Tubefilter News

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers lit up the Oscars stage last night (above) on ABC with a medley of all of the Best Original Music nominees. Talk about a killer (and free) promo for their upcoming web series The LXD from director Jon M Chu. Check out Madd Chadd’s legendary robot skills in the UP section of the routine. [YouTube]

The Guild’s creator-star Felicia Day is going to star in a SyFy Channel Saturday Original Movie where she will portray “a werewolf-hunting descendant of Little Red Riding Hood.” “In the action-packed Red, Red (Day) brings her fiancé home, where he meets the family and learns about their business – hunting werewolves.” The movie, set to debut in 2011 on SyFy also stars Kavan Smith (Stargate Atlantis) and Stephen McHattie (Watchmen). [Bloody Disgusting]

DigiVenture is hosting a Women in Digital event tonight in Los Angeles hosted by Joanne Griffith that will feature a panel representing audio, visual and print media professionals, including: Carmen Dixon, former ABC producer and creator of the blog Allaboutrace.com, Zadi Diaz, founder of the web TV series, Epic Fu, and Shani Byard-Ngunjiri, founder of Media Message Ed. The free event will be held at Otis College of Art and Design on Monday March 8th from 7-9pm and parking is free. [DigiVenture.org]

Funny or Die tapped director Ron Howard to rope together the best SNL prexys from the past few decades in a Presidential Reunion video (below) that already broke 2.5 million views on in under a week on site. Darrell Hammond stars as Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey as Reagan, Dan Aykroyd as Dick Cheney, Fred Armisen as Barack Obama, Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, Dana Carvey as Poppy Bush, Will Ferrell as George W. and Maya Rudolph as Michelle Obama. The video is part 1 of three in the series. [Funny or Die, MainStreetBrigade]

According to Interpublic Group’s Magna forecasts, online video ad revenues in 2009 were supposed to jump 32% to total $699 million. At that rate the industry will hit over $1 billion in advertising revenue by 2011. A recent eMarketer report claims online video ad revenues hit the $1 billion mark this year, and will continue to grow to $5.2 billion by 2014.

Regardless of which numbers are more accurate, that’s a lot of cash. In an in intriguing article over at Advertising Age, Michael Learmonth shows where online video advertisers are spending big chunks of that cash and reveals how much they’re paying. Here are some particularly interesting finds:

YouTube Homepage costs $400,00 a day – With over 81 million monthly unique visitors, YouTube is selling its traffic as much as it sells video. Homepage takeovers are a mix of both, incorporating more traditional display ads with interactive banners and promotional videos.

ESPN Brand Channel on Youtube sees $22 CPM – In July, YouTube began letting third parties sell and insert their own ads into their videos. The idea is if YouTube gives its premium content publishers the tools wich which to effectively sell their own programming, the content will see higher ad rates and free up YouTube personnel to sell things like the YouTube Homepage. If you believe the reported average YouTube CPM numbers, it seems to be working.

Hulu sells a $35+ CPM – As Learmonth notes, “The key here is great content combined with limited inventory. Hulu caps the ads at four per hour despite grumbling from network partners that want to see TV generationg more revenue on the web.”

Wall Street Journal Video CPMs run $75 to $100 – Even the New York Times admits that Wall Street Journal videos are lucrative. If you combine a dedicated, affluent readership with timely video coverage of current events and national issues, you can charge these kinds of dollar amounts.

ABC.com Full Episode Player charges a $45+ CPM – Way back in 2006, ABC was the first network to test and fully embrace online distribution. Being early to the internet seems to have paid off. If ABC.com is seeing these kinds of rates, it’s no wonder the network was hesitant to add its shows to Hulu.

Another companion web series coming out of a major TV network today as ABC launches its Grey’s Anatomy companion Seattle Grace: On Call. It premiered tonight 10:00 PM ET, immediately following the latest episode of Grey’s, which featured promo for the new sidekick.

It’s a faux documentary, set at Joe’s Emerald City Bar where seemingly all of the Seattle Grace surgeons frequent to booze it up and make bad decisions. A handful of the lesser known stars from the TV version will appear in the 4-minute episodes, like Joe the Bartender Steven W. Bailey and SG interns Brandon Scott and Gloria Garayua. Italian food brand Bertolli signed on as lead sponsor of the series.

