Hayden Black Finds Online Success with “Goodnight Burbank” and “Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary”

Hayden Black Finds Online Success with “Goodnight Burbank” and “Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary”

Hayden Black is one of a growing group of director/writers/producers in Hollywood who are finding success in original, serialized programming for the Web. I caught up with Hayden earlier this month.

He talks about “Goodnight Burbank” and his latest hit, “Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary.” Abigail the 13 year-old female who suffers from a genetic disease which makes her look like a beadred, middle aged man — who is played by Hayden. It is a big concept, but it works. Oh, and it’s not X-Rated at all, that’s just a provocative title.

Hayden told Beet.TV that Abigail is getting some 2 million streams a months. That’s impressive. He explains that he is making money by product placements and mentions.

— Andy Plesser

Posted on Beet TV on Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Hayden Black Finds Online Success with “Goodnight Burbank” and “Abigail’s X-Rated Teen Diary”

Steve Garfield on Using QIK

Steve Garfield on Using QIK

Steve Garfield explains how QIK works

Break.com Has 1 Million Visitors Per Day. That’s a lot of Laddies!

Break.com, the fast growing video site for men 18-34, serves one 10 million vidoes a day, says Nick Wilson, CTO. The company, started as BigBoys.com about 10 years ago, the site has recently expanded its reach by organizing a network of guy-oriented sites.

According to a recent comScore report, the site has locked into a valuable demographic.

The company’s principal investor is Lionsgate Entertainment, a major independent film studio.

I interviewed Nick at Digital Hollywood.

— Andy Plesser

*Update 5/19: I corrected the headline and lead with the number of 10 million daily video streams. I was given the corrected number from a Break.com spokesperson. The one million a day in Nick’s comments refers to the number of daily unique visitors.

Posted on Beet.TV on Monday, May 19, 2008

http://www.beet.tv/2008/05/breakcom-stream.html

Mashable is Pumping up the Event Side of Things — Partying with Grand Master Flash Tomorrow in NYC

Mashable is Pumping up the Event Side of Things — Partying with Grand Master Flash Tomorrow in NYC

(video upload coming shortly)

Mashable, one of the world’s top 10 most influential blogs, is expanding its events business. Tomorrow in Manhattan, hundreds of Mashables will partying at Webster Hall for a performance of Grand Master Flash. The tickets are just about sold out, we have learned.

If Mashable’s party in San Francisco last month, which was called a “wild one” by Caroline McCarthy of CNET News.com, tomorrow’s should be a blast.

Last week in Hollywood, I spoke with founder Pete Cashmore. He told me that Mashable is expanding both events and “mixers” — sounds like a great way to build awareness and sell sponsorships.

Pete will not be in attendance tomorrow night.

Hope it’s great fun.

Break.com Has 1 Million Visitors Per Day. That’s a lot of Laddies!

Here is Nick Wilson of Braek.com

O La La: “French Maids” Are Cleaning up with “How to Videos”

O La La: “French Maids” Are Cleaning up with “How to Videos”

So, we’ve been talking to some clever independent Hollywood Web producers about making money out of Web video by creating entertaining, sponsored content.

Tim Street
, producer/director/writer, has developed a hit with his show French Maid TV which gets millions of streams on YouTube and other sites.

Having developed the franchise he is using the “maids” to demonstrate how to use company products and services who sponsor the show.

The “how to” video sector is really growing, as reported in the Wall Street Journal last week. One way to commercialize these videos are through sponsorships. But Tim reminds of a drawback: while the show segments live on forever, the sponsors sponsors don’t always.

Tim’s Holy Grail is to find a way to dynamically swap out sponsorship messages in his show. That would be awesome.

Oh, and by the way, the maids are not French, but I bet you figured that out.

— Andy Plesser

NBC Directs Tests New Download Platform with P2P Distribution

NBC Direct, the platform to deliver downloads of high quality programming, is opening its beta testing, according to a report in NewTeeVee.

Nbc_direct This is different from Hulu, the joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Hulu streams flash video. NBC Direct provides a download to save and watch “true” 720 HD.

As HD files are so large, NBC will incorporate a substantial peer-to-peer component. Providing the P2P technology is New York-based Pando Networks. Earlier this month I caught up with Pando CEO Robert Levitan who explains the integration of Pando and the quickly evolving transformation of P2P technology as a “rogue application” to a legitimate protocol.

