Tubefilter News

Well it’s official. Not that it was any real surprise at this point, but YouTube’s parent company Google has officially acquired New York-based online video production studio Next New Networks today for an amount reported to be under $100 million.

As part of the pickup, YouTube is launching a new program called YouTube Next, where Next New Networks’ content and audience development operations will plug into. Effectively, it will replace NNN’s existing Next New Creators program that help elevate rising YouTube partners like The Gregory Brothers (Auto-tune the News), Hot for Words and VendrTV.

Next New’s Vanessa Pappas, who will now be heading up Audience Development for YouTube, added in an email to partners today that, “going forward Next New will be integrated into YouTube and operate under YouTube Next. Excitingly, two newly formed divisions will come out of that, the Next Lab, and Audience Development.”

For a while now I’ve been saying that the best web series think of themselves as startups, not just side projects. The hustle, the grind, the payoff—phases known all too well amongst the kindred souls of web video creators and entrepreneurs. Fitting then, that one new series would decide to turn the cameras on the latest crop of business ventures all trying to build something from nothing. When you think of it, startups already have everything that makes for a good story—drama, conflict, high stakes and passion.

Trep Life premiered online this past week from Chicago-based creator Scotty Cadenhead, a 12-episode documentary series diving into a number of the city’s budding startups. First up is online restaurant delivery service GrubHub and its founders Matt Maloney and Mike Evans. This isn’t a marketing EPK, and despite any narrator or audible interview questions we’re given a rather candid look at the less than glamorous life at a startup. Maloney’s creative balancing of his personal life and recently added baby, show a human side mostly absent from the pages of TechCrunch.

Craig Ferguson isn’t going to make any jokes about Charlie Sheen. He likens the media and general public’s infatuation with the Hollywood celebrity’s suicide by camera to an 18th Century psychiatric hospital where people paid to tour the facility, peek into the padded rooms, and gape and point and laugh at all the patients who had flown over the cuckoo’s nest.

Ferguson’s usually my moral pop culture compass (Why? Because he’s awesome.), but on this point I disagree. It certainly would seem appropriate if everyone had the self-restraint not to gawk at Sheen’s drug abuse and domestic violence charges, but his subsequent adoption of social media doesn’t all look like the violent and haphazard path of a star on a train that’s careening off track. There’s more to it. Like Sheen says, “If people could just read behind the hieroglyphic, if they could put their freakin’ cryptology hat on, they’d realize this isn’t totally serious.”

Clearly the guy could use a script for some chill spills, but his choice to go to the Twitter (after losing his publicist after burning more than a billion bridges with more than a million radio and television interviews) and speak directly to masses with a kind of diction and gusto tailor-made for the medium may come to be a case study for future PR interns on how to handle acute manic crises.

Sheen further embraced the medium that cuts out the middle men between him and his audience on Saturday night with the debut of his web series, Sheen’s Korner. The hour-long broadcast on Ustream included poetry recitals, fan shout-outs, the reveal of a new tattoo, the mocking of NBC News correspondent Jeff Rosen, and a lot of wasted air time with nonsensicals that made even hardcore winners confused.

2011 may go down as the year YouTube went on tour. For most of the top stars on the world’s most popular video network the distinction between whether they are media moguls or all-out rock stars is getting harder to distinguish. This year, it looks as though the rock star camp may be #winning. Last month saw the first YouTour, and later this month there’s PlayList Live down in Orlando. But what has to be the most ambitious of the YouTube star live shows, The DigiTour, kicks off mid-April in Los Angeles on a 27-city tour across the country hitting everywhere from Nevada to Maryland to Maine.

Stars slated to appear include MysteryGuitarMan, Dave Days, DeStorm, David Choi, The Gregory Brothers, Ricky Ficarelli, Nice Peter, The Annoying Orange, Savannah Outen, Megan Tonjes, Kimmi Smiles and Antoine Dodson.

Bryan and Michael Voltaggio first appeared on camera together in a very big way.

In the now famous Top Chef Season 6 finale (the best Top Chef season ever, btw), the talented brothers cooked their hearts out to present incredible meals to the judges. But in a reality competition, there can be only one winner (unless you are watching The Bachelor, then that’s a whole different story).

Michael Voltaggio (the younger one with tattoos) prevailed, but Bryan’s (the older one with less tattoos) classic dishes earned him a nail-bitingly close second place. It was really a victory for the whole Voltaggio family, especially considering Momma Voltaggio was in attendance to cheer her sons on.

These days when the brothers appear on camera the viewer is the winner. After considering several branding opportunities (what company wouldn’t want to be represented by two handsome, competent chefs who are also siblings?), the Voltaggio brother entered into a partnership with Williams-Sonoma to inspire the home cook to learn techniques chefs use in professional kitchens.

