The Hudson Valley Ballers are back, and as per usual, they’re hanging out with some big-time guest stars. Paula Pell and James Anderson’s offbeat web series has returned with new episodes on the Lexus-branded Lstudio platform, and among the visitors to the Hudson Valley’s trendiest bed-and-brunch establishment is a critic played by Tina Fey.
Fey appears in the final of four new episodes posted on Lstudio’s website and YouTube channel. Her character, Gingie, is essentially a fictitious version of Angie’s List founder Angie Hicks. Over the course of a seven-minute episode, Pell and Anderson (who play fictionalized versions of themselves) do everything they can to take Gingie out of her comfort zone and win her over at the same time.
Hudson Valley Ballers, which is produced by Broadway Video’s Above Average network, first arrived in 2013 with six episodes. Pell and Anderson are both longtime writers for Saturday Night Live; Pell has been with the show since 1995, and Anderson since 2000. Along they way, they’ve made lots of friends in the comedy world, and as a result, Hudson Valley Ballers has been jam-packed with guest stars since its launch. Its very first episode, for example, featured appearances from Kate McKinnon and Paul Rudd.
A second season came to Lstudio this year. The first batch of new episodes arrived in July, and the newest releases bring season two up to eight episodes. They’re all available through Lstudio; head there to see the other familiar faces who pop up at Pell and Anderson’s B&B.
Benny and Rafi Fine (aka The Fine Bros.) have teamed with ABC Family to bring some supplementary Pretty Little Liars content to traditional television. The YouTube stars, who boast over 12 million subscribers on their main channel, produced a segment called Superfan Suite, which will air on August 11, 2015, during ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars (PLL) marathon.
Starting at 12 PM EST, ABC will run The Fine Bros.’ Superfan Suite snippets between PLL episodes until the series’ all-revealing finale from 8-9 PM EST. A release calls the Suite the place for “fans to experience the ultimate insider’s look at their favorite shows.”
The Superfan Suite segments will feature behind-the-scenes facts, talks with ABC stars, and info-revealing games. Celebrity guests like YouTube star Ricky Dillon (who tweeted about how excited he was to talk about his favorite show) will also make appearances throughout the day. The PLL-themed Superfan Suite snippets are hosted by Stephanie Gray, Ashley Mova, Meghan Lamontagne, and Sinead de Vries.
i got to be on tv to talk about my favorite tv show :~) thanks again to @thefinebros for asking me to be apart of it!
The Fine Bros.’ are already quite familiar with making content for linear TV. Their wildly popular React series scored a full series deal at Nickelodeon dubbed ReactToThat, which premiered on December 15, 2015. The brotherly duo of digital stars has also landed a TV series deal with TruTV for a comedy show they’ll host about how everything in the world can be connected within six degrees; the aptly-named Six Degrees of Everything premieres on August 18, 2015.
Two YouTube stars have launched an app that requires quick thinking. Frequent collaborators Phil Lester and Dan Howell are behind the 7 Second Challenge app, which presents open-ended questions and asks users to respond in seven seconds or less.
The app is based off a challenge Lester invented for a vlog he recorded with PJ Ligouri in 2014. In that video, prompts include “make an argument between a shark and a scuba diver that results in the scuba diver falling madly in love with the shark” and “sing a song about bricks.” The result was fun and improvisational, and it quickly spread across YouTube, with other vloggers offering their own versions of the challenge.
The new app will allow the Seven Second Challenge to widen its reach even more. Hundreds of prompts are included, and users can record their friends’ seven-second answers, which can in turn be uploaded to social media. In the first few days after launch, Lester and Howell are playing up the app’s sharable nature. They have asked fans to tag clips from the app with the hashtag #The7SecondChallenge, and they plan to feature their favorite ones in their own videos.
While it has only been available for a few days, the 7 Second Challenge app already has a handful of high-profile users. Lester and Howell have posted a separate video in which they ask their fellow YouTube stars to respond to some of the app’s silliest prompts.
Plenty of Lester and Howell’s fans have already downloaded the app as well. They have left it hundreds of glowing reviews, and have surely cooked up their own hasty responses to the app’s absurd requests.
At first, Erik Battany may seem like your average 16-year-old kid. But thanks to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Colorado teen recently got the VIP treatment at RTX 2015 in Austin, Texas, and met many of his personal YouTube heroes from the gaming and comedy channel Achievement Hunter.
