Tubefilter News

Yahoo is premiering 7 new original online series this week, each targeting the female demo.

The fall programming line-up features TV stars including Judy Greer, Cameron Mathison, Niecy Nash, and Morgan Spurlock.

Yahoo’s TV-quality programming ties into Yahoo’s latest video initiative: the re-vamped video hub Yahoo! Screen, which will also include Yahoo’s entire line-up of original shows, including Primetime in No Time, The Thread, and The Daily Ticker.

Yahoo! Screen is also syndicating video from Hulu, CBS, Howcast, Turner Sports, UFC, Revision3, and more than 70 other content creators, with the intention of assembling the most comprehensive premium video content library on the web.

Two of the shows are in-house productions from Yahoo! Studios. The other shows are developed in partnership with production companies Electus, FishBowl Worldwide Media, Prime Content and Warrior Poets.

Here’s the line-up:

Reluctantly Healthy with Judy Greer (Arrested Development, Californication, 27 Dresses) – It’s easy to live healthy at home, but what do people like Judy Greer do that are always on the go, working long hours and traveling? Luckily Judy’s got a dream fitness team – trainer Tanja Djelevic chef Jared Sokoloff and nutritionist Carey Peters – to intervene and teach her and the audience how to live healthy on the go.

Let’s Talk About Love with Niecy Nash (Reno 911, Dancing with the Stars, Clean House) – Comedienne Niecy Nash hosts this weekly relationship show, which uniquely and positively examines a different love, sex or relationship topic in each loosely-formatted episode. In the premiere episode she tackles the subject of “why girls like bad boys” with a collection of her friends at the local spa.

Ultimate Proposal with Cameron Mathison (Dancing With The Stars, All My Children) – Each week Cameron Mathison and a team of experts help a new guy plan and deliver the proposal of a lifetime. In the premiere episode Cameron introduce you to Kenny, a hopeful love bird who plans to win over his girlfriend Cassie with a staged art show, original art work, a two part choreographed dance routine and live vocals. Will his attempt at the ultimate proposal pay off? Watch and be wooed!

If you’re craving some Top Chef and are tired of rereading Eater’s delightful recaps of installments of Top Chef by the very funny Max Silvestri, but still want to satiate your entertainment pangs for reality culinary competitions before the November 2 premiere of Top Chef: Season Nine’s multi-platform programming, you can tune into BravoTV.com. That’s where you’ll find the ConAgra-sponsored original web series Top Chef: Healthy Showdown.

The half-dozen-or-so-episode original web series features one of Padma’s favorites and three other past contestants – Sara Nguyen of Season Three, Ryan Scott of Season Four, and Casey Thompson and Tre Wilcox of Season Three and Top Chef All-Stars – cooking for celebrity chef Curtist Stone, the Judge’s Table, a shot at $25,000, and the opportunity to become the “Flavor Ambassador” for Healthy Choice’s new brand of Top Chef-endorsed products.

The episodes are shorter than their television counterparts, but aside from the time and the underlying calorie conscious theme, Healthy Showdown looks and feels just like any installment of Top Chef you’d find on Bravo proper. The sereis should be a good representation of what’s to expect from the online Loser’s Bracket component of Top Chef’s upcoming season.

There’s one thing we do know, and it’s that Bad Lip Reading is set for a hell of a rise on YouTube now that they’ve fully embraced the alchemy of catchy, politically satirical music videos. What began modestly just six months ago with a bad lip reading of Rebecca Black, has veered straight into the whack train that is Election 2012, issuing bad lip readings of Barack Obama, Rick Perry and now, Michele Bachmann.

The channel is fast becoming the Auto-tune the News of the 2012 campaign, taking the politicos’ speeches and TV interviews and re-dubbing as a malicious, yet cleverly faulty lip reader might interpret them. “Trick the Bridesmaid – A Bad Lip Reading of Barack Obama” (below) remains my favorite, though so far it’s Rick Perry’s soundbite that tops their political entries.

It’s tough to penetrate beyond a university coed, post-college, or fratacular demographic when you have a brand with a name like CollegeHumor. So, if you do have a brand with a name like CollegeHumor and you want to appeal to individuals outside of the 15 million or so monthly visitors who frequent your internet destination and fit into the aforementioned demos, what do you do? You create a spinoff brand with a different name.

Jest.com is the just-launched progeny of CollegeHumor.com, birthed onto the web by the company’s newish CEO Paul Greenberg and helmed by long-time and familiar CollegeHumorer Jeff Rubin. The new comedy destination will attempt to appeal to 18 to 49-year-olds by way of aggregating access to a handful of popular television programs (including 30 Rock, The Daily Show, Modern Family, The Simpsons, and more), compiling viral videos from the web and other CollegeHumor properties, and producing two to three Jest original videos per week.

