Through an eclectic group of creative partners, MiTú has established its self as the most prominent multi-channel network for Hispanic content. Now, MiTú is taking a leap forward by bringing two of its shows–Casa Linda and Gurús de Belleza–to Spanish-language TV channel Discovery Familia.

Both Casa Linda, which stars home design expert Linda Ruiz, and Gurús de Belleza, which features beauty gurus Marisol Gomez, Cris Ordaz and Gaby Motomochi, first debuted on MiTú’s lifestyle channel, MiTú Life. While web videos from each series have rarely run for more than seven minutes, the TV versions will feature half-hour formats.

Here’s the first part of the debut episode of Gurús de Belleza, which arrived on MiTú Life in September:

Discovery Familia is one of two Spanish-language channels owned by Discovery Communications. “At Discovery Familia we are committed to being at the forefront of the evolving media landscape,” said Bilai Joa Silar, the channel’s VP of content, in a release. “With this strategic partnership we have the opportunity to continue to expand our content offering, leveraging up and coming MiTú talent and reaching our audience with storytelling that travels across platforms.”

Both TV programs will debut this year. Casa Linda will arrive on November 20th, and Gurús de Belleza will follow a few weeks later on December 12th.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, News, Studios by Sam Gutelle
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If you’re a budding online video star or established entertainment professional looking for a low-cost, but high-tech sound stage, recording room, editing bay, or otherwise production-friendly facility in which to shoot, slice, sweeten, or finish your project in New York City you can fuggedaboutit. At least you could fuggedaboutit before November 6, 2014. It’s on that Google officially opened the doors of its YouTube Space New York and gave YouTube creators with 5,000 subscribers or more a free place in which to work.

The sprawling (especially for New York) 20,000 square foot facility is located on the fifth and some of the sixth floors of Chelsea Market on Manhattan’s West Side, directly across the street from Google’s massive three million square foot New York Headquarters the company purchased for a cool $1.9 billion back in 2012. Savvy, space-efficient designers packed the area with no less than three enclosed sound stages, a handful of editing bays, a few very well-lit makeup rooms, a pair of audio suites, a couple of master control rooms, one voice over recording room, a permanent 1950’s diner set, miles and miles worth of cable, an equipment room with loaner cameras, lights, booms, and other tools of production, a screening room, and more.

The powers that be at YouTube also learned from their experience at other YouTube Spaces (New York is the fourth YT Space, with Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo already established and Sao Paulo on the way) and did their best to make every square inch of the facility shootable. That’s why lighting rigs cover the ceilings, a lot of the furniture is on wheels, and the bathroom was especially designed with mirrors to give the space depth and titles to better deal with bright lights.

YouTube reports more than 6,000 videos created at its Spaces around the world have generated over 750 million views, while upwards of 30,000 individuals have attended workshops and training sessions at the facilities. Those numbers are only going to increase at a greater rate with the addition of YouTube Space New York.

Interested creators can sign up for 9AM to 9PM, Monday through Saturday access to the facility at the YouTube Space NY site. Here’s a quick tour of the space and facilities they’ll be working with:

[doptg id=”7″]

Filed under: Articles, News, YouTube, YouTube Spaces by Joshua Cohen
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AwesomenessTV’s creators now have a new digital matchmaking toy to play with. The YouTube Multi-Channel Network just announced the launch of its new mobile app Bridge by AwesomenessTV.

Exclusively available to talent that’s a part of AwesomenessTV or Big Frame (which was acquired by Awesomeness TV in April 2014), the free Bridge app helps creators from these MCNs discover and connect with other influencers within their networks in order to foster collaboration and channel growth. The app itself is pretty straightforward. Users are shown profiles and videos of fellow creators. If the users like what they see, they have the option of pressing the “collab” button to notify individual creators of their interest to work together. Or they can always choose “next” if they’d rather try to work with someone else.

If the notified creator also chooses to collaborate, the two creators then have the ability to chat through the Bridge app. It’s like Tinder, except with a couple of buttons instead of directional swipes.

