Tubefilter News

The latest installment of our weekly web series critic column Pass The Mustard. No sugar coating, no doublespeak, no hand holding. Just brutally honest reactions from one guy: Ned Hepburn. We’ll throw a handful of web series at him each week. Agree, disagree, love him, hate him, but please don’t punch him. Got something clever to say in retort? Leave a comment below. He’ll probably read it and embarrass you later. His opinions are his own, so take them or leave them. See last week’s column here.]

POV
This College Humor series pretty aptly reminds me of college, high school and sort of every waking moment of every major meeting i’ve ever been in. Bravo, good sirs. Tada. College Humor is sort of the Scottie Pippen of bro humor. It’s might not pull Michael Jordan numbers but still deserves to be on the cover of the metaphorical box of Wheaties.

Web series and web video bits worth clicking today:
Julia Allison, host of NonSociety’s TMIWeekly, gives dating and sexual courtship advice on College Humor’s The Crucial Man series (above) to scruffy host Jon Gabrus, who is trying to figure out how to be a gentleman. [College Humor]

Grass Roots, the political comedy on KoldCast TV (below) has scored a distribution deal with The Huffington Post. The site has featured a few political series before like Get Your War On and Swift Kids For Truth. “It sparked our interest because it’s both funny and political, which is the goal of our comedy page,” said Alex Leo Sr. Editor at HuffPo. [Huffington Post]

Babelgum announced they have added another comic strip series, Over the Hedge, has joined its comedy channel adding to other exclusive series like Dilbert and The New Yorker cartoons, also from animation distributor RingTales. Four brief (30-second) episodes of the strip that spawned a Dreamworks film of the same name, are up now on the site. [Babelgum]

Indy Mogul’s The Reel Good Show host Bobby Miller proves he isn’t just a snarky film buff, but also a credible indie filmmaker as his film Tub was picked as an official selection for this winter’s Sundance Film Festival. Also on the list is Tubefilter writer Lindsay Stidham’s film Douchebag, which she penned. [Sundance press release, NextNewNetworks]

Casey McKinnon, host of A Comicbook Orange, guest stars as evil nemesis ‘Kalm’ in episode 6—the season finale— of sci-fi comedy Hurtling Through Space at an Alarming Rate (aka much easier to say, HTSAAAR) today on Babelgum (below). [Babelgum]

Web drama Anyone But Me, from creators Susan Miller and Tina Cesa Ward is prepping for its December 15th premiere of its sophomore season. The series hosted a premiere screening of the new season last night in New York and is rolling out promo videos like Gilmore Girls’ bad girl Liza Weil jonesing for more ABM, and Heroes’ Zacahry Quinto who calls the show “an addiction.” [Emailed]

Trying something new here on Tubefilter. There are just so many web series related tid bits out there worth mentioning—including a heap in our News Desk email inbox that are worth a click.

College Humor staffers are moving crosstown to parent company IAC’s offices, out of the unsupervised Union Square office sanctuary that birthed many of the CH crew’s original series like Hardly Working and The CollegeHumor Show. And co-founder Ricky Van Veen is taking a more grown up post as CEO of Barry Diller’s new web production arm Notational. He’s also hired Vogue Editor Anna Wintour’s strapping daughter Bee Shaffer as his assistant. Can you say cameo? [Business Insider]
Bite Me TV, The MAN Cooking Show launched its second season with host Josh Landis today, cooking recipes aimed at impressing a date in an edgy, guy-friendly way. Other series out of the unabashedly male site are Field Trippin’ and Drink n’ Play. [emailed release]
Josh Schwartz’ Rockville, CA is taking the Euro stage—en français—starting December 3, thanks to a licensing deal between Warner Brothers Television and French internet provider Orange. The Echo Park indie rock drama is already up on Orange’s new Video Party site where it bow the 20-eps in both French and English with subtitles. [emailed release]
Neighborhood Watch, hidden camera web series made for Strike.TV put out its latest trailer, though no official launch date has been set yet. The Hollywood-based indie series sets itself in real-life den of aspiring actors, an apartment building called “The Hollywood.” [emailed]
Broadway web series The Battery’s Down wraps up its celebrated run today, bowing its three-part series(!) finale at 11:00PM (ET). The number of Tony winners, Broadway regulars and future Glee cast members in this indie web series from creator Jake Wilson is astounding. Though Wilson named Ep 16 “Party’s Over,” he says it’s just the next step for him after shepherding the series since Feb. 2008. [Broadway World]
In-Store Designer, a new design series launched, with one recent episode giving us everything we needed to know about Scandinavian furniture making that we didn’t get at IKEA. [LAist]
Copy & Pastry, a new comedy series proves Berekley Californians Two Trick Pony can play in the no-budget web series game, boasting “25 per cent of the budget came from redeemed bottle deposits.” [emailed release]

