by Marc Hustvedt on January 5th, 2010
Rocketboom correspondent Ella Morton launched a new web series this week, The Elegant Guide, with light hearted style and etiquette tips from the graceful and dare we say, elegant British native. [TheElegantGuide.com]
Taryn Southern has a new live web chat show on Ustream: The Taryn Ten at 10pm EST every Tuesday. After a few experimental preview eps, the series begins 2010 tonight with guest Jaime King (Sin City, My Bloody Valentine) joining Southern. For now the series shoots via web cam in Southern’s home, but future weekly episodes will head to a 3-camera studio. [TarynSouthern.com]
The Beautiful Life, the cancelled CW show from Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media that found a second life on YouTube—with new sponsor HP on board—has been doing better online than it had on TV according to new numbers reported today by CNN. 2.7 million people have watch the five episodes online so far, compared to just 2.5 million on the CW. “I want this to be the first show ever that gets more viewers on the Web than it did on terrestrial television,” said Kutcher said in a recent video on YouTube. Kutcher and company are now exploring options to keep the series alive with new episodes as an online-only show. [CNN.com]
RISE a new daily “non-boring web show for entrepreneurs and marketers” from St. Louis-based creator and host David Siteman Garland launched this week packing reviews, tips, whiteboard sessions—and sponsor shoutouts—into tightly cut three minute episodes. So far it’s content rich and living up to its tagline: “If you want fluff, go pet a bunny.” [therisetothetop.com]
Slate TV has a gem of an animated editorial cartoon from Mark Fiore that takes “an amusing look back at what we did and didn’t accomplish in 2009.” [Slate TV]
by Marc Hustvedt on December 17th, 2009
American Idol co-creator Simon Fuller is prepping a reality web/TV hybrid series with Hulu called If I Can Dream, which will follow three aspiring actors, a model and a musician trying to make it in Hollywood. Hulu will stream new episodes each week exclusively on its site when it launches in early 2010. MySpace, Pepsi and Clear Channel are also involved in the project. [THR, NewTeeVee]
Break Media, which owns popular video site Break.com along with a slew of other male-focused sites, announced a partnership with VOD platform Clearleap via the Clearleap’s Content Marketplace, making selected videos and web series available to cable and IPTV providers for their VOD offerings. [Break Media Blog]
Anyone But Me launched the much awaited second season to their web drama, with the help of promos from celebs Zachary Quinto, Liza Weil and Eric Stoltz. The season’s opening ep “The Real Thing” (below) see Vivian and friends dealing with a day of “unexpected encounters” in New York. [AnyoneButMeSeries.com]
Ashton Kutcher’s cancelled CW show The Beautiful Life: TBL has found new life online, as Katalyst has scored HP as a sponsor and released the rest of the season on YouTube. There were only five episodes done (and two aired) when it got the axe, but Katalyst plans to air all five. “What we feel like we’re doing is creating, in some ways, an industry first,” Kutcher told Reuters. “A show that couldn’t find its legs on television, we believe can find its legs on the Web.” [MTV.com]
The Legend of Neil, the gamer comedy web series from creator Sandeep Parikh and Atom.com, is making the web syndication rounds with Season 2 scoring a front page skin on Dailymotion this week as part of their Zelda movie Hero of Time promotion. [Dailymotion]
by Marc Hustvedt on October 14th, 2009
A couple weeks back we asked the rather obvious question, Where are all the fantasy football web series? We had found a few, some scripted, some not. It was right around then that we came across a fantasy football goldmine, Fantasy Football Live!, a weekly, hour-and-a-half live web show all about NFL for us armchair GMs.
It’s the latest of Asthon Kutcher’s web originals, and somehow has me way more hooked than KataylstHQ or the on-hiatus Blah Girls. In full disclosure, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a fantasy football nut and this show is right up my alley. But even if debating the likelihood of LT’s return to glory or the durability of Willie Parker’s turf toe isn’t your thing, you still have to appreciate the fact that this live show pulls in an average of 10,000 simultaneous viewers.