“Collaborating on videos is one the fastest ways for YouTube channels to expand their audience,” said Kelly Day, Chief Digital Officer at AwesomenessTV, in the release. “Bridge puts creators only a few clicks away from finding a collaborator and allows them to chat without sharing personal contact information.”

Bridge ideally helps solve the problem of creators having to spend time, energy, and cash to meet and organize collaborations on their own or at in-person events. The self-discovery tool also streamlines the time-consuming task of tracking down a potential collaborator and his or her videos and contact info. That’s a hassle nearly every YouTube creator has to manage if they want to employ the tried and true tactic of collaboration to effectively grow their channel. AwesomenessTV’s app could remove some of the friction from the process to make in-network collaborations easier to execute and occur more often.

Bridge is the most recent initiative in a growing laundry list of announcements from the teen-focused MCN. AwesomenessTV previously made public the launch of a pop-up retail store for the coming holidays. The MCN also introduced its Awesomeness Ink publishing division specifically for young adult books, as well as a licensing department to help negotiate deals between YouTubers and retailers.

Available on all iOS devices, AwesomenessTV plans to develop the Bridge app for Android devices soon. The MCN will also open up the app to creators outside its network in the future. Until then, non-AwesomenessTV talent will have to figure out who to collaborate with the old-fashioned way (or they can check out some other technology in the market that hopes to foster collaboration).

Filed under: Articles, AwesomenessTV, News by Bree Brouwer
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Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here.

Mini Ladd is a member of the YouTube community, but he doesn’t take his success for granted. The UK-based YouTuber, whose real name is Craig, has built a lot of his success thanks to Garry’s Mod, the sandbox program he features in many of his videos. To celebrate one million subscribers, Mini Ladd released a compilation of his best “GMod”.

Mini Ladd is currently on the up-and-up, but he believes his time as a top YouTuber is ephemeral. Here’s what he had to say about his experience within the Let’s Play genre:

Tubefilter: How does it feel to have one million YouTube subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?

Mini Ladd: It’s honestly the most crazy thing to me that one million people from around the world like me enough to feel the need to watch me more. YouTube has been the best thing that has happened to me and if you would have told me that I would reach the one million subscriber mark, I would have laughed. For my fans I have to say thank you. Thank you for changing my life, and because of you, I get to wake up everyday and live my dream, and I wouldn’t be where I am without you.

Tubefilter: How do you manage to set yourself apart instead of being just another gaming channel?

Mini Ladd: I don’t think I’m anything special so it blows my mind that anyone wants to watch me…I think maybe its because I try to add more of my personality to my videos through editing. Editing for me is the main reason why I only upload every day or every other day, because it takes a long time to edit every video but in my eyes, it makes the video a whole lot better. That and because I’m just a weird person and people like to laugh at me.

Tubefilter: What’s the story behind the name Mini Ladd?

Mini Ladd: The name Mini Ladd came from when I was a kid. When I was growing up, my next door neighbor and one of my best friends at the time was called Craig (which also happens to be my name) so to avoid confusion, they called me ‘Mini’ because I was younger. I was six or seven years old when people first started calling me that, and when you’re that age, calling someone Mini was hilarious.

Craig’s younger brother Kyle was the same age as me and when we went into Secondary School/High School, he kept calling me Mini and because of that, everyone kept calling me Mini and even to this day, people call me Mini before they call me Craig. The ‘Ladd’ part came from when a few friends and I decided to make our Xbox gamertags the same, so there was Kyle Ladd, Conor Ladd, and then me, Mini Ladd! When I made my YouTube channel, I kept getting an error whenever I tried to make my YouTube name ‘MiniLadd’ so I just added an extra ‘d’, and that’s why my YouTube name is ‘MiniLaddd’.

Tubefilter: What is your process for choosing games you play on your channel?

