Tubefilter News

Denny’s launched a web series last month. It’s called Always Open. It’s produced by DumbDumb (Will Arnett and Jason Bateman’s branded production company) and Electus (Ben Silverman’s “next generation studio”). It stars David Koechner (who you’ll recognize from Anchor Man, Reno 911, Talladega Nights, and a few dozen other television and film appearances), who engages in conversation with a rotating cast of comedians (including Bateman and Sarah Silverman) over a Grand Slam inside an actual Denny’s.

The series is a solid addition to the long line of online talk show from comedians. It’s funny, irreverent, and unexpected. But the best part about Always Open is it works.

Denny’s has seen a “marked increase in awareness among 18 to 34 year-olds” since the launch of the web series. Those numbers come courtesy of YouGov’s BrandIndex, “a daily measure of brand perception among the public, tracking many brands across multiple sectors simultaneously.”

Steve Hall at Adrants breaks down the numbers:

Since the show’s premiere at the beginning of the month Denny’s has seen its Impression score rise from 6.2 to 25.4 – a number that has surpassed the score for the 50+ demo.

YouGov’s BrandIndex measurement scores range from 100 to -100 and are compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback. Denny’s was measured using the research company’s Impression score, which asks respondents: “Do you have a general positive feeling about the brand?”

Hulu is on pace to make $500 million in revenue in 2011. Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar announced the news earlier this week on the blog on his premium, on demand streaming video destination.
That amount is almost double the estimated $250 million and actual $260 million Hulu grossed in 2010.

So, what’s accounting for the year over year 100% increase in revenue? A few things.

Kilar notes a 50% increase in the amount of advertisers on Hulu, up to 289 in Q1 2011 from 194 in Q1 2010. He also points out the uptick in the number of content partners on Hulu and Hulu Plus, from 211 to 264 during the same time frame. But neither of those two stats matter in terms of revenue unless more people are watching more Hulu.

Well, viewership on Hulu is up, too. Users initiated 10% more streams in Q1 2011 than the previous quarter. And the site is poised to have over 1 million subscribers to the $7.99/month Hulu Plus service by year’s end, up from zero in 2010.

But that 10% increase in streams and the million Hulu Plus subscribers can’t fully account for a 2011 revenue projection of $250 million more than last year. Let’s say we increase last year’s revenue by 10% to account for Kilar’s reported increase in streams. That’s a $26 million bonus for Hulu. Now add the Hulu Plus revenue of $96 million (1 million subs at $7.99 per month for 12 months) and you get a total $122 million. That’s still $128 million shy of the extra $250 million Hulu’s supposed to take in this year.

So, what’s else is accounting for the year over year 100% increase in revenue? More ads.

ComScore first began tracking video ads in June 2010. During that month the site served 566 million video ads. According to ComScore’s latest numbers from February 2011, Hulu served 1.13 billion video ads, almost a 50% increase over 9 months. That increase in video ads served should cover the $128 million we have left over, easily getting us to Hulu’s $500 million projection.

At this point, would-be Hollywood types are more likely flush with web video ideas than headshots, though both options can be tragically bad. Online video has become a viable—and necessary—step in a career of writing, acting or directing these days (not to mention all the associated editing, art directing and other such tracks.)

Break Media, home of Break.com, has gone on record saying they are planning on producing more than 1,000 original videos this year. And even the great Andy Signore, Sr. Producer in Break’s Creative Lab which actually comes up with most of them, is going to be tapped out of comedic gold at some point. It isn’t every day you whip up an Interactive Hot Tub Girl.

So Break decided to team up with screenwriting software site Scripped.com to launch a search for the best web video scripts, with the winning script getting greenlit into production by Break’s Creative Lab. Fast tracked into riches and fame? Not quite. The top five winning scripts will get $500 each, which is half what Break was offering for April Fools prank videos, but the cash isn’t really the point here.

Careers after all, are all about momentum, built with a string of successively greater and greater accomplishments. Online video isn’t really any different, and even the top creators in the game today can attribute their current success to some early exposure like this. Judging the script entries will be two celeb judges in the form of screenwriters (and directors) Ed Burns and Steven De Souza, both of whom are dabbling in web series the past few years.

Bob Andreson of the Raptor Resource Project in Decora, Ioawa recently installed a series of cameras 85 feet up in the air. They overlook a giant bird’s nest (over five feet in diameter) 24 hours a day, monitoring all the mundane and exciting happenings inside the nest’s walls. Within those walls lives a bald eagle family, the mother and father (who’ve been together since 2007) carefully feeding and watching over their two new chicks and the one remaining egg that’s yet to hatch.

The unadulterated look into the domestic lives of bald eagles is the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam of 2011, except way more patriotic and popular.

As of yesterday, 11 million visitors – with peaks of 150,000 concurrent viewers – checked out the eagle cam to catch an up-close and personal glimpse of an animal Americans have been educated to respect, admire, and revere.

That last part, the part about the bald eagle occupying an ingrained, almost mythological place in American culture is my guess as to why the feed attracts so much attention, but Anderson has a different rationale.