“Our goal with the Web series is to expand the Grey’s universe by offering a unique perspective of the various happenings at Seattle Grace, while paralleling some of the same story lines seen on the show,” said Grey’s creator and executive producer Shonda Rhimes to MediaPost.

We have all heard the saying “when the cat is away, the mice will play.” In this particular case, it’s the Executive Assistant and the Receptionist at a high-end fashion magazine that are the ones doing the playing.

Mode After Hours is a spin-off webseries that follows two characters from the popular ABC dramedy series Ugly Betty and their office antics when the rest of the staff has gone home. Marc St. James (Michael Urie) and Amanda Tanen (Becki Newton) are “besties forever” and their frantic and odd devotion to each other is topped only by their disturbing obsession with themselves. From Amanda’s “Me Pile” (packages delivered to the office that mysteriously end up “lost in the mail” only to be opened by Amanda when she’s feeling down) to Marc’s pretending he is babysitting a newborn just so he can stalk Jake Gyllenhaal, these two are dysfunctional with a capital func. But whether you identify with them in a “hey, I know people like that” way or just thank the heavens you aren’t anything like them, there is something about Amanda and Marc’s relationship that keeps you watching. Kind of like how you slow down to watch a car on fire on the side of the road.

On October 6, 2009 at 2 PM Pacific Standard Time, everyone on the planet blacked out at exactly the same time (called the Global Blackout or GBO). During the 2 minutes and 17 seconds that passed, every person experienced a vision of where and what they were doing on April 29, over 6 months later. These visions are deemed by a government task force created to investigate the GBO as FlashForwards.

And thus begins the ABC series named after these visions: FlashForward. Co-created by Blade and The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer and Star Trek writer/producer Brannon Braga, the series is slated to premiere on September 24th. But like a few other television and film projects, the series is integrating an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) to promote and build a community around the series. Using Internet videos, live events, original websites, and social networking sites, the FlashForward ARG strives to give players a truly immersive experience.

The game is currently two-pronged, having begun on July 23 with the launching of TruthHack.com, a video blog series reporting on the Global Blackout and run by Oscar Obregon, who according to his bio is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and author of the international bestsellers Parties/Over and Fire Sale.

Maybe the Dharma Initiative is actually just a front to saturate the American automobile market with reliable, affordable Korean-made cars. (So that’s why Jin and Sun were on that plane.)

Kia Motors is sponsoring a five-episode Internet miniseries by ABC called Mysteries of the Universe: The Dharma Initiative, a set of short-form documentaries about the enigmatic research institute that is central to the show’s mystery.

Not only are these faux-documentaries pure LOST mythology, they’re done up in impeccable ’80s investigative journalism style, complete with VHS tracking lines. It’s so authentic I feel sorry for whoever got stuck with putting them on a video cassette before ripping them and putting them up on ABC.com.

Furthering its digital extensions of its franchise primetime hit series LOST, ABC debuted this week a web series primer, LOST Untangled, taking a lighter spin on catching up confused newbies. The recap series blends comic book graphics with LOST action figures spoofing actual scenes from the show.

This sounds familiar. Oh wait, haven’t The Fine Brothers been spoofing LOST with action figures for over a year now? Their hit web series parody LOST: What Happens Next? has racked up over 4.5 million views on YouTube and other sites since its debut last January. Both use the same action figures licensed to a Chinese manufacturer, shaky hand-held figurine movements and silly exaggerated riffs on the actual characters’ voices. Interesting.

ABC Family has picked up Take180’s My Alibi for distribution on ABCFamily.com, marking the first major content deal coming out of the community driven web series site.

My Alibi, which premiered this fall, centers around five high school seniors at fictional Wheeler High School—Cy, Marley, Jonah, Scarlet and Rebecca—who all try to prove they are innocent after an elaborate prank is pulled on campus.

The talent tie-ins from the series to ABC’s other shows are pretty notable, like star Zachary Abel who also stars in the upcoming ABC Family hour-long drama Perfect 10 and a few upcoming episodes of its hit series The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Other cast include Mad Men regular Alison Brie, Adam Chambers, Cyrina Fiallo, Julianna Guill, Marque Richardson and Gabrielle Carteris (Andrea on the original Beverly Hills 90210) stars as the school principal.

So far there are 18 episodes complete, each one featuring audience-submitted content that gets written into the script by head writer Julie Restivo. Take180’s community members, many of them high school age themselves, had a chance to shape the episodes with their own anecdotes,funny notebook doodles and webcam videos that actually end up in the final version.