Mini Ladd: For me, I try and find games are not just fun, but also funny. There are a lot of games out there that are fun but I also know the game needs to be funny for people to watch and enjoy it. For example, I play a lot of Destiny, because its a fun game, but I don’t want to upload it because its not really a funny game, and because of that, people wouldn’t find it too entertaining. For games like that, I like to livestream them on Twitch whenever I have some free time.

Tubefilter: What was your favorite collaboration video so far in your career?

Mini Ladd: My favorite collab I’ve ever done is probably when I played with SeaNanners for the first time because he was one of the main reasons I started a YouTube channel over three years ago, and when I finally got a chance to meet him, it was crazy to think that I was talking to this guy who I’ve been watching for four or so years. The fact that I can call him a friend is still crazy to me. It also helps that he’s a really down to earth guy!

Tubefilter: Your Five Nights at Freddy’s video has over 2 million views. Why do you think it’s so popular?

Mini Ladd: I think I just got the video up at the right time when Five Nights at Freddy’s was still big on the scene, and at that time, I didn’t see anyone else who had uploaded a Garry’s Mod version of the game so for that video, I edited it for nine hours to make sure that people [would] really like it and so it could be received well, and I guess I got lucky. That’s one thing about YouTube is it’s all about being there at the right place at the right time. For example, I could have made that video when no one was really looking for it and it would have got nowhere near the amount of views as it has. It’s all about picking your moment.

Tubefilter: You just did your first “#AskMini” vlog. What was your favorite part about that? Do you think you’ll do more in the future?

Mini Ladd: For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be more personal with my viewers and talk to them on a personal level but I guess that because I was too busy trying to get my gaming videos out there, I put vlogs on the back burner. I probably wouldn’t have started #AskMini if it wasn’t for a close friend of mine, Ashlynn Arias, who knew that being personal can separate a good channel from a great channel and so I took her advice and went for it. I’m really glad I did because recording my first #AskMini episode was a lot of fun.

I know it wont get as many views as my gaming videos but I know views will come in time and I just have to be consistent with it and keep enjoying it and eventually, views will come, but it’s not my main priority. I still treat YouTube as a hobby even though it is my job. I still put the enjoyment of making videos at my forefront, I can work out all the business stuff afterwards!

Tubefilter: Can you see yourself doing YouTube gaming videos the rest of your life? Or do you want to try something else?

Mini Ladd: As much as I want to continue doing this for the rest of my life, I can only see YouTube being around for the short term, not because I want to quit, but because I feel that as a YouTuber, everyone gets their moment in the spotlight before someone else comes along and takes your thunder, kinda like that artist who has a one-hit wonder and then no one ever hears from them again. I live in the UK at the moment, but I’m planning on moving to California in early 2015 because I want to be able to gain connections with people in the gaming industry so whenever YouTube does decide to shut its doors on me, at least I’ll know people and have a plan that I can fall back on.

Tubefilter: What’s next for your YouTube channel? Any fun plans?

Mini Ladd: I want to continue to develop as a YouTuber and continue to improve the quality of my videos. I also want to start doing more personal stuff and collab that way as well as my gaming stuff. I will always keep my channel gaming but I also want to let people who know who I am, not just [be] that voice that shouts over video games. Big things are planned but now they just need to be brought to life. Life is amazing at the moment and I cant wait to see what lies ahead for me.

On Deck (channels that will soon reach one million subscribers): Kina Grannis, Ten Second Songs, Pinkstylist 

Filed under: Articles, Channels, Featured, Millionaires, News by Sam Gutelle
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Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee has returned to Crackle, and Jerry Seinfeld‘s web series begins its fifth season with something a bit different. Instead of jumping into Seinfeld’s chat with guest Kevin Hart, the first episode begins with a self-aware back and forth between Seinfeld and “Crackle President Dick Corcoran,” a character played by Michael Richards.

At the beginning of the episode, Seinfeld gets a text message asking him to meet with “Corcoran”. One trip to Los Angeles later, Seinfeld finds himself in Corcoran’s office, where Richards explains how the Sony-owned platform is spending “half the budget” on Seinfeld’s show. He also compares Crackle to more visible competitors like Netflix and Hulu, outright stating “Crackle is dead.”

