Tag: Digital

8/4/2014   THR

The Disney-owned digital media firm has hired Gabriel Lewis and Bonnie Pan to its programming division, led by chief content officer Erin McPherson.

Maker Studios is making a significant bet on original content with two big digital media hires.

In a coup for the Disney-owned firm, former AOL Studios head Gabriel Lewis has been tapped as executive vp development and strategy and Yahoo programming veteran Bonnie Pan (pictured below) will join as executive vp programming. Both start Aug. 11 and will report to chief content officer Erin McPherson.

Lewis previously was vp AOL Studios and AOL Originals, where he spearheaded the tech firm’s programming strategy and helped develop its formula for advertiser-friendly shortform content driven by well-known personalities. AOL developed shows such as Nicole Richie‘s #CandidlyNicole and Steve Buscemi‘s Park Bench under his leadership. In his new role, Lewis will be responsible for developing Maker’s pipeline of more than 200 original projects in development, working with the multichannel network’s top YouTube talent and partnering with Hollywood.

Pan was most recently head of originals and programming at Yahoo Video, where she worked with McPherson, formerly head of video at Yahoo, for more than three years. During her time at the Sunnyvale tech firm, Pan oversaw Yahoo Screen’s move into longform content by resurrecting Community and picking up a pair of series from Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) and Mike Tollin (One Tree Hill). She also led the programming and development of projects including Electric City from Tom Hanks and The Bachelor spoof Burning Love.

At Maker, Pan will be responsible for expanding the MCN’s 23 content verticals, building out programming under the categories of family, entertainment, life and style, and gaming and sports.

“Bonnie and Gabe both bring this wealth of knowledge and expertise in content and programming and we’re going to leverage that as we grow and expand our business,” McPherson tells THR. “I think the fact that both of them are coming speaks to the incredible growth we’re seeing in our business and the massive opportunity we have with Disney now to really expand our programming offerings.”

Original content has become an increasingly important part of Maker’s business, as it looks to own content and develop more distribution channels off YouTube. The Culver City-based firm made its first presentation at the Digital Content NewFronts this year, announcing a slate of originals that included a comedy from Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele and a docuseries from YouTube creator Shay Carl.

Maker also recently launched Maker.tv, its first off-YouTube platform that includes a mix of original content, videos from its network of creators and shows from third-party partners.

Lewis and Pan join Maker at a key moment for the firm, which was folded into Disney in May. McPherson, who was hired in November last year to jump-start Maker’s content strategy, says that the network now has more than 6.5 billion streams a month and will soon reveal a number of initiatives with its new parent company.

“We’re going from startup to being part of the Disney family and we’re at an inflection point for online video as a whole industry,” she adds. “You combine those two things and it’s just a unique moment in time to be in this business and to be at Maker.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/maker-studios-snags-aol-yahoo-723246

2/11/2014   Variety

A Hulu mini-series about food integrity? Don’t have a cow, dude

Chipotle is hardly the first sponsor to brave the programming game – indeed, not even for Hulu, since Subway underwrote a comedy pilot dubbed “The 4 to 9ers.” Still, “Farmed and Dangerous” does mark an unusual entry into production for the restaurant chain, inasmuch as it mixes pointed satire about corporate greed with wonky dissertations about food policy. The result is a four-episode series with more tang than one might have anticipated given the pabulum often churned out in ad-supported vehicles, yet which ultimately falls into a sort of narrative no-man’s land that’s neither fish nor fowl.

In pitch-meeting terms, the show’s money shot comes in the opening sequence, when PR/image guru Buck Marshall (Ray Wise) is receiving a demonstration of the newest product from Animoil, which involves feeding a petroleum-based substance directly to cattle to lower costs. The main side effect of the PetroPellet, he’s told by the CEO (Eric Pierpoint) and the company’s German scientist (Thomas Mikusz), is that the cows occasionally explode – which is precisely what this one does.

So Buck faces the rather uphill task of putting lipstick on this particular cow, enlisting his daughter and newest employee (Karynn Moore) to help him. She enthusiastically dives in, which includes trying to win over an advocate for sustainable farming (John Sloan), who pushes back against the corner-cutting maneuvers employed by Animoil and its distasteful implications for the food supply.

The sparring banter between these two beef-crossed characters is a lot older than Chipotle, down to the complication of her sneering country-club boyfriend. But their exchanges are often woefully stilted, feeling as much like a public-service announcement as an actual series.

