Tubefilter News

Cory Doctorow and the rest of the Boing Boing crew are wearing frock coats and derbies and all ran-tan in celebratory preparation for the upcoming premiere of Riese: Kingdom Falling. The retooled, steampunk original web series debuts on Syfy.com Tuesday, October 26.

Riese’s initial run wasn’t long for the internet. The series was released in late 2009 by creators Ryan Copple and Kaleena Kiff as an alternate-reality-game-slash-web-series. The duo partnered with UK-based digital distributor, Fireworks four months later. Copple and Kiff then took down the series per a request from Fireworks in the hopes that some type of moneyed distribution or development deal would follow. Two months later, they signed a deal.

A $200,000 production budget put to very good use, a compelling fantasy-infused storyline, and a host of Hollywood talent – including Amanda Tapping (Sanctuary), Christine Chatelain (The Bone Collector); Sharon Taylor (Stargate Universe), Ben Cotton (Harper’s Island), Allison Mack (Smallville); Ryan Robbins (Caprica), Patrick Gilmore (Stargate Universe), Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica) and Emilie Ullerup (Sanctuary) – made Riese an appealing acquisition.

In its online reincarnation, Riese brings along with it an iPhone game developed by Vancouver-based Genius Factor and voiced by online video superstar, Felicia Day. Liz Miller at NewTeeVee also reports the show got a shiny new edit thanks to Syfy’s collaboration with Copple and his team.

Check out the Syfy.com premiere of Riese: Kingdom Falling October 26 at 12PM. New episodes of the 10-part series will be released every Tuesday and Thursday.

Leading web television network Revision3 announced yesterday the launch of Destructoid, a new web series that will bring editorial content from popular gaming news site Destructoid.com to viewers three times a week.

The second thing they teach you in Interpreting Research Reports 101 Class at Journalism University is to define your terms. For instance, if a survey touting the efficacy and value of original web programming uses phrases like “Web original programming” and “National Sample of monthly online video viewers,” it’s beneficial to find out exactly what those phrases mean.

In the case of YouTube, Next New Networks and Magid’s research on viewership of web original content, “web original programming” is defined as “high quality short videos produced exclusively for the Internet and not derived from pre-existing movies, television, or film properties.” And “National Sample of monthly online video viewers” is meant to convey a “nationally representative recruitment of adults 18 – 54 through a high quality research panel provider.”

Based on surveys completed between May 18 and June 4, 2010, the report from YouTube, Next New Networks, and Magid found that of the National Sample of monthly online video viewers, 55% watch web original programming, while 45% do not. While that’s news in and of itself, the most interesting parts of the report focuses on that 55% of web original watchers.

YouTube and Next New Networks intercepted web original video viewers during visits to their respective sites, surveyed these online video viewers, and came up with the following conclusions:

60% watch Web original video content weekly;
58% see Web originals as providing quality entertainment whenever they want it;
Over one quarter of viewers find Web original content to be more entertaining than traditional television.
The top motivators for web original watchers to tune into their web originals were “to be entertained,” and “to laugh.” Web original watchers also keep up with new episodes from their favorite titles not by RSS feeds or e-mail subscriptions, but over 50% stay up-to-date simply by “checking the site to see if any new videos have been posted.”

In terms of using social media to spread the word about their favorite programs, the survey found web original watchers had the following habits:

4 out of 10 viewers share the videos with others;
Number of viewers who email the link: 37%; post to Facebook or MySpace: 36%; while those who share on Twitter: 10%.
Now back to Journalism University. The first thing they teach you in Interpreting Research Reports 101 Class is to know your sources. For instance, if a survey touting the efficacy and value of original web programming was commissioned by an original web programmer and an online video distribution company, you should tread carefully when interpreting the results.

That being said, everything points to the findings of YouTube, Next New Networks, and Magid to be overwhelmingly positive for web original creators and all others involved in the original online video industry. Now, the goal is to get more than 55% of monthly online video viewers to tune into web originals and (to be on the safe side) a couple independent third party studies to come to similar conclusions.

Just face it, this is the best four minutes you are going to spend today.

Between Two Ferns has been lighting it up lately. And output is sure picking up too, perhaps because of that new juicy sponsorship deal with Speed Stick. Zach Galifiankis’ Streamy Award-winning web series continues to be Funny or Die’s tentpole right now, and nothing appears to be taking away that honor any time soon.

Last time it was Sean Penn and before that Steve Carell trying to outwit Galifiankis on his low-budg interview show, and this time it’s Bruce Willis sitting down for some cold brooding stare-offs. But does he actually get Bruce to open up to his softer side?

No wonder all the digital ad execs at Starcom MediaVest Group and video publishers like Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, CBS, Discovery, and BBE want to adopt Hulu’s ad format of choice, the Ad Selector (ASq). The thing works.

In the latest September numbers from comScore, Hulu sits atop the Online Video Ads Viewed charts with an impressive 793,976,000 video ad impressions. Tremor Media comes in a distant second at 525,823,000, with BrightRoll in third at 476,476,000. The retooled online-video-distribution-platform-slash-ad-network, Tubemogul also made its first appearance in the top 10 with 179,393,000 video ads viewed. Total ad impressions in the US across all networks climbed from 3.8 billion in August to 4.3 billion in September.

When it comes to plain old video views, Google still blows away the competition. Led by YouTube, Google sites saw 144,166,000 million unique viewers in September. That’s over 2.5 times as many viewers as the next online video property on the charts, Yahoo, which edged out Facebook for second place with 54,356,000 uniques.
But what makes the Google/YouTube numbers even more impressive is how much the sites dominate other online video properties in terms of Viewing Sessions and Minutes Per Viewer. In September alone, Google/YouTube was home to 1.9 billion Viewing Sessions. That’s almost eight times Yahoo’s number. Viewers also spent an average of 260.4 minutes on the world’s largest video sharing site, over eight times the amount of time they spent with videos on Yahoo.

Today marks the launch of The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour (JL5MCH), the highly anticipated online sketch comedy show from comedian Jeff Lewis (Vork from The Guild) and The Guild director Sean Becker.

In an announcement today from the International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV), the group has decided to open up its membership to anyone in the online entertainment world who is interested in joining.

The decision came after some debate amongst members as to what requirements should be in place for membership, an issue the group had a hard time finding consensus on. Instead the move to open up membership is being pitched as a way of mirroring the internet’s open environment.

“Digital media professionals are so diverse, determining an IAWTV member profile and IAWTV membership requirements has been a widely debated topic among the current membership,” said IAWTV Membership Chair Kathleen Grace.

Susan Miller and Tina Cesa Ward aren’t afraid to mix it up and try something new. The two New York-based creators of hit indie drama Anyone But Me spent most of the summer drumming up fan donations in their Web-a-thon fundraising drive to raise enough money to shoot a third season.

With a final count of $33,088 raised, Miller and Ward are calling the drive a success, even if it didn’t hit the amibitious $120k mark they set to fund the entire season. It’s enough to fund at least three episodes, and another donor has stepped in with a bridge loan to cover another two. So come January the cast and crew of the coming of age drama that notched four Streamy Award nominations and a Best Actor win for star Rachel Hip-Flores, are heading back into production.

Asking for fan donations can only go so far, even for a show as showered with press as Anyone But Me. The next tactic is to turn to the social contract of old—creating content that viewers will pay for. In this case it’s the release today of an exclusive new music video for folk singer Rachael Cantu starring Hip-Flores, Nicole Pacent and other cast from the series.