The bit with Richards is a self-aware preamble that also serves as Crackle’s way of saying “hey, we have other shows besides this Seinfeld thing, too.” To that end, the walls of Corcoran’s office are plastered with Chosen posters, providing a bit of product placement.

Perhaps the unusual intro isn’t your thing; if you’d like to get right to the actual episode, it begins at 3:55, and we immediately learn where all of Crackle’s money is going: Seinfeld’s first car of the fifth season is an incredible 1959 Porsche race car. Seinfeld shares his new ride with Hart, who joins him for Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee‘s typical combination of caffeinated beverages and amusing banter.

Crackle’s pre-show silliness aside, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee is the same as always. If you are a fan of Seinfeld’s personality, it’s a must-watch. Otherwise, feel free to tune whenever he cavorts around town with a guest you enjoy.

Filed under: Articles, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Crackle (Sony Pictures Television), Featured, News by Sam Gutelle
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While many companies and brands are still placing billions of dollars worth of ads on traditional television, they’re also more aggressively pursuing digital options. Forrester Research believes U.S. digital advertising spending will beat out TV spending by the year 2019, reaching $103 billion.

According to Adweek, Forrester claims digital spending will see a 12% annual compound growth rate by the year stated above. The research group found mobile is particularly responsible for the estimated massive $103 billion figure, with the platform claiming 66% of the growth in interactive categories in the next five years.

On the other hand, TV ad spending won’t do so so well, says Forrester. The research group estimates the U.S. TV advertising industry will reach $85.8 billion by 2019. However, Adweek noted other companies predict digital ad spending will beat out television ad spending even faster. Magna Global estimates 2017 will be “the” year digital trumps TV while eMarketer claims it’ll happen in 2018.

Regardless of the exact date digital advertising overtakes TV, advertisers’ focus on the new media space has already been set. Last year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau found internet ad revenues had beat out broadcast television revenues for the first time in history, claiming $42.8 billion as opposed to TV’s $40.1 billion.

It’s obvious advertisers have become and are becoming increasingly aware of the fact they should put more of their dollars towards digital media. Forward-looking Omnicom recently suggested this route to its clients (including McDonald’s, Pepsi, and Starbucks), telling them to invest 10-25% of their TV advertising budgets in online video.

For now, research groups will just have to wait and see which can claim bragging rights for calling the exact year digital ad spends would overtake those of TV.

Filed under: Articles, Forrester Research, News by Bree Brouwer
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CBS is getting into the streaming online video game in a hurry. The cable network debuted a live and on-demand, ad-supported online news service dubbed CBSN on November 6, 2014, and also hinted at an upcoming streaming service based on its Showtime properties.

CBS’s CEO Les Moonves said CBSN won’t have “the costs associated with a cable news network,” according to Deadline. “This service will provide programming 24/7 to a whole new audience… We are following our viewers with CBS content wherever they are.”

The strategy isn’t entirely dissimilar to CBS’ competitors and the direction in which major premium television and network players are headed. HBO, for instance, announced its own plans for a streaming service last month. “Obviously, we see the same opportunity HBO does,” CBS’s COO Joe Ianniello said to USA Today. “So we have to find creative and innovative ways to continue to have our content where the consumers are.”

USA Today also noted Moonves’s interest and reasoning behind a Showtime streaming service. “There’s many millions of people out there on college campuses, the cord-nevers, the cord-cutters … and there are 10 million broadband-only consumers out there, and we expect to be able to get those people and reach those people. We could say fairly definitively, sometime in ’15, there will be some service from Showtime.”

The announcements were made in CBS’ third-quarter earnings call with Moonves and Ianniello on Wednesday, November 5. The CBSN and Showtime news follow hot on the heels of CBS’s October announcement of its All-Access service for $5.99 a month.

CBS isn’t afraid to go after what it wants and what its viewers want. Now, we wonder who will be the next media giant to follow in CBS’s footsteps. We’re guessing we won’t have to wait a very long time to find out.