Landline TV is in charge of that latter part. CollegeHumor tapped the New York City-based comedy trio and production company (comprised of Jared Neumark, Saj Pothiawala and Paul Briganti) as Jest’s original video team. They’re charged with producing “high quality topical videos that are responsive to the news cycle.” That includes shorts like the timely Too Much Moneyball and this evergreen funny-because-it’s-true look at the experience of discount furniture shopping at big-box Swedish stores with significant others:

Felicia Day first announced in February she would play the role of writer, co-producer and Tallis, a headstrong, sarcastic, dirty fightin’ elvin assassin in the live-action iteration of the uber-popular video game Dragon Age. A week later, Day and Jimmy Falon showed people who watch Late Night a trailer of the Dragon Age: Redemption original web series. Today Day, Dragon Age creator BioWare, and the entertainment industry’s go-to distributor of high-profile, gamer oriented online originals, Machinima, let the internet know when you’ll be able to catch the premiere.

The first of six weekly installments of Dragon Age: Redemption will debut on Tuesday, October 11 on Machinima’s YouTube channel. That’s the same date BioWare will make available the next downloadable content package for Dragon Age II. Mark of the Assassin will reportedly feature Day’s live-action character Tallis in game.

Here’s the Redemption trailer to whet your appetite for flesh and bone, fantasy-based, RPG-oriented entertainment:

Machinima is fast-becoming the premiere distribution channel for big budget original web series. Mortal Kombat: Legacy recently finished a successful run on the network and AMC chose Machinima as its distribution channel for its The Walking Dead web series Torn Apart.

First came planking, then came owling, then leisure diving, then bat-manning, and now Melbourne Australia’s Alki Stevens is making people laugh and scoring youtube views worldwide with his “ING” craze which has generated some buzz with it’s signature move “coneing”, or ordering an ice cream cone at a McDonald’s drive in and taking it from the attendant by the ice cream, not the cone. Yes pranksters are getting their hands dirty, but the fad has caught on with the mainstream, so much so even Justin Bieber was even recently known to “rip a few cones.”

In addition, to starting up Internet memes including “gnoming,” “fruiting,” and “trophying,” Alki has also started his own online web series The AlkiStevens Show, where he features other pranksters from around the world. It’s kind of like a crowd sourced 21st century Jackass.

Everything dies. Except when they don’t stay that way. Starting off in a suburbian set piece that could operate as a proper clone of the Dawn of the Dead 2004 remake, The Walking Dead companion web series Torn Apart opens on a mother waking up in her car after hitting a tree, with her children who were in the backseat missing.

Much of what made The Walking Dead such a visual masterpiece in a medium not known for it remains here. The art design leaves behind the haunting images of life and civilization that only hours ago had been operating as normal. The zombies themselves show no difference from that of the TV series – which is to say, quite frightening and gross. It shouldn’t be a surprise, as the director and one of the story writers Greg Nicotero is the key special effects makeup supervisor for the series.

The series here gets the apocalypse part of The Walking Dead equation down, and that’s more than enough to hold us over between now and its second season premiere in a couple of weeks. Where it misses – and not without an honest try – is the human interaction, which is largely a casualty of both the short running times of each video, and the curious decision to flashback to what is probably hours before the first episode for eps 3 and 4. It’s a pity, because the monologue in Episode 4 is fantastic, but otherwise holds no significance to the show as a whole.

Warner Bros. Digital Distribution has brought out some big guns for its new action comedy series. One of those big guns is Facebook. One of the other big guns is you.

Aim High, from director-producer McG, stars Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone alongside Aimee Teegarden (Friday Night Lights) and Greg Germann (Ally McBeal), and is directed by Diary of a Wimpy Kid’s Thor Freudenthal.

Aim High follows Nick Green, a new high school junior who must balance school work with his job as as a highly trained secret operative for the government.

Billed as the “first-ever social series from a Hollywood studio,” Aim High incorporates viewers’ personal profile information—friends, photos, and wall posts—through the show’s Facebook application. Viewers will be able to see themselves or their friends integrated into select scenes throughout the series—from their photo appearing on a student body election poster, to having their name seen as graffiti on the bathroom wall.

“The ability for fans to become part of a production by simply watching a show is truly revolutionary,” said McG. “I’m delighted that Aim High is the first to embrace this technology and I’m looking forward to including this in future productions.”

“Facebook is an increasingly influential destination for discovering and acquiring movie and television content,” said Thomas Gewecke, President of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution. “This effort takes video distribution to a whole new level by making the actual viewing experience personal and social in a truly innovative and entertaining way.”