Tubefilter News

The Young Turks uploaded its first video to YouTube on December 25, 2005. The liberal-progressive and self-proclaimed “first internet TV news show” was created by Cenk Uygur (here’s a videoif you need to learn how to pronounce that one), Ben Mankiewicz, Dave Koller, and Jill Pike and born out of a defunct Sirius Satellite Radio program of the same name. It’s done much better online.
In the five years, six months, and couple of weeks since the program found a new home on the internet, The Young Turks has uploaded 9,450+ videos, accumulated 250,000+ subscribers and just recently received it’s 500,000,000 view. In that time frame Uygur landed a hosting gig at MSNBC and Uygur and company turned The Young Turks from one left-of-center news show into a brand that now produces no less than six regularly scheduled original web series, employs 12 full-time employees, and sees revenue upwards of $1 million per year (a threshold Uygur tells me the company stepped over eight or so months ago).

That half-billionth view and those revenue numbers are some very impressive milestones to attain, especially for a news program that’s not trying to garner eyeballs via pop culture parodies (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or by way of video titles sprinkled with the names of conventionally attractive celebrities (not that there’s anything wrong with that, either). Given his program’s numbers, I recently caught up with Uygur over the phone to find out more about the current status of The Young Turks (the show and the company), how Uygur manages the relationship between his television show and his internet show, and where The Young Turks (again, the show and the company) is headed.

Tubefilter: You have a regular gig now on MSNBC. A lot of people in the online video world would consider that the end game, a sign that you’ve made it. So why is The Young Turks still up and running online?
Cenk Uygur: The Young Turks is the main show. The network is averaging over a million views a day. Just from a financial perspective – let alone the ability to get our your message and do something you love – you’d be crazy to stop the program.

TF: How does MSNBC feel about that?

CU: Whenever I talk to any TV executive, I say stopping The Young Turks is non-negotiable. I think the oldschool way of thinking is if you’ve made it onto TV you’ve made it. I’m not a believer in that oldschool of thought. I think online is going to be bigger and I’d much rather hold onto my online show than get caught up in dreams of television stardom.

TF: What’s the relationship like between you on MSNBC and The Young Turks? Is there any synergy there?

CU: Sure, but they don’t work together much. We promote MSNBC on The Youg Turks. We promote The Young Turks a little bit on MSNBC. We haven’t coordinated anything at this point in a significant way. So far they’re fairly distinct.

TF: Are you seeing fans cross over from one medium to the other?

CU: A lot more viewers cross over from The Young Turks to MSNBC than MSNBC to The Young Turks. I think television viewers are are a little more set in their ways. It’s a little harder to get them to try something new, whereas The Young Turks viewers are invested in the show and happy to see me on TV.

TF: Do original Youg Turks fans get bragging rights since they liked you before you were on TV?

CU: Ha. I think people feel a little proud that they’re able to say, “We were TYT fans before Cenk was on TV.” Definitely. There’s a point of pride there.

The latest comScore numbers for online video consumption in the U.S. are out today for the month of June, showing once again that Google Sites, primarily YouTube that is, dominate the rankings with a whopping 2.3 billion (with a B) viewing sessions last month. That’s out of a total market of 6.3 billion viewing sessions, the first time ever that comScore numbers have surpassed the 6 billion mark.

The runners-up are the same as previous months, with music video powerhouse VEVO the next highest with 399 million viewing sessions, followed by Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom sites.

comScore defines a viewing session as “a period of time with continuous video viewing followed by a 30-minute period of video inactivity,” meaning their data conservatively undercount actual views reported from the sites themselves. How many times have you headed over to YouTube for example, and only watch one video per session?

There’s always been one number buried deep in the comScore releases that we’ve always pay attention as it creeps up month by month. That’s the online video duration stat, that measures the average time of an online video. For June 2011 that number hit 5.4 minutes, nearly double what it was a few years back. To better visualize this move, we whipped up a chart of this data over time, going back to December 2007 when it was just 2.7 minutes.

There are currently over 20,000 YouTube Partners (aka the channels whose content YouTube has deemed appropriate for advertisers and with which the company splits advertising revenue earned against the channels’ videos). That number has doubled in the last year. The revenue on partner pages has tripled in the last year, too. The number of YouTube Partners making over $1,000 per month up 300% since the beginning of 2010.

That’s a lot of new media and homegrown internet talent making at least some extra cash and at most a very comfortable living thanks to the world’s largest video sharing site. But while Youtube has created and fostered a new breed of entertainment professionals, the company can’t help but court established Hollywood and pop culture personalities with multi-million dollar productions.

Michael Learmonth at Advertising Age leaked details of a few of the types of big name, big budget original web series YouTube is currently pitching to brand name advertisers. They are:

Dream Makers – A series produced by Endemol, starring Kobe Bryant that’s been in the works at least since August of 2010. The program features the Los Angeles Lakers star “rewarding ‘outstanding young people’ with the ‘dream of a lifetime.’” The reported asking price for an exclusive run of six to eight episodes will cost an advertiser $1.7 million.
The Incubator – A 36-episode reality series featuring 10 entrepreneurs as they take a business idea from conception to fruition. Ben Silverman’s new media studio Electus is on board to produce and looking for an exclusive six-month sponsor to the tune of $3.5 million.
Lady Gaga concert – A live New York City show with the reigning Queen of Pop streamed to the online masses via YouTube and Vevo. Real estate on Lady Gaga’s YouTub channel and Facebook page along with a sponsorship for the concert alongside Samsung will cost a brand $9 million.
These pitches, Learmonth notes, are a completely separate initiative from the $100 million YouTube supposedly has earmarked for enticing recognizable celebrities to take their talents online. The two programs, however, along with a planned January redesign to YouTube’s layout could literally change the face of online video.

