Broadband Jungle Blog

broadband comedy

Looks like good old comedy, as in standup and webisodes created by professionals, could rescue the explosion of not always-so-funny viewer-generated content on the Internet. At least that’s how some of the big players driving the online video push seem to see it:

Ubiquitous MySpace just launched MySpace Comedy with The Improv comedy club chain, and more than 7500 comedians have already posted tour dates and video clips and utilize the message boards to upload profiles and connect with their fans.

Comedy Central’s MotherLoad, still one of the most creative broadband venues around –if only I could also watch its content on my Mac (when is Apple finally going to stop this security restriction nonsense by the way!?) – is rumored to be in acquisitions mood for The Onion as a companion piece for MotherLoad.

Hot comic Dane Cook even jump-started his career in 2002 simply by launching his very creative and high profile website. Since he extended his reach into MySpace, he managed to sign up 1.2 Million friends to support his comedy tours – helpful when transitioning from intimate comedy clubs into arena shows with your own show on HBO.

While NBC is getting ready to roll out its dot comedy broadband player (still under construction), the mother ship is staking out new ground by unleashing several made-for-the-web bonus episodes from The Office, called The Accountants. Not bad for the network that routinely had their high-rating SNL clips pulled from YouTube as recently as this spring.

Here’s one clip they were allowed to post and screen along with the other 100 Million reportedly served each day: Conan O’Brien gave the speech at this year’s Stuyvesant High School's graduation ceremony, filmed with shaky hand from a balcony on the second floor and uploaded for our instant amusement.

Where would we be without it?

fan films

This weekend, the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards return to San Diego’s Comic-Con for the 5th time since George Lucas started endorsing fan tributes to his saga.

No one really knows when and how it all started, but the pioneer was ‘Hardware Wars’, an award winning 1977 short film spoofing the original ‘Star Wars.’ A group of die-hard fans shot their own version to bridge the time until the next episode would come out and George Lucas soon embraced the result.

Starting in 2002, the SWFFA started handing out trophies and dorky sounding awards like the cherished ‘George Lucas Selects’ or the ‘Spirit of Fandom’ Award; they’ve managed to even create their own star, Trey Stokes, who’s won repeatedly with his very own ‘Pink Five’ and ‘Pink Five Strikes Back’ franchise.

But fan films aren’t limited to ‘Star Wars’ alone: Fanfilms.net lists more than 100 films and TV-shows that have been parodied and spoofed by enthusiasts and dedicated fans with more than 700 different projects. ‘Star Wars’ clearly leads the pack, way ahead of ‘Batman’ and ‘Star Trek’ in fan film popularity.

Joss Whedon is another sci-fi creator who has attracted a cult following of most persistent fans who continue to inhabit the universe of his three canceled shows – ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘Angel’ and ‘Firefly.’ Wired author Annalee Newitz visited the Seattle set of the second (!!) season of the web parody ‘Cherub, the Vampire with Bunny Slippers’ that’s derived from ‘Angel’.

Director and creator Scott O.Moore produced ‘Cherub’on a $ 10,000 budget with a lot of passion and goodwill from cast and crew to terrific internet response – more than 100,000 viewers watched the first season.

Personally, I’d prefer one episode of these to hundreds of entirely unoriginal uploads of Zidane’s big faux pas on YouTube…

muzak

MTV, the favorite lifestyle channel for adolescents of all ages, relinquished its monopoly on music a while ago. A lot of the cooler activity shifted to the Internet where most of the music videos are being watched these days anyway, several billions a year on Yahoo alone.

It’s no surprise that various outfits are rushing to launch full-fledged music networks for their online audiences. I particularly like AT&T ‘blue room’ which seems to have grown out of a CBS Radio property called “Street Date.” More than just a music video Wurlitzer, ‘blue room’ does interesting A-list interviews with acts like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, goes on tour with Tom Petty and reports from major festivals like Bonnaroo all around the country.

AOL went out with Bruce Springsteen in a big way this summer, covering ‘18 Nights of Bruce’ during the current tour with the Seeger Sessions Band. The Boss himself handpicked different highlights from every concert each night so they could appear on the site within hours after the show. Only being there would have been more immediate.