Photo courtesy of CBS News

Filed under: Articles, CBS, News by Bree Brouwer
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The Vlogbrothers are adding new episodes to their educational catalog, and they’re doing it thanks to an assist from the leader in public television. Hank Green and John Green have teamed up with PBS Digital Studios for two new Crash Course series: one covering US government and a second covering astronomy.

The two new series will expand Crash Course’s library, which already covers eight different subject. The educational series, which uses the Green brothers’ fast-paced narrations, animations, and kinetic typography to convey educational information, already includes series on subjects like world history, chemistry, and literature.

These videos have proven quite popular, accumulating more than 2.3 million subscribers on YouTube. At the same time, the channel has been plagued by financial issues. During a 2013 AMA on Reddit, John Green lamented “the godawful amount of money it takes to make Crash Course,” since the show’s production requires a full team of academic experts, writers, animators, and editors.

The partnership with PBS will be a big help. The network will add Crash Course to its roster of partner channels, and the channel’s entire library will become available on PBS LearningMedia, an on-demand digital resource for K-12 educators. “PBS has become one of the most innovative and interesting media properties in online video, and we’ve long admired their work on YouTube presenting educational content in a fresh new way,” said Hank Green in a release. “We’re so thankful that PBS Digital Studios is helping create two new Crash Course series, and for bringing Crash Course directly into classrooms via PBS LearningMedia.”

Both Green brothers have experience working with PBS Digital Studios. John and his wife Sarah are the hosts of The Art Assignment, a interactive series distributed by the network. Hank, on the other hand, served as an executive producer for Frankenstein, M.D., a partnership between Pemberley Digital and PBSDS that recently posted its final episode.

The US government series will be hosted by “WheezyWaiter” Craig Benzine, who has also hosted content alongside Hank and John on the Mental Floss channel. The astronomy series will be hosted by Phil Plait, who also blogs about the subject for Slate. Both series are expected to debut in January 2015.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, News, PBS Digital Studios, Vlogbrothers, Web Series by Sam Gutelle
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PewDiePie, the Swedish gamer who claims nearly 32 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, is doubling down on his pledge to move away from YouTube comments. In a recent video, titled “31,970,288 Subscribers!!!!“, PewDiePie addressed his decision to disable comments and claimed he is “really happy” about the change.

PewDiePie first made the decision to disable his YouTube comments in September, when he claimed his “Bro Army” was being pushed out of the comment section in favor of spam and irrelevant responses. He instead asked his fans to comment on his videos on Twitter and Reddit.

In October, PewDiePie reversed his policy, re-enabling comments on his channel. At the same time, he doesn’t seem to be paying them much attention, and he has set up a forum that acts as an official chatroom for each video.

In his new video, he laments that even this strategy is not perfect. “I feel like as this channel has grown it’s been a constant struggle with trying to connect with you bros in a good way,” he states. At the same time, he admitted that he feels good about his decision to ignore YouTube comments. “Before I turned off my comments, I think things were going downhill,” he says. “So, making that change, I feel like we’ve been going back up, and it’s been making me really happy, and it’s been making me really enjoy what I do, which is something very important to me.”

From the looks of it, PewDiePie won’t be paying attention to YouTube comments. Instead he will continue to grow his audience of nearly 32 million bros, who will be able to interact with him across his social media channels.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, News, PewDiePie by Sam Gutelle
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Endemol is losing a familiar face to Bunim/Murray Productions (BMP). The Van Nuys-based entertainment company, known for reality TV shows like The Real World and Project Runway, just hired John P. Roberts to fill its Chief Digital Officer position.

Roberts will lead the digital division of Bunim/Murray with the goal of increasing the company’s multi-platform and digital productions for web, mobile, and connected device distribution. He’ll also pursue investments and opportunities to help grow BMP and establish it as a leader in the digital production industry. Finally, Roberts will oversee BMP’s VP of Digital Kesila Childers, who was promoted to the position from her role as Director of Digital Media.