“Why viral, I’m not really sure,” Anderson told the AFP. “The world just likes to hear something good instead of negative…This is all positive, this makes people feel good.”

Katie Couric is expected to soon leave her $15 million per year position at CBS, where she became the first solo female anchor to host a network evening news program almost six years ago. The Sarah Palin interviewer extraordinaire will end stint behind the news desk to pursue plans to host a syndicated talk show, which will compete against similar programming from Anderson Cooper, Rosie O’Donnell and Martin Bashir in an attempt to fill the daytime talk show power vacuum Oprah will leave in her wake.

But Katie Couric’s talk show won’t be ready for air until Fall 2012. What’s a television journalist to do in the mean time? How about start a production company and online news show with a major internet destination? From Lacey Rose, Lindsay Powers at The Hollywood Reporter:

Looking to further diversify, Couric is also believed to be eyeing both a production company and a content deal with one of the major Web portals. According to one source, both AOL and Yahoo have expressed interest in partnering with Couric, a move that speaks to the growing need for these sites to differentiate themselves with original, premium content in an increasingly fractured environment where outlets like Facebook and Twitter compete for users’ time.

If Couric developed online programming with AOL or Yahoo, it’d be a great move for two reasons. One, she’d find herself on familiar ground. The web isn’t unexplored territory for the 54-year-old, who began @KatieCouric – her weekly, one-hour online interview program on CBSNews.com – in 2009. Since then, she’s interviewed everyone from Justin Bieber to Glenn Beck.

To my knowledge, Christopher Guest has yet to do a web series—and I’m not counting those controversial Super Bowl ads he directed for Groupon. So that leaves the mess of online mockumentaries devoid of Guest’s distinctive improv-driven repertory comedy. Luckily David Hunt and (his wife) Patricia Heaton are about to bring us something that should tide us over in the form of Versailles which sets for a May 9th debut on My Damn Channel.

Hunt directed and created the series, pronounced “Ver-sales,” (along with Rodney Vaccaro), also starring as Colin Tickler, the son of the late B-movie actress Evelyn Anders (Heaton). Tickler and his sister Summer (Eve Gordon) set out to launch a public access sports TV show from the basement of the local library in hopes of grasping what little notoriety their mother bestowed upon them. Mockumentaries wouldn’t be the same without Fred Willard who appears as Summer’s husband and backer, while William H. Macy gives a pitch perfect talking head interview donning his Shameless scruff that might just become his default look for a while.

Stan Lee was supposed to create, write, and star in a comic book called Super Seven. It was supposed to a partnership with Archie Comics about a group of seven aliens who are befriended by Lee and get the Pa Kent treatment after their spaceship crash lands on planet Earth. The comic was supposed to be turned into a web series in a collaboration with A Squared Entertainment, the creators of Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionair’es Club, Martha Stewart’s Martha and Friends, and Gisele Bündchen’s Gisele and the Green Team. But legal issues permanently stalled the comic book and web show before it ever started.

Now, Lee is once again working with Archie Comics and A Squared Entertainment on a new entertainment property with Arnold Schwarzenneger. It’s called The Governator and this one’s supposed to have a comic book, cartoon TV show, 3D feature film, and a web series, too.

The multi-platform entertainment property stars an animated Schwarzenegger who turns from politics to the kind or private life to which Bruce Wayne is accustomed, meaning the vigilante crime fighting kind. In addition to the Austrian Oak, the story will feature an impossibly young-looking Larry King, Arnold’s real-life wife Maria Shriver, the couple’s children, and the former Governor of California embracing nearly every parody of himself and finding a way to listen to the Black Eyed Peas while dispensing justice without having to deal with all the bureaucratic red tape.

In Early March, YouTube announced two of its latest initiative to foster the development of successful content creators within its own community.

YouTube NextUp – the division of the video sharing site established after YouTube’s recent acquisition of new media studio Next New Networks – asked for submissions from YouTube Partners with fewer than 300,000 subscribers interested in joining an exclusive mentoring program and becoming the beneficiaries of a small stimulus package. Selected creators will receive $35,000 in funding, an invitation to a 4-day YouTube Creator Boot Camp in NYC, and hands-on training and promotion from the YouTube crew in order to bring their careers from the level of amateur to professional.
The YouTube Creator Institute – a program developed by YouTube NextUp – was conceived to lend guidance and a helping hand to creators “who’ve always wanted to express themselves through video, but may be limited by funding, video-making skills, insufficient tools, or just knowing where to start.” YouTube partnered with the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia Colelge Chicago’s Television Department to develop curriculum and coursework specifically geared towards ensuring the world’s new breed of content creators “thrive online and offline.” Selected video makers will be awarded with a free opportunity to become part of the YouTube Creator Institute’s inaugural class.
Now comes the point in both initiatives where the greater YouTube community gets to vote on who should advance to the final judging round. If you want to be a good judge and watch all the submissions that made it thus far, you’ve got your work cut out for you.