“Farmed” fares somewhat better when Wise (“Twin Peaks”) commands center stage, strategizing with his minions at the Industrial Food Image Bureau about how to, say, downplay a YouTube video of the aforementioned cow, with the head of digital expressing relief that it “wasn’t on TV.”

What makes “Farmed and Dangerous” mildly interesting is seeing some of these Occupy Wall Street-type sentiments articulated through the prism of a corporate-commissioned TV show, one that mentions Chipotle – which employs the slogan “Food with integrity” – precisely once in a later chapter, yet which conveys an implied slight to other fast-food chains throughout.

Traditionally, advertisers have gone into programming to create what they see as a hospitable environment for their commercial messages. Here, the company approaches production with more ambition, but also slightly suspect aims, given how inseparable the message is from the messenger.

The marriage between advertisers and programming, in other words, remains an awkward one, even if their heart appears to be in the right place. Because “Why buy the cow when the milk’s laced with a petroleum-like substance?” could just as easily be read as “Why sit through a food-integrity lecture from a company that clearly has a dog in the fight, even if they sugar-coat the packaging?”

3/7/2011   The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube, the video site owned by Google, formally announced on Monday that it had acquired Next New Networks, a Web video production company, in its biggest effort yet to move beyond short, quirky home videos to professionally produced content.

The acquisition of Next New Networks, which produces original programming and helps video creators distribute their films and make money, is YouTube’s biggest leap into creating its own programming. But that will be minimal, the companies said. Original programming has taken a back seat at Next New Networks, and Google has shied away from producing its own content.

“We want to make as clean a line as possible for us to build the platform on YouTube and then let the content production happen with our partners,” said Tom Pickett, director of global content operation at YouTube.

Google will pay less than $50 million for the company, according to two people briefed on the terms of the deal. The New York Times first reported YouTube’s interest in the company in December. The companies declined to comment on the price.

Improving its original programming is crucial for YouTube, which faces competition from Web video services like Hulu, iTunes and Netflix. For its part, Google, which is trying to popularize its Google TV service, needs more Web video that people will watch for hours at a time.

“There’s still a lot of YouTube that’s about the single video experience right now,” Mr. Pickett said. “We want to think about sets of videos and program experiences. That’s where we’re heading and we think this team is going to help us get there.”

Many video creators on YouTube “are making money and doing great, but as a group they have not added up to shake the foundations of the way people watch content,” said James L. McQuivey, a digital media analyst at Forrester Research. “Maybe it’s just that they’re not aggregated in a meaningful way, but as long as YouTube remains something you do between phone calls at work, it won’t change the way the industry envisions its relationship with the viewer.”

The company also said Monday that it was creating a program called YouTube Next that will help the video makers with whom YouTube shares ad revenue to produce more professional content by giving them grants and training.

Next New Networks, which attracts two billion views a month, compares itself to cable networks, which do not own all their programming but package and broadcast other people’s shows. It helps video creators with advertising, distribution of their shows to various Web sites, and in building an audience by including shows as part of a programming package.

It created the shows “Barely Political” and “Indy Mogul.” It produces videos for the Gregory Brothers, whose video “Bed Intruder Song” was the most-watched video on YouTube last year, and Hungry Nation, a series of online food shows. The Gregory Brothers’ videos, for instance, had up to 20,000 views an episode before the group started working with Next New Networks, and now they have up to two million views for an episode, said Lance Podell, chairman of Next New Networks.

Most of Next New’s shows are on YouTube, but others appear on services like iTunes and Vimeo, and that will continue.

“At this point, we are YouTube-focused, but that doesn’t mean that as an adviser to creators we won’t be able to suggest to them how their business can build on YouTube and off of YouTube,” Mr. Podell said.

He will be director and global head of YouTube Next lab and audience development. YouTube also said it hired the former head of digital distribution at Paramount, Alex Carloss, to work on content acquisition.

Next New Networks, which was founded in 2007, has raised $26 million from investment firms including Spark Capital, Fuse Capital and Goldman Sachs. The company is based in New York and will remain there. YouTube is based in San Bruno, Calif.

11/14/2012   Variety

Time Warner is eyeing an investment in digital upstart Maker Studios, a key producer of original programming for YouTube.

Conglom is in discussions with the Culver City, Calif.-based Maker about purchasing a minority stake in the company, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the talks.

It’s possible, however, that Time Warner could get beaten to the punch as other media giants kick the tires at Maker. COO Courtney Holt, who joined the company a year ago from MySpace Music, has been working on raising a new round of capital, according to sources. The venture has already raised $4 million to date from venture capital firms including Greycroft Partners and GRP Partners.