In 2012 at age 12, Battany was diagnosed with Castleman disease, a rare, cancer-like blood disorder that affects the body’s lymph node and immune systems. Battany’s doctors tried a variety of treatments, including infusions and chemotherapy, but the latter backfired and caused heart failure. Battany had to use a left ventricular assistive device to pump blood through his heart to help it heal itself.
However, one day Battany went septic after bacteria got in through his mouth as he was brushing his teeth. The young teen underwent surgery to remove the LVAD; Battany’s mother Kathy then had to give him infusions at home. But Battany’s kidneys started to fail, which meant he couldn’t take his heart medication, so his heart failed again. Eventually, Battany received a heart transplant in April 2015.
Throughout his entire medical process, Battany would watch YouTube videos during his hospital visits. The Coloradan explained how he’d been watching some YouTube creators, like Markiplier, for a while. It wasn’t until he saw an online ad for AH (shoutout to YouTube’s Fan Finder initiative) that he started to watch the company’s content. Battany fell in love with AH’s Let’s Play videos, and the 16-year-old said AH “became my favorite YouTube channel.”
Battany recalled his favorite AH moment, which was in a GTA V Let’s Play video he watched during his hospital visits. “They were doing a mission, and Gavin [Free] came up on his bike, and he got a weird hop and sort of flew through [the air] and smashed his head into something and died instantly. He messed up the whole mission in one second.”
After finding out that no one had talked to the Battany family about doing Make-A-Wish, Battany’s nurse submitted all the paperwork to the foundation. It took Battany a little while to figure out what he wanted his wish to be. “Originally, I didn’t want to do anything for me,” Battany explained. “I was just asking around to see what other people wanted to do. When the time came, no one wanted to give me an answer of what they would’ve done, because they didn’t want to take the Make-A-Wish.”
After throwing around ideas like a new gaming computer, Battany eventually decided on RTX, because he wanted to do something his parents, brother Billy, and sister Veronica could enjoy, too. Make-A-Wish and AH’s parent company Rooster Teeth granted the entire Battany family VIP tickets to the Austin-based gaming and online video convention.
The next day, Battany headed to the exclusive Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate room at RTX and started playing a mission from the upcoming game. Ramsey, along with AH’s Matt Bragg, Jeremy Dooley, and Jack Pattillo, joined Battany, who ended up beating the Assassin’s Creed mission on the first try.
“Jack bragged to Geoff about how good [Erik] was at the game,” said a very proud Kathy.
Battany’s favorite part of RTX was the Happy Hour panel, which got even better when an audience member gave Ramsey a gift that made him squirm. “Some guy came up and gave Geoff a bottle of snake wine, where there’s a snake with a scorpion in its mouth in the bottle,” Battany said. “Geoff got really scared because he’s afraid of snakes, and it was really funny.”
Battany will always have Castleman disease, even though it seems to be in remission right now. According to his mother, Battany will eventually need another transplant, but if the disorder ever comes back, he won’t be a viable candidate. However, Battany refuses to let his disease control his life, and he advises others in similar situations to do the same.
“Just stay positive,” Battany said. “I never got sad or anything.”
You can learn more about Make-A-Wish children and teens, and even donate to their causes, at wish.org. And if you’re as impressed by Erik and his family as we are, you can follow him on Twitter or Twitch.
Lisa Kudrow’s web-series-turned-TV-show is now just a web series again. During the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, Showtime president David Nevins said Kudrow’s Web Therapy series will not have a fifth season on TV. “No,” he stated plainly, “that’s done.”
Web Therapy stars Kudrow as a self-important therapist who communicates with her patients via video chat. The series first debuted in 2008 on the Lexus-branded Lstudio platform and became a hit, earning nominations for Kudrow at the first two Streamy Awards in 2009 and 2010. Showtime premiered a TV version of the series in 2011; the premium channel managed to turn webisodes into full-length TV episodes by adding in some auxiliary scenes.
As Kudrow and her team rolled out more star-studded episodes online (guests have included Lily Tomlin, Minnie Driver, and Conan O’Brien), Showtime continued to convert them into TV entertainment. Ultimately, Web Therapy’s TV run lasted for four seasons, with the final episode airing in January 2015.