“With our continued commitment to innovation and engaging, ground-breaking storytelling, we are thrilled to bring John on board to lead BMP Digital,” said Gil Goldschein, President of Bunim/Murray Productions, in the release. “His extensive experience in digital and multi-platform production will help us continue to grow our digital initiatives and overall media footprint and extend our brands across multiple platforms.”

“Bunim/Murray is the best in the business when it comes to storytelling,” noted Roberts in the release. “They laid the foundation for unscripted TV and were pioneers in shining a spotlight on relatable, everyday people. This created the groundwork for much of the content that’s thriving on digital platforms today. My goal is to continue to build momentum and guide BMP Digital to the next level of content creation across all platforms including video, games and social media.”

BMP has every reason to want Roberts under their name, as the digital executive is a four-time Emmy nominee in interactive television and already has experience overseeing many digital developments from his time at Endemol as its SVP of Digital Media and Commercial Ventures. A leading example was his launch of the MCN’s reality competition series in partnership with Blizzard Entertainment, Azeroth Choppers, which received over 2 million views in the first week of release. Roberts has previously worked for The Hub, Universal Studios, Lucasfilm LTD, and Fox, where he helped launch its cable network FX and its Fox.com website.

With Roberts on board at BMP, we expect to see a lot more digital releases from the company in the future.

Filed under: Articles, News by Bree Brouwer
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RTL Group recently acquired a majority stake in the the fashion and beauty-focused YouTube multi-channel network StyleHaul. The deal values the MCN with over 5,000 channels, an aggregate 203 million subscribers, and over 900 million monthly views at roughly $150 million. But that number could go up to as much as $200 million if StyleHaul achieves certain performance thresholds in the near future.

StyleHaul CEO Stephanie Horbaczewski and the other powers that be at the company obviously want to hit whatever revenue numbers are outlined in those performance thresholds to enhance the value of the MCN’s recent sale. So, they’ve brought on board Noel Mika Bahamon to help them out.

Bahamon is StyleHaul’s shiny new Senior VP of Strategic Partnerships and will head up the company’s e-commerce strategy, according to Variety. The new executive will also work with the network’s top talent (like iJustine and Zoe Sugg) to develop a range of consumer products (which is a role that’s becoming quite the rage these days for fast-growing MCNs).

Bahamon comes to her new position most recently by way of the Walt Disney Company (which also seems to be a trend among new executives in the online video space). At Disney, Bahamon held the very cool role of Imagineer and worked with teams around the world to produce products for the company’s theme parks.

StyleHaul’s latest hire joins other recent high-level additions to the MCN, including Chief Content Officer, Mia Goldwyn by way of Paramount and Senior Vice President of StyleHaul Studios, Rob DeChiaro by way of AOL.

Filed under: Articles, News, StyleHaul, YouTube by Joshua Cohen
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Last month, Snapchat announced its plan to begin running ads, which will appear on the ephemeral messaging app’s Recent Updates page. With its ad infrastructure in place, Snapchat now wants to populate its streams with branded content, and it already has a few takers. According to a report in Digiday, Snapchat is planning partnerships with companies like CNN, Spotify, ESPN, the Daily Mail, and VICE.

Those companies would create content for a new section, which Digiday believes will be called Discover. Content on Discover will apparently go beyond images and video to include text and audio posts, which will not have any length restrictions. The format of the Discover section also features a novel look; other brands visible in Digiday’s mock-up include VEVO, BuzzFeed, and People.

The one part of Discover that will remain consistent with the current Snapchat app is the fleeting nature of its posts. Brand content posted to Snapchat will still disappear after a few seconds, thus maintaining the app’s signature feature.

It’s unclear when Discover will become available to the public, and Snapchat declined Digiday’s request for comment. The bottom line is that an influx of branded content to Snapchat could potentially turn the app into a much more legitimate media platform while simultaneously galvanizing its upstart creative community.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, News, Snapchat by Sam Gutelle
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