At 23, Jake Hurwitz is already a web comedy veteran. As one half of College Humor’s long running Jake and Amir series, Hurwitz has found himself at the center of a New York comedy powerhouse and starring himself in a slew of CH originals including Hardly Working and its TV adaptation—MTV’s The CollegeHumor Show.

This summer, he was even tapped to host the second season of MySpace’s game show BFF, which despite some questionable view counts, managed to work out to a pretty nice deal for Hurwitz in his first series outside the vaunted walls of College Humor.

We caught up with the Connecticut native-turned-Brooklyn-local Hurwitz for a little tell all into just what it means to be a successful young comedy writer coming of age on the internet. That, and what to make if this BFF series.

Tubefilter: How do you describe BFF if you’re trying to tell a friend of yours that’s never seen it?

Jake Hurwitz: I guess I’d describe it as it’s kinda just a game show where you test how well you know your best friend by answering questions about each other. It’s not like the dating game but I think I would just I would say it’s the dating game for friends.

As part of our ongoing effort to grow the web television space and evangelize the inherent advantages of an open entertainment medium, Tubefilter has partnered with creative communities all over the country. NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts has a longstanding reputation as a hotbed of talent for visual arts, and we’re honored to join them in programming the web-focused installments of their renowned Director’s Series.

We’re very excited to announce that the next installment of NYU’s Web Directors Series will be a candid conversation with CollegeHumor TV moderated by Tubefilter on November 9th at 6:00 PM.

When they began posting funny photos and stories on the Internet as college freshmen, CollegeHumor.com creators Ricky Van Veen and Josh Abramson didn’t realize they were creating an entertainment sensation. Since its launch in 1999, CollegeHumor.com has grown into a massively popular site for 6 million visitors monthly, a comedy tour, a T-shirt business, books and even a television series, MTV’s The CollegeHumor Show. The parody and sketch focused content is a favorite of men ages 18 to 22. In 2006, media mogul Barry Diller acquired a majority stake in CollegeHumor through his holding company, IAC.

While this isn’t per se its own web series, the launch of someecards’ new video card series caught our eye with its first batch, a series starring Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black promoting their new Comedy Central show Michael and Michael Have Issues. That show of course has its own web roots coming straight out of their 2007-2008 web series Michael Showalter Showalter on CollegeHumor.

It’s a nice addition to the viral-friendly card site, which stood out pairing vintage black and white drawings with witty truisms. The first few rounds of cards will continue to be primarily advertising deals, though the site is planning on rolling out more videos that aren’t necessarily promoting anything.

Global web video site Joost announced last week that it was adding 12 new content partners to its roster, stepping up its offering of original web series content. While a number of the new additions are traditional TV series, a new handful of primarily web series makers are on the list.

The curated site favors a global audience, and all but a few of the new partners (RDF, Marvel, ReelzChannel, TOEI) are opening up their content globally without geo-blocking.

New web series content partners:

* MWG Entertainment (My Two Fans, Road to the Altar)
* Marvel Entertainment (Marvel Super Heroes: What The –?!)
* RDF Digital USA (RDF USA’s digital arm which has web series in the works)
* Vogue.TV (Model.Live, Trend Watch)

Comedians Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter have a few things in common. They share the same name with some of the greatest music artists of all time like Michael Jackson, George Michael and yes, Michael Bolton. Bolton. In fact, aside from being comedy writers, the hilarious duo are also actors. Indeed they are best friends in real life, but when it comes to their debut on Comedy Central, they might just kill each other.

Why? Because that would be @#$!ing funny that’s why.

Based off their widely popular web series on CollegeHumor.com, The Michael Showalter Showalter, the good folks at Comedy Central has picked up seven episodes of their upcoming sketch show called Michael and Michael Have Issues, which is set to hit your living room tubes this July.