New York comedian Catie Lazarus has more than dabbled in web series before, popping up as a Barely Political correspondent or as a reverse -therapist and host of YourTango’s On The Couch with Catie Lazarus. But now we get a peek into the devilishly candid and inventive mind of the young performer with her first original series, The On Time Show with Petunia Van De Twirp.

With a setup somehwere close to the Late Night show for the Toy Story gang, puppet host Petunia is the Conan of the stuffed animal kingdom. Voiced (and written) by Lazarus, Petunia’s opening monologue breezes through self-deprecating one-liners cutting quickly over to a very real crank call segment with everything from Virgin Atlantic to Best Buy and Budget Rental Car.

There’s a silent film bit after that—Petunia’s somewhat racy run-in with her bedroom beau Senator Bear—followed by a one-on-one with bilingual prodigy Dora the Explorer. The series for now is just the pilot, though Lazarus promises more are in store if we’re nice about it.

This is an odd one. And at the same time possibly brilliant. One one hand, you have to digest the fact that Pippa Middleton—you know the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton’s upstaging sister—has a web show dedicated to recreating her globally admired bum. Then, on the other hand, you have to be comfortable with the knowledge that there’s someone out there crazy enough to hire a lookalike model to shoot a web series doing just that.

The originator here is a photographer named Alison Jackson, whose YouTube channel TheRealAJackson is releasing these thumbnail-friendly low-fi exercise videos. Some have called Jackson a “stunt artist,” whose 1999 staged photo caught attention portraying the late Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed with a mixed-race love child.

“I held auditions for a Pippa Middleton face and a separate Pippa bottom,” Jackson told The Daily Mail. “It took several casting sessions to find the ideal bottom double, Gabriella Parris.”

The uber-short-form is the genre of online entertainment of which I might be most fond. I

know new media studios are trying to delve into longer fare, but uber-short-form is the perfect video product for a medium where a billion distractions lie behind a million links a mouse click away. It’s respectful of the viewer. It knows you’re busy, so it only asks for a literal minute (or less!) of your time. If that minute (or less!) is comprised of quality entertainment, that’s great! You were just entertained. If it’s bad, no worries! You only wasted a minute (or less!) of your time.

The format is sustainable, too. Big (and even smallish) budget web series with a 10 or 12-episode story arc and a beginning, middle and end can oftentimes start and finish before audiences even discover they exist. But the uber-short-form can stretch those same production dollars and work hours into tens, if not hundreds of installments.

All that’s why I’m in like with 5-Second Films. The online destination for uber-short-form entertainment was created by Brian “Boss Man” Firenzi in 2005, “after being disappointed by so man 5,400-second films.” All films on the site must abide by 5-Second Films’ Rules. There must be 2 seconds of beginning titles, 5 seconds of film, 1 second of end titles. The Boss Man along with a handful of talented friends and few cameo filmmakers have so far created and uploaded 694 films abiding by those rules. And counting. A brand new 5-Second film debuts on the site every weekday.

YouTube personality and lifecaster Dan Brown inked a deal with Revision3 to air Delicious Steak with Dan Brown on the network.

The Dan 3.0 star, who allowed fans to control his life for a year, will host the biweekly series (Tuesdays and Fridays) that will document Dan’s travels and discuss topics that interest him and his loyal fan base.

After posting a tutorial on how to solve a Rubik’s Cube which earned over 20,000,000 views on his YouTube channel pogobat, Brown leveraged his internet stardom to launch a vlog covering day-to-day life, focusing on cutting-edge science and tech with an accessible, personal touch.

With nearly 90,000,000 upload views and over 280,000 subscribers on YouTube, its no surprise that Revision3 tapped Brown to join its network of more than 25 online programs.

The series promises to address “tough topics slathered in sauce;” the first episode addresses the climate crisis and Brown’s candid discourse on the topic, during which he incorporates fans’ comments and reactions. Brown provides inspiration to his viewers, offering suggestions on how we can individually address global warming.

Seth Green is all up in the internet lately. The trailer for his new Crackle series Issues just dropped, and now comes word that he’s launching a new dedicated YouTube channel, Stoopid Monkey, based around the title card of Green and partner Matt Senreich’s Robot Chicken production company.

The YouTube channel put out its first video today (below), a short teaser for the combination live-action and stop-motion animation series that will put out two new episodes each Friday for 10 weeks starting this Friday (July 15).

The show follows “the misadventures of Stoopid Monkey, Biggie and QT as they interact with real people.” Animation is being handled by Buddy System Studios with John Harvatine IV, Eric Towner and David Brooks directing.

Matthew Beans is head writer on the series and shares producing duties with Nakia Trower-Shuman, Steve Tzirlin and Terence Liff.