A Time Warner spokesman declined comment; a rep for Maker could not be reached for comment.

The potential for a Time Warner-Maker tie-up underscores Big Media’s growing interest in companies that specialize in original programming for YouTube, which is far and away the primary destination for consumers of online video. Maker was second only to musicvideo hubs Vevo and Warner Music among YouTube partner channels during September, according to Comscore Video Metrix, with 23.5 million unique visitors.

Founded in 2009, Maker pockets a portion of the revenues derived from a network of amateur talent feeding over 2,000 YouTube channels in exchange for providing them various production and management services. Maker’s channels boast a growing worldwide audience, generating more than 1.7 billion views as of September.

The venture has been attracting TV-size audiences to its top YouTube series including “Epic Rap Battles of History,” though it hasn’t been without growing pains: Last month, Maker star Ray William Johnson, who has more subscriptions than any content creator on YouTube, signaled he was leaving the company amid a contract dispute, though he currently remains in production on his hit show “=3.”

What makes the Maker model so attractive is its ability to corral significant viewership at a fraction of the production costs, though the ad revenues YouTube content attracts pales in comparison to what TV programming fetches. In addition, Maker could provide Time Warner with inhouse entree to its TV and film brands on YouTube, where content consumption patterns adhere to a set of rules quite different than traditional media. Maker could also be a place to incubate low-cost intellectual property before migrating it to other platforms.

It’s unclear what part of Time Warner would be providing the funding, but the likeliest source is Time Warner Investments, a portfolio filled with “mid-stage” new-media ventures including analytics firm Bluefin Labs, social-TV hub GetGlue and ad network Tremor Video. However, it’s possible that entities within the conglom that have done their own digital investing could be in the mix including Warner Bros. TV Group, Turner Broadcasting and HBO.

Maker may be finding it difficult to tap VC circles for a fresh infusion, which could make a conglom like Time Warner the next logical option. But that could also spell the beginning of the end of its independent status.

New funding could help fuel expansion plans, though the company has already grown exponentially in the past three years. Founded by Lisa Donovan, Danny Zappin and Ben Donovan, Maker started with just nine employees. The company now has about 300 employees and 20,000 new video uploads per month. With more than 20,000 square feet of studio space in Culver City, Maker employs a staff of editors, cinematographers and others in core functions to produce more than 300 videos a month.

http://variety.com/2012/digital/news/time-warner-eyes-stake-in-maker-studios-1118062235/#.UKRWlVel-8w.email

4/14/2014   Variety

Public relations giant PMK-BNC has launched digital agency Vowel, which will provide its clients with creative ways to reach online audiences, the company said.

Vowel will absorb PMK-BNC’s social marketing firm Spokes as part of the move.

“Brands, talent and entertainment properties are increasingly looking for integrated communications programs to build loyalty with audiences across multiple platforms. Vowel will deliver those solutions,” said PMK-BNC co-chairman, Michael Nyman.

Joseph Assad, chief operating officer of PMK-BNC’s New York office runs the new division, while Spokes co-founder Jeff Diamond joins Vowel as senior VP and Matt Kennerson serves as senior developer.

Vowel develops and distributes original content, produces social media strategies, manages platform development, creates custom online solutions, handles influencer marketing, and provides measurement and analytics.

“PMK-BNC already has a track record of producing acclaimed digital and influencer content for a range of clients. Vowel is an evolution of that offering,” Assad said. “Along with the technical know-how of Spokes, Vowel offers a comprehensive solution to what clients today are looking for: a holistic approach to digital and social in a way that can enhance and integrate into PR, experiential and marketing.”

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/pmk-bnc-launches-digital-agency-vowel-1201157170/

6/26/2014   Deadline.com

So now we know. After getting roasted by some competing studio heads (if not on Wall Street) earlier this year when he said movies are “not a growth business,” DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg traveled south to Anaheim today to talk about online video, a business he does see growing into the next big entertainment business platform. Katzenberg sat down onstage with Hank Green, himself a prominent video blogger with brother John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars. The brothers are co-founders of Vidcon, the massive industry confab and fan festival filling the Anaheim Convention Center the next three days. Katzenberg used the friendly audience of video creators, distributors and others in the business to talk about why online video, particularly on YouTube, is such a promising creation and distribution platform for a new generation of talent outside traditional Hollywood.