— Andy Plesser

Creative Producers will Grab Advertising Dollars Migrating Online

Creative Producers will Grab Advertising Dollars Migrating Online

From small online videos content producers such as EQAL and NextNewNetworks, to giant ones like Yahoo!, the marketing messages of sponsors are being “baked” into original productions. These messages range from product placements to branded characters to stories about a particular product or service.

As online video advertising is in its nascent stage, sponsored content or “advertorials” are
a big trend and away to make money. This theme was repeatedly mentioned to me by several independent producers I’ve spoken with. I will be publishing several of these interviews over the next few days.

In a sense, Madison Avenue is moving to Hollywood as the creativity of independent filmmakers is being sought by marketers who had only relied on their advertising agencies. This is very exciting.

At Digital Hollywood last week, I interviewed the head of IBM’s entertainment and media consulting group Saul Berman. He talks about the impact of digital media on the entertainment industry. He says that Hollywood has to change — that it has been way behind the curve relative to other major industries. Saul references this recently released study about the imperative of change in his comments.

— Andy Plesser

Yahoo! Has Hit Video Hit with “Primetime in No Time”

Yahoo! Has Hit Video Hit with “Primetime in No Time”

SANTA MONICA — Yahoo!’s video daily digest of highlights of the previous night’s network prime time programming is turning to be big hit. Primetime In No Time, launched in March, had 4 million daily streams last week, Beet.TV has learned.

I visited the the Yahoo! entertainment complex in Santa Monica for a sit down chat with Karen Gilford, VP and General Manager of Entertainment. We talk about the strategy behind original programming on Yahoo! This is the first of two interviews.

“Primetime” has an exclusive sponsorship Verizon fiOS. The sponsor has pre-roll and companion ads.

— Andy Plesser

NBC Directs Tests New Download Platform with P2P Distribution

NBC Directs Tests New Download Platform with P2P Distribution

NBC Direct, the platform to deliver downloads of high quality programming, is opening its beta testing, according to a report in NewTeeVee.

Nbc_direct This is different from Hulu, the joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Hulu streams flash video. NBC Direct provides a download to save and watch “true” 720 HD.

As HD files are so large, NBC will incorporate a substantial peer-to-peer component. Providing the P2P technology is New York-based Pando Networks. Earlier this month I caught up with Pando CEO Robert Levitan who explains the integration of Pando and the quickly evolving transformation of P2P technology as a “rogue application” to a legitimate protocol.

— Andy Plesser

YouTube in HD is Coming to Your Living Room in June

YouTube in HD is Coming to Your Living Room in June

YouTube in HD is Coming to Your Living Room in June

LOS ANGELES — Here at Digital Hollywood yesterday, HP announced that YouTube clips would be made available on the soon-to-be-released MediaSmart Connect digital media receiver.

The box acts as a connection between multiple PC’s and Macs around the house to television sets. HP is squarely taking on Apple TV with the new device which will be shipped in June. The retail prices is not available.

Yesterday at the show, I interviewed Carlos Montalvo, vice president of marketing and services, Connected Entertainment Business, HP.

Similar to clips on the the iPhone, this is not the full YouTube offering, but a specially curated channels by YouTube for the new service. The channels offered through the box will be high quality, encoded in H.264.

If you haven’t noticed, the quality of YouTube clips is getting better as the transition to encoding via H.264 is pervading more of the content. Our Beet.TV channel on YouTube is looking very good.

If you want your videos to look better on YouTube, work on your encoding and you can upload giant files as big as 1 GB. If anyone want to share their advice on the best encoding, file format and bit rates for YouTube, please comment below.

— Andy Plesser

Slide, The Giant Widget Creator, Streams 4 Million Video Streams Daily

Slide, with 170 million uniques per month, making it the world’s seventh biggest online destination, is not a Web site at all. but a an assembly of third party applications, known as widgets. These widgets sit on social networks and are shared among members.

Its application FunWall is the number one active application on Facebook, Slide’s Jared Fliesler told me in this interview at Digital Hollywood last week. FunWall sends some 4 million video streams across the product on a daily basis, he said.

Throwing Pregnacy Tests, A SuperPoke For Juno, the Movie

SuperPoke
, another widget in the Slide network has been used by some creative marketing folks in Hollywood. Some 5-6 million “pokes” are “thrown” on a daily basis. For the promotion of the DVD for the film Juno, which depicts teenage pregnancy, a pregnancy test was created, as a joke of natch, and some 2 million of the test were “thrown,” Jared told Beet.TV

— Andy Plesser