Now, it doesn’t hurt that @aplusk himself is on the show, and he tweets out weekly about the series to his 3.6 million followers. The series airs live on UStream and Facebook, under Kutcher’s channel and the live chatrooms and Twitter are a key part of the fan interaction. So if you’re trying to figure out why Willis Magahee is worth a start after he laid down a 0-pt stinker last week, you can tweet like this fan to @aplusk to (possibly) have it answered by the hosts. Speaking of hosts, Kutcher isn’t just there for vanity. He knows a thing or two about fantasy, holding his own with his resident FFB expert Nate Zegura.
by Tubefilter News on September 4th, 2009
Labor Day weekend is here. Joy! (Now you know why we’ve been wearing our whites all week.) Despite its very American traditions—BBQs, boating, parades and football season kickoffs, this holiday is one we have the Canadians to thank. Yep, it was a printer’s strike in Toronto back in 1872 that started this whole Labor-loving end-of-summer trend. So go for it, hug a Canadian this weekend!
Web series news was steady this week, though a few places held off major show releases until after the Holiday. So count on Tuesday being full of flurry of new goodies.
The week started with news that MSN is wising up the the social internet, and finally is allowing open embedding of the new season of The Guild, which debuted on the network this week. Tech blogger Shira Lazar kicked off the new Stylit.TV giveaway web series TechStyle with plenty of geek gear from MacWorld. And Asthon Kutcher’s inside the production company web series, KataylstHQ, bowed its second season this week, releasing exclusively on Facebook via the Slide FunSpace app.
by Marc Hustvedt on September 3rd, 2009
It’s about once a day that we get tipped off on a new office comedy web series, and we really have no idea why they are so popular to make. Is there really that big of a dearth of workplace hijinks with The Office on hiatus? Are they just easy?
Today marks the return of KataylstHQ the lightly-scripted comedy web series from inside the offices of Hollywood-based Kataylst Media, the multiplatform production company founded by Jason Goldberg and A-lister Asthon Kutcher. During last season’s run earlier this year, releasing exclusively on Facebook via the Slide FunSpace application, the show racked up over 8 million “shares” from Facebook users.
This isn’t really a show about Ashton Kutcher, it’s a show about people who work for Ashton Kutcher. And by association, the office dons a affectation of cool, a hipness tied to working with Twitter’s most followed user, @aplusk.
by Marc Hustvedt on May 13th, 2009
CBS Television Distribution (CTD) has picked up Katalyst Media’s animated gossip web series Blah Girls, for distribution as one-minute interstitials between segments of its daily entertainment show The Insider.
Katalyst, headed up by founders Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, has roots in television and film along with its more recent moves in new media. Most notably its long running hidden camera TV series Punk’d ran for eight seasons on MTV before its finale in 2007. Somewhat appropriately, they are actually re-imagining the hit series with a live internet take on it via UStream.
by Marc Hustvedt on February 4th, 2009
Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg’s production studio Katalyst Media, creators of the animated web series Blah Girls and 24 Hours at Sundance, announced today the launch of their new scripted comedy web series KatalystHQ. The series is being released exclusively on Facebook in a partnership with Slide’s FunSpace application.
Frito-Lay’s Cheetos brand is the lead sponsor of the first season of KatalystHQ, which parodies a “fly-on-the-wall reality” look inside the daily life at Katalyst’s production office. It’s not clear how much Kutcher himself will appear in the series, but knowing his camera-friendly antics, our guess is he’ll make a few clever cameos. While the concept isn’t exactly new (see College Humor’s new inside-the-office comedy coming soon to MTV) the LA-based Katalyst office stays busy in film, TV and web series giving a nice mix of celebs to pull from.
by Pat Miller on January 16th, 2009
Digg founder (and Diggnation host) Kevin Rose is teaming up with Ashton Kutcher (creator of Blah Girls web series and a few other things) to do a 24-hour reality web show during this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Titled 24 Hours At Sundance, the series features a veritable who’s who of internet celebs: CJ Peters of Konsole Kingz, VentureBeat Founder Matt Marshall and web journalist star Shira Lazar, gadget blogger Meghan Asha and internet personality Irina Slutsky all competing for…something unspecified. Really, all we know is that it starts on Saturday, January 19th, at 9am and co-hosts Kutcher and Rose have final authority to determine the winner.