This collaboration did not start with a chocolate ganache mix from Bryan or an at home molecular gastronomy kit from Michael, but rather an exploration of Williams-Sonoma products that both brothers count on in their restaurant kitchens.

The mission: to create a series of videos that show the home cook how to sous vide, make sauces with Vitamix, smoke with the Smoking Gun, properly use Williams-Sonoma products, and more.

The brothers Voltaggio just returned from exploring barbeque in the South. I caught up with the chefs to learn more about their passion for this project, the video series for the Williams-Sonoma site, and how The Smoking Gun can add some smoky flavor to just about anything.

Tubefilter: How did the Williams-Sonoma collaboration come about?

Michael Voltaggio: We met them through a company that we mutually work with and we hit it off. They were a good fit for us and it seemed that we were a good fit for them. We were approached with different branding opportunities all over the place. Bryan and I wanted to make sure we aligned ourselves with something that was authentic.

Bryan Voltaggio: The best thing about the collaboration is that we have very similar values when it comes to cooking, sharing recipes, and food. We love to gather people together around the table. We are working together to do something that translates what we do in the restaurant kitchen and bring it to the home cooking realm. With Williams-Sonoma we are able to deliver that message.

Tubefilter: You are making a combination of recipe and product videos. What are your goals as chefs when you are shooting the videos? How do you want them to come across?

MV: The video that we shoot we want them to be educational and informative and at the same time. We use them as a platform to translate what we do day to day in our restaurants and make it accessible to more people.

Tubefilter: How long does it take you to prepare and shoot each video?

BV: It depends on what we are doing. If it is just an educational video or recipe it can be very quick, maybe two or three hours for a four to five minute video. It just depends on the content.

The most important thing in any of them is showing the steps in the process, especially if any of them shows a new piece of equipment. Some products many people have not used in a home kitchen. We are translating the techniques from how we work as professional cooks. You have to sometimes think twice about the messages you are delivering. It is very easy for us to lean over to one of our cooks and tell them what we need pureed smooth and I don’t have to explain anything else because they know the language. They know exactly what I am looking for in the end result. But when we are talking about the home setting, we need to be much more specific and make sure we are capturing every step of the way.

SideReel has had a big week. First came news that the San Francisco-based online TV hub had been acquired by Rovi, and somewhat simultaneously they launched a partnership with Tubefilter to help curate their booming Web TV section. Coincidence? Probably.

So here’s how it works. Each week our editors will select four web series to be featured on SideReel in a section we call Tubefilter’s “Freshly Filtered.” Plus, SideReel viewers will now get every Tubefilter News article so they can stay atop of what’s happening in the online video world. The goal here is to help solve one of the biggest problems in an endless sea web series—discovery of shows actually worth watching.

SideReel was founded back in 2007, building one of the largest directory of TV, film and web series, and now boasting over 10 million monthly uniques and 2.5 million registered users. And those users, according to the company, fall heavily in the 18-34 demo that watch more than five hours of TV online per week. Now they are making a serious push into connecting their audience of over 1 million visitors every day with more web originals.

AOL’s on a talent tear. Notable recent additions to its star-studded online video content line-up include every high school student’s favorite study buddy, a trio of internet talk shows hosted by Kevin Pollak, Adam Corolla, Kevin Smith, and an animated iteration of supermodel Gisele Bundchen (and that’s all in addition to Arrianna Huffington and too many celebrity guest appearances to name here). Now you can add a queen to the list.

Queen Latifah and AOL announced a partnership today that will bring the rapper, actor, and singer’s talents to the web pages of AOL’s Blackvoices.com. The site will provide a home for Latifah’s original web series, a short-form, talk show that will “cover topics ranging form entertainment and sports, to social issues and entrepreneurialism.” Flavor Unit, Latifah’s production company, will produce the program.

Here’s to hoping she hosts at least a few of the installments in-character as Ursula and gets the Jonas Brothers as her house band.

AMC is responsible for two of the best shows on television (and The Walking Dead is pretty good, too), so when there’s an announcement the cable network formerly known as American Movies Classics is producing a web show, I get excited.

Jeff Sneider at Variety reports every one’s favorite Bluth patriarch, Jeffrey Tambor and the guy who just wants to dance, Adam Goldberg have finished production on AMC’s latest original web series The Trivial Pursuits of Arthur Banks.

The 44-minute black-and-white program “follows a successful theater director (Goldberg) staging an elaborate play that mirrors his own life.” Tambor plays the theater director’s therapist. Peter Glanz takes on the role of writer and director for the series. There’s no word yet on an expected release date.

This is AMC’s first foray into the web series fray in recent memory. SNL’s best female cheerleader, Cheri Oteri starred in the original online show Liza Life Coach, in which she played a tragically terrible life coach who could use some coaching of her own.