Film and Television director Peter O’Fallon of ‘Suicide Kings’ and ‘House’ fame followed his love for live music when he purchased Hollywood alternative rock venue the’Gig.’ When the broadband revolution came around, he outfitted the venue with cameras and invited his buddies from the film industry to help capture the unpredictability of live performance. Most acts playing at the Gig are unsigned and widely unknown, making the broadcast an additional incentive for the bands.

Mog is a cool and fairly new web community for advanced music lovers who like ranking specifics like ‘Favorite Pieces of Music Over 20 Minutes in Length’ in their profiles. Connoisseurs, celebrities and insiders alike are allowed to mingle and post titles and clips that range from the very eclectic to the beautifully obscure. Judging by the photos everyone’s also styling and taking their music wonderfully seriously.

If you feel like ripping a bunch of music videos after work but don’t want to go through the trouble of finding and loading them yourself, then eyespot is your place: this site comes with free clips, its own video mixer and you can even send each masterpiece to everyone’s cell phone when you’re done. The first legal mash-up site and a great place to keep a video-log. Not sure about giving everyone access to my vlogs for their own mash-ups, but hey, that’s me!

welcome to the niche

Last fall, everything began to make sense in my little TV world, when MTV’s former Internet guru Jason Hirschhorn announced the advent of ‘The World of the Super-Niche’ in an interview with Business Week. Like an evangelist waiting for a cause I had spent the fall trying to spread the word about the non-linear future with broadband, mobile and VOD while helping launch a cable network broadband player.

With Super-Niche, my cause had arrived.

We’re giving access to an audience that hasn’t had that kind of global access to programming and broadcasting before, and while we’re at it we’re changing everything about how this industry works: Programming, production, distribution, eventually probably killing off Television, DVD’s and movie exhibition as we know them.

This month’s edition of Wired features stimulating excerpts to this very topic from an upcoming book by the magazine’s editor in chief, Chris Anderson. The article ‘The Rise and Fall of the Hit’ goes straight for the jugular:

The era of the blockbuster is so over. The niche is now king, and the entertainment industry – from music to movies to TV – will never be the same.

After elaborating on the breakdown of the music industry and drawing a beautiful line between various unifying forces in our history like the printing press, the phonograph, newspapers and TV, Anderson reaches the Internet:

The Internet’s peer-to-peer architecture is optimized for a symmetrical traffic load, with as many senders as receivers and data transmissions spread out over geography and time. In other words, it’s the opposite of broadcast.
Exactly! How incredibly validating.

The book is called: ‘The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, copyright © 2006 Chris Anderson, to be published by Hyperion in July.

broadband activism

Creating space for niche programming is THE big opportunity for the broadband revolution – here are some activists who’ve caught on early and are already using the technology to reach a global audience.

Witness
Founded in 1992 by musician and activist Peter Gabriel and the Reebock Human Rights Foundation after Gabriel saw the impact home video cameras had on the Rodney King trial in Los Angeles.

The partnership has since grown into an international human rights organization that provides video training and support to local groups in their human rights advocacy campaigns. Beyond providing video cameras and editing equipment, Witness facilitates exposure for the films and videos produced on a global scale.

The results are equally moving and terrifying. Videos enhanced with detailed summaries of the case can be seen on their website. A video hub that will make accessing and posting these documents easier is in the works.

TreeHugger
Started by Canadian-born ‘Designpreneur’ Graham Hill in 2004, the web magazine has quickly established itself as the main destination for environmentally sensitive yet chic products and concepts. With the declared mission to help push the issue into the mainstream, TreeHugger successfully bridges the gap between sustainability and modern aesthetics.

Visitors also tend to rely on TreeHugger’s buying guide which obviously helps with advertisers. TreeHuggerTV is a fairly new addition, consisting of a weekly green news update and short features on subjects as varied as sustainable skateboards and green trends at the Brooklyn Design Show.

dh love life
Actress Daryl Hannah is behind this site and she’s been posting very entertaining AND clever weekly video blogs to green and vegetarian issues, shot and produced by – Daryl Hannah. Apparently she’s the real deal, after all she stopped driving petroleum-fueled vehicles years ago and instead switched to a bio-diesel-powered 1983 El Camino she found on the Internet.