“I think the opportunities ahead are so immense,” Katzenberg said. “This platform is in its infancy. Monetizing that is still a struggle. What we will see in a very short period of time, that will all start to migrate up to the top of the pyramid. I believe in five years, 95 percent of the value will come from the top 5 percent” of video creators.

And DWA already has invested substantially in the space, buying multi-channel network AweseomenessTV a year ago and launching the daily video digest YouTube Nation about four months ago. Last week, the company officially announced the programming slate for DreamworksTV, another YouTube channel under Awesomeness that will feature short animations involving notable DWA characters such as Shrek and Po the Panda, along with planned animated series featuring characters from its Classic Media library acquisition.

Katzenberg was particularly upbeat about YouTube Nation, which highlights notable videos and up-and-comers in a 5- to 6-minute daily roundup. “We have created a lighthouse that is in service of everything that is great and unique and singular about what I believe will be the most important platform in the world, which is YouTube,” Katzenberg said. The channel already has accreted 1.6 million subscribers and 25 million views, and ultimately, the company hopes to extend YouTube Nation into specialized shows focused on verticals such as sports and beauty. The idea for the program came from Katzenberg’s own fascination, and frustration, with the vast YouTube sea of content, he said.

“Being someone who’s just a fan of the platform, the content, the creators, I loved it, and at the same time, I was incredibly frustrated by my ability to consume it,” Katzenberg said. “It just overwhelmed me. It was an ocean of opportunity I kept feeling I was missing. It pissed me off that I would find out on, like the Today show, something I should be watching.”

He also touted the opportunities for AwesomenessTV (“Our biggest and most exciting bet”), which has a show on Nickelodeon among other ventures and whose YouTube channels Katzenberg said now have 50 million subscribers and 1 billion views a month.

“They are at the foundation of making careers,” Katzenberg said of the team running Awesomeness. “They’ve become this great host where great talent can find audiences. This is all about value creation. If you’re looking for a place now to go and connect with that audience, it’s hard to find a better place to make that launch.”

With 18,000 fans and online-video industry types attending Vidcon, the scene is strongly reminiscent of the San Diego Comic-Con without the cosplay at a time, say 10 years ago, when Hollywood was just beginning to embrace the franchise-marketing possibilities there. Vidcon this year includes sponsors such as Kia Motors, Friskies, NBC, UTA, Best Buy, Samsung, HLN, Taco Bell and other big media and consumer brands. Today is Industry Day, with a series of presentations by prominent video creators and even old-school veterans such as MTV and Nickelodeon pioneer Fred Seibert, now 62 and once again exploring a new medium with his Frederator Studios.

http://www.deadline.com/2014/06/where-the-growth-business-is-for-jeffrey-katzenberg-online-video/#more-756168

6/5/2011   The New York Times

CHICAGO — For many Internet users, YouTube is synonymous with online video. But Mike Michaud and several friends who live in suburban Chicago are trying to change that.

Mr. Michaud co-owns Channel Awesome, an aspiring Viacom of the online video world, which promotes online shows about video games, comic books and assorted realms of popular culture. He was a casualty of the recession, having been laid off by Circuit City, the electronics retail chain that later was closed, and now he is a beneficiary of the advertising rebound, having doubled his revenue last year, enough to employ seven people full time.

“People may still scoff at online video, but this is a real business now,” he said over breakfast recently. Channel Awesome’s primary partner is not YouTube, but Blip.tv, which distributes made-for-the-Web series and surrounds them with ads. The companies that create these series are small, are popping up in unexpected places — like Mr. Michaud’s home — and are creating unlikely stars in lucrative niches.

Channel Awesome’s best-known weekly show, “Nostalgia Critic,” which another Circuit City cast off, Doug Walker, produces from his home five minutes from Mr. Michaud’s, draws about three million views a month. Several of Blip’s top production partners are on track to earn at least a $1 million in ad revenue from Blip this year, said Dina Kaplan, a co-founder of Blip.

Like YouTube, Blip splits advertising revenues with Web series producers. But unlike YouTube, which also streams amateur videos, and Netflix, which streams feature films and television shows, Blip is solely focused on those producers. Rather than competing directly, it is trying to carve a niche next to YouTube in the expanding world of Web video.

“This ecosystem that we started working with in 2005 has finally come into its own,” Ms. Kaplan said, citing the success of companies like Mr. Michaud’s, Blip’s relationships with top advertisers like Procter & Gamble, and the growing popularity of streaming video on televisions.

