from pre-roll and display units on the site is said to have been fairly healthy for Season 1 of the series. Much like YouTube, Hulu splits revenue with the content owners—in this case that’s Paramount Digital and Agility Studios.
Conan O’Brien is set to return to late night television at 11PM on Monday, November 8. TBS is doing everything it can to make sure you’re aware.
The network released literally dozens of ads promoting its serious (sorry George Lopez, but nobody takes you seriously) entree into the world of late night, filled its extra HD ad space with Conan promos, and helped Team Coco pull off 24 hours of live programming on YouTube.
Last week, the Coco Cam webcam streamed all the action from a stairwell at Conan HQ for 24 hours straight. Dancing tacos, 80′s bear aerobics, zombie attacks, and the revelation of Conan’s first guests were among the many highlights.
A total of 660,000 viewers tuned into the live stream at some point over the day’s worth of programming, with the viewership at any given time averaging 13,000. The on-demand videos featuring Live Coco Cam highlights have collectively drawn a total of 732,000+ views in less than a week’s time.
Sony PlayStation Network, the game console’s online entertainment hub, has signed on Ford, Electronic Arts, and the U.S. Air Force to sponsor the second season of The Tester, PlayStation’s original online reality series in which gamers compete for a job at the company as a professional video game tester.
Skinny Jeans: The Movement is the web series that was supposed to expose the Jerk dance craze to the online masses.
Candor Entertainment announced plans to debut the 20-episode series back in July 2009. Camera crews were to follow around jerkin’ musical groups like New Boyz, Pink Dollaz, The Bangz, and Kream Kidz, and document their dance offs, 80′s-inspired fashion choices, too-tight jeans, and the evolution of a body movement characterized by loose freestyle motions peppered with dips, pin drops, and fancy lower body work.
But a year after the intended debut date, nothing’s been released. Skinny Jeans: The Movement went AWOL, which leaves an opening on the floor for MySpace.
Ben Silverman, the IAC-owned “next generation studio” Electus, and the internet’s “place for friends” have teamed up for the original web series, Jerk All-Stars. Here’s how the reality dance competition works:
From November 1-17, MySpace users can submit their dance crews to be featured on the show. The online community will weigh in, and four All-Stars judges – known talents BB the Jerk, Sabi, Indigo Vanity and Young Ace – as well as a panel of judges from Electus, MySpace and Sprite will pick 10 crews to compete on the weekly show, which premieres November 30….The winning crew from each episode moves on to the finale.
Jerk All-Stars will release a total of 14 episodes, all sponsored by Sprite.
The series is the latest in a string of online, reality programs from MySpace. In the past 18 months, the social network has ditched financing scripted series like Roomates in favor of inexpensive, unscripted fare like BFF and Married on MySpace. Jerk All-Stars is also the latest of several web original announcements from Electus, which entered the online entertainment space in June with Jason Bateman’s Orbitz-sponsored Dirty Shorts.
RadNerd’s Beau Ryan, Andre Meadows and Damien Beurer have been staples on the LA web video scene, often popping up at Tubefilter events—Ryan’s signature thick dark rim glasses making him an easy find even in crowded mixers.
A year ago it was a pilot run on live streaming channel TheStream.tv, an earlier incarnation of the series that would land The RadNerd Show a Streamy Award nomination for Live Production in a web series.
Now The RadNerd Show is back as a more polished, non-live version picked up by entertainment site CraveOnline for an exclusive distribution run. The 15-minute weekly web series premieres today on site with new episodes out every Friday.
The 15 minutes will break out into four segments, blending tech, comic book, gaming and entertainment news rundowns with comedy sketches and a ‘friendly interview’ with a different ‘Weblebrity’ each week. Taking a nod from their well-received live show, they will solicit questions for their guests from their fan community through Twitter. Andre “BlackNerd” Meadows (BlackNerdComedy.com) is the newest addition to the show, and comic book wiz Beurer running down the latest in comics news.
This week emerging technology news and trends blog NewTeeVee launched its first ever original web series, Cord Cutters, a Revision3-style hosted news program that offers, as Co-Editor at NewTeeVee Liz Shannon Miller put it, “a look every week at the exciting new gadgets and important companies emerging to help you replace your cable subscription, as well as a spotlight on the great content available with or without Comcast or Time Warner Cable.”
Battlestar Galactica and Caprica co-executive producer Michael Taylor announced in July a new BSG web series was in the works.
Blood & Chrome was set to revolve around the experiences of a young William Adama in the Twelve Colonies of Man during the first Cylon War. Taylor said it would depict “the realities of war as fought by soldiers on the ground (and in Battlestars and Vipers), and the somewhat less real version portrayed in the media.”
If greenlit, Syfy was set to produce nine or so 10-minute episodes of the original web series, all shot on green screens using virtual sets. But, Syfy’s not greenlighting the web series. Instead, it’s greenlighting a TV pilot.
Maureen Ryan at TV Squad reports Syfy execs were so enthralled with Taylor’s script, they decided Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome will air on the network as a “pilot for a possible young Adama TV series.” Production will begin in Vancouver in early 2011, with an air date in late 2011 or early 2012.
Mark Stern, executive vice president of original programming at Syfy, told Ryan about how the scope of the project changed:
When we read Michael’s script, it was so clearly a full-blown pilot for a series…The scope is fantastic and bigger, I think, than anticipated, so we said, ‘Let’s do it as a 2-hour backdoor pilot.’ … We’re trying to get up and running as soon as possible.
No actors for the series have been announced, but Ryan was able to gather some clues about the Blood & Chrome storyline:
Blood & Chrome, which takes place in the tenth year of the Cylon War, follows Adama, a recent Academy graduate, as he and a rookie pilot take a female character on an important mission. There’s a potential love interest for Adama in the story, but the pilot is basically about that mission, which, if successful, could turn the tide of the war.
B&C was set to become the second online show to come out of the BSG franchise. In December 2008 and January 2009, Syfy released the The Face of the Enemy, took home a number of Streamy Awards and is a must-see for anyone who knows the meaning of frak.
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