Taking full advantage of her celebrity status, here she is campaigning for change and showing us how yummy bio-diesel really tastes. Her site is also being revamped for bigger things to come later this summer.

the corporate drum

Everyone’s wondering how to monetize production for original new media content. Some companies have actually started hiring talented performers and filmmakers to create sometimes low-end but extremely creative online programs that don’t look or feel like commercials at all but come across as a unique piece of entertainment.

Evan and Gareth are two improv and sketch comedy guys with a very wicked sense of humor. Last summer Unilever’s Axe deodorant hired them to criss-cross the country to write the big ‘play book’ of seducing women. The result is a blog full of comic video entries in search of the perfect pick-up line which they apparently shot, produced and posted all by themselves during their 128 day field trip – kind of like their own traveling variety show. Here they are seen trying out a new character exploring the finer things in life with two southern belles. Evan and Gareth have recently been signed by Reveille to a television and new media development deal.

Kitchen staple Brawny went the mock reality TV – route: Brawnyman, their archetype of an outdoorsman with superhero features and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor welcomes eight guys to Brawny Academy, a kind of finishing school for the untidy and unromantic. Sent there by their better halves, the reasons are obvious: They live like pigs ! Eight episodes have been produced and become available on a weekly basis on the site.

Fresh from gracing an unsuspecting crowd at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards, and before launching The Sarah Silverman Programme on Comedy Central, comedienne extraordinaire Sarah Silverman participated in what could be perceived as the ultimate anti-ad: Produced decidedly low end and collaborating with Rob Schrab, one of her creative partners on the Programme, she’s confessing her love to the new T-Mobile Sidekick 3 – and sending off her beloved little Chihuahua into an uncertain future.

Volkswagen is re-introducing their 1970’s compact car the Rabbit and teamed up with Steve, a charismatic filmmaker from Denver, Colorado, who has been interviewing people in his pick-up truck for a local cable access show.
For the GipsyCabProject, Steve’s been transplanted to New York City and upgraded to a brand-new Rabbit that’s outfitted with two cameras and the interior of a taxicab. His assignment is to give more than 100 free rides to strangers within two weeks in the big apple without ever having driven a car there. Confessions are to be expected…

…NOT the six o’clock news…

With Dan Rather gone, a new breed of anchors is bypassing television altogether to deliver our daily news fix via the Internet. Owing more to comedic timing and the storytelling tradition of the Daily Show, they appear to be in character of citizen reporters commenting on world events, gossip and their own backyard affairs.

Exhibit one: Rocketboom

Amanda Congdon is the pioneer who helped shape this phenomenon – she’s been posting a fearless daily satire consisting of political news and pop culture sensibility on her website since October 2004.

Shot low-budget inside a make-shift studio in front of a signature world map, Amanda leaves room for the quirky in between the newsworthy, and frequently informs us about things that really matter: Watch her list and demo favorite Atari video games in this report filed during her first week on the air, way before she developed that signature ‘Click’ to hammer in the next story.

Exhibit two: MobuzzTV

Whoever’s writing for MobuzzTV has the news room-style down precisely, as well as the irreverent lingo of Internet bloggers: MobuzzTV comes all nicely packaged without trying to be too television. Host Karina Stenquist delivers like a pro – according to the website she’s new to the field, which is almost hard to believe. Topics vary but tend to revolve around the Internet.

Watch them lay out a spectacular story arc in this recent episode: It kicks off comparing soccer bets to sex, satirizes NBC’s newfound love for YouTube and cleans up with news about a French company setting up free wifi. Featuring a mock interview using Monty Python style animation, Karina releases us back into the world with a plea for good cyber-karma.

Exhibit three: Ehrensenf

Only broadcasting since last November, this German internet program already won a Grimme Award, the equivalent of an Emmy, for revolutionizing traditional web content. Produced along the lines of its American colleagues, the tone is again highly satirical – no surprise since its creators are a German sitcom writer and a developer at reality TV powerhouse Endemol.

The odd name itself implies a nonsensical ‘honored brand of mustard’ but is instead an anagram for watching TV in German: Fernsehen … Ehrensenf. Not above bias towards the German soccer team, they have a blast with the World Cup in this particular episode.

With the once so noble distance between subject matter and personal agenda all but disappeared, Edward R. Murrow would hardly be proud… but what about Hunter S. Thompson?