Shows hosted by Blip’s servers now account for 330 million video views a month, the company says. Blip is in its third round of financing by venture capital firms that have invested $18 million.   But what the system has been lacking, Blip executives and other industry specialists say, are ways to find made-for-the-Web series that are worth watching. The problem, in industry parlance, is discovery, and it is a huge hurdle for Web video makers and sponsors to clear.

“There just isn’t anywhere right now that focuses on original Web series and presents them in a clean, curated, well-lit environment,” Mike Hudack, another co-founder of Blip and the company’s chief executive, said last month as he showed his solution: a new home page for Blip that is updated daily with links to new episodes of shows.

The new home page divides shows into categories like sports and comedy, ranks shows by popularity and creates what Mr. Michaud calls “real show pages” for users to visit.

YouTube, too, is trying to solve the discovery problem by programming its home page and putting a new emphasis on channels of content. In March, the company, a unit of Google, bought a Web video production company called Next New Networks, and now the employees of Next New are training other budding YouTube producers.

Like so many other Web video companies, Blip is a partner of YouTube, so it avoids any insinuation that it is a competitor. But it would clearly prefer to rack up video views on its own sites, not YouTube’s.

The audiences for most Web series are still puny by television standards, and so are the budgets for the series. Mr. Michaud, 29, who wore to breakfast a yellow shirt with the star symbol from Super Mario Bros. 3 imprinted on the front, said online video itself “still has a lot of growing up to do.”

“My company has a lot of growing up to do,” he said, “but I believe that sometime in the next one to two years someone will create that one series that gets everyone talking.”

That one show, he said, could then start pulling people from traditional television “to the endless options of online video.”

Many of Blip’s top shows are part of a network, the same way that MTV is an umbrella for all sorts of shows. Along with Channel Awesome, Blip praises Rooster Teeth, a production company based in Austin, Tex., that makes the action drama “Red vs. Blue” and “Immersion,” which tests video game tropes in real life.

Mr. Hudack’s other favorites include “Dusty Wright’s Culture Catch,” a music and culture talk show and blog, and “Aidan 5,” a black-and-white sci-fi drama produced in Columbus, Ohio, and based on a film short.

“When it comes to Web video, Hollywood could learn lessons from Illinois and Texas,” Ms. Kaplan said.

As the channel and show names imply, success often results from tackling topics that appeal to young viewers. They are some of the same people who are “watching less television,” Ms. Kaplan said, “so if advertisers want to reach them, they have to start advertising on Web series.”

Last week, Blip signed its latest content deal, with a management company called the Collective, that will steer more videos — and thus more views and ad impressions — in Blip’s direction. The Collective represents online stars like Lucas Cruikshank, who plays a helium-voiced character called Fred in a hit YouTube series. In celebration of the deal, Blip’s new office space on Broadway in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan was rearranged into a dance floor last Thursday night, where staff members at Blip, executives at the Collective and friends from YouTube all mingled. In the back, out of reach of 200-plus partygoers, an unopened bottle of Champagne sat at an employee’s desk.

To hit the million-dollar mark that Ms. Kaplan mentioned, Channel Awesome has to add new series and maintain the audiences for its current series. Mr. Michaud is now looking for warehouse space in suburban Chicago, and benefiting, he said, from the weak real estate market. He considered the vacant Circuit City building where he once worked, he said, but concluded that the space was too small.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/business/media/06blip.html?pagewanted=all

6/26/2014   The Wrap

6/26/2014   The Wrap

Maker Studios announced on Thursday that it’s adding two new consumer-facing brands to its ever-growing umbrella of products: Creator network Maker Gen and merchandise store Maker Shop.

Maker Gen seeks to provide the building blocks for creators of any medium to benefit from its tools and services, offering guidance, resources and incentives like brand partnerships, talent collaboration and creator development. Maker’s RPM (Record, Promote, Monetize) creator network, already 50,000 creators strong, will be folded into Maker Gen, which will now allow content creators on platforms beyond YouTube to join in.

Maker Shop is a relaunch of Maker’s Rodeo Arcade, the e-commerce store now rebranded to more seamlessly align with the Maker brand. The online store will continue to offer clothing and accessories for 150+ content creators, original series, vertical brands and more.

The new brands join a list of Maker products including proprietary web platform Maker.tv, ad product Maker Offers, and programming initiative Maker Labs.

“The Maker brand is a strong consumer brand among audiences that value our creative community,” said Courtney Holt, General Manager, Maker Studios. “It makes so much sense to create offerings under the Maker brand, increasing discoverability among both creators and audiences.”

http://www.thewrap.com/maker-studios-launches-new-brands-maker-gen-and-maker-shop/