Tubefilter News

As we hinted at earlier, broadband TV network KoldCast TV, who distributes numerous HD-quality web series including The Midwest Teen Sex Show, Poor Paul and After Judgment, has signed a partnership deal with TiVo allowing for their roster of web series to be available to their over 4 Million DVR subscribers.

While the official announcement of the deal is yet to come, we confirmed that is in fact a go, with the first batch of ten web series expected to be on the service by the end of next week. The full list of the first ten series has not yet been announced, though we do know that After Judgment and Poor Paul will definitely be on that list.

The web series will live on a new platform called TivoCast, which is available to TiVo subscribers with either a Series 2 or newer TiVo DVR (that’s about 4 Million). Out of that 4 Million, over 850k subscribers have started using the free TivoCast service. Koldcast CEO David Samuels tells us they have already tested the software and it is “very, very cool.”

Also notable is that a number of the Strike.TV web series are showing up on KoldCast as part of a deal between the company and the writers-backed content portal. Though there were some initial delays in getting all of the series out to partner sites, KoldCast TV now has the largest collection of Strike.TV series outside of the Strike.TV site itself. Up there now are Mary Feuer’s With the Angels, Lester Lewis and Mindy Kaling’s House Poor, Tom Holland’s 5 or Die, Unknown Sender, Daryl from OnCar and Side Effects and Faux Baby (video above).

Tubefilter’s Jonathan Hludzinski examines House Poor and Daryl Fron OnCar in the second part of his series on Strike.TV: Yay! Mindy Kaling saves the day! Strike.TV redeemed! House Poor is about writer and actress Mindy Kaling’s foray into impoverished home ownership. Written by Kaling and Lester Lewis, the mockumentary pilot begins with Mindy throwing a baby shower for herself in order to furnish her home. Hilarity ensues when Mindy gets annoyed at her guests for actually buying gifts for a baby girl and not checking her registries…at Crate and Barrel and Z Gallery. I don’t watch The Office so I’m not predisposed to LOVE Mindy Kaling, but for some reason, the moment she appears onscreen at the opening of the show, I laughed. A combination of her sudden close-up, a glint of sardonic wit in her eyes and the fast throwaway joke about fellow writer and the previous owner of her home Mike Schur, elicited a quick but very real guffaw. And this is just the beginning.

Today, after months of delays and strategizing, Strike.TV has finally launched.

It’s been a while since the picket lines of striking WGA writers last winter where the idea of a video portal for professional writers (read: WGA writers) could have a place to showcase their original web series while also owning the rights to all content. The idea seemed simple enough. Writers would head out and rally together resources — celebrity actor friends, camera ops, editors, etc. — calling in all the favors and waivers they could manage.

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The content was the easy part. With Hollywood on strike for two months, it seemed everyone had a little time to spare and a hand to lend. In all, some fifty web series were collected for the newly formed site, loading it up with a year’s worth of star-driven series. Here are some of the web series debuting today:

* Unknown Sender, written/directed by Steven de Souza (Die Hard), starring Timothy Dalton and Joanne Whalley
* John’s Hand, starring Garret Dillahunt (No Country For Old Men) and Kali Rocha (Grey’s Anatomy)
* Global Warming, starring Kristen Wiig (Saturday Night Live) and Aasif Mandvi (Jericho, The Daily Show)
* With the Angels, written by Mary Feuer (lonelygirl15)
* Daryl from OnCar, written and starring Ron Corcillo and Russ Carney of America.
* Life in General, written by Karren Harris (General Hosptial)
* Greenville General also written by Karren Harris, it’s the show-within-the-show of Life in General
* House Poor, created by The Office writer-producers Lester Lewis and Mindy Kaling
* The Challenge, starring Bob Newhart and written by sitcom veteran Lloyd Garver (Alf, Family Ties)
* 5 or Die, written/directed by horror director Tom Holland (Child’s Play, Psycho II)
* Side Effects, written/directed by Chuck Rose.
* Joe and Kate, written by and starring Joe Kelly (How I Met Your Mother, SNL) and Kate Purdy (Cold Case)

The philosophy and message were solid, that’s for sure. From our interview with Strike.TV founder Peter Hyoguchi earlier this summer:

Hyoguchi is excited about where TV on the web stands today, saying “the internet’s pre-Howdy Doody today,” referring to the 1947-debuted TV show which essentially spawned the advertising-supported television model that exists today. While he notes that there have been some early successes like lonelygirl15 and quarterlife, “we still haven’t haven’t see a true hit show yet,” the kind that reaches a true global scale. “For a show to reach that kind of mass appeal, it’s going to come from a professional team,” he notes.

Strike.TV has signed a content distribution and revenue sharing deal with YouTube and Joost, allowing the WGA writers-backed video portal to extend its reach for its more than forty original web series. Long-awaited launch now set for October 28th.

More news in about the upcoming launch of Strike.TV, the site we reported on in early July. According to our source, a “soft launch” of the site is expected to begin on Monday, August 18th. The private beta will be open to people close to the project, as well as for the first 1,000 people [...]

With buzz growing about Strike.TV’s anticipated launch (possibly in the next few weeks), we caught up with founder Peter Hyoguchi, also a writer and director, about what’s in store for the upstart web channel.
Founded amidst the throes of the 100-day WGA writer’s strike early this year, what began as a fundraising platform for the WGA [...]