While the TV version of Web Therapy has not been renewed, there’s still hope for more webisodes; most recently, StyleHaul distributed the show’s sixth web season, with several of its creative partners snagging guest roles.
Kudrow, however, is a busy woman. While we wait for more updates on Web Therapy, the Showtime version of it is available to watch on Hulu.
Another acclaimed filmmaker is bringing his work to Netflix. Mascots, which will continue a 30-year series of mockumentaries from director Christopher Guest, will be a Netflix exclusive when it arrives sometime in 2016.
According to an image Netflix shared with press, Mascots will follow “all the drama, intrigue, and occasional excitement of the 8th World Mascot Association Championships, where a group of “unusual men and women,” with big heads and furry suits, compete to win the prestigious gold fluffy award and be crowned best mascot in the world.” That summary makes Mascots sound like Best In Show, Guest’s 2000 mockumentary about the kooky characters who converge at a high-profile dog show.
Guest joins an impressive list of directors whose films have been acquired by Netflix. Others working with the streaming video platform include Cary Fukunaga and Angelina Jolie.
Netflix didn’t announce any details about the Mascots cast, but as Variety notes, Guest is known for using many of the same actors in his movies, dating back to the 1984 classic This Is Spinal Tap. The film’s exact release date is also currently unknown.
Despite its comical reputation, Rooster Teeth‘s Achievement Hunter (aka AH) doesn’t always just poke fun at other of its gaming team members or make jokes about male anatomy. At one of its many panels this year at the annual RTX convention, the AH team, known for their Let’s Play and all-around gaming content on YouTube, answered fans’ most pressing questions, including a very serious one about dealing with depression and another about the future of the team’s in-person events.
The panel started off with audience members bringing piles of gifts to the front of the ballroom for the AH team (like alcohol, drawings, and gaming memorabilia), an act which has become something of a yearly tradition at AH’s RTX events. Then, the AH team, which boasts a collective total of 3.9 million subscribers across two YouTube channels, started taking questions from fans. Many audience members asked your typical queries, like what each AH member’s creepiest experience was with fans (Gavin Free’s was when a fan took a selfie with his rear end) or what music they liked. However, a few poignant questions stood out among the general fandom ephemera.
One such question came from a fan who said the AH videos help her get through bouts of depression. She asked the AH team for their advice on how to deal with difficult times. “Don’t take the power away from yourself,” Jack Pattillo answered. “A lot of that power comes from internally… surround yourself with good people and you will get through it.” Pattillo added that if the “little stupidness” of AH can help people who are struggling, they know they’re doing something right.
A fan then asked if the Achievement Hunter guys would take their antics across the country, like they did for Let’s Play Live in Austin in February 2015. Pattillo confirmed the group’s interest in doing more live events in the future. “I would love to do more,” the long-time Rooster Teeth and AH employee responded. “We’ve talked about it, we’ve got some ideas, but nothing’s solid yet.”
ITV has its eyes on web video, and with its latest investment, it has joined forces with a network aimed at young mothers. The British broadcaster has picked up a minority stake in Channel Mum, a UK-based company that features insights from videomaking moms.
Channel Mum, which first launched at the beginning of 2015, is run by parenting website Netmums and features an online home for the native Internet users who are now having kids of their own. “YouTube is growing up, and the millennials are growing up too,” Channel Mum founder Siobhan Freegard told The Guardian at the time of her network’s launch. “There are a huge number of new mums in this category, and at least the middle and younger of them are the YouTube generation, while the older ones are coming to it.”
ITV’s investment will assist Channel Mum’s growth, which has recently included a number of brand partnerships. It has teamed up with Panasonic for a program that helped one hundred mothers become vloggers and has a deal with Pampers as well. “Siobhan Freegard is a hugely successful entrepreneur with a proven track record in digital business,” said ITV managing director of online, pay and interactive Simon Pitts. “She and her team at Channel Mum have a brilliant understanding of content, advertisers and mothers, and how they can work together to produce genuinely appealing, authentic content.”
Rooster Teeth has exciting new updates concerning its popular and incredibly long-running Red vs. Blue (aka RvB) series. On August 8, 2015 at the company’s annual RTX convention , the cast and crew of RvB talked about the show’s upcoming fan guide and what season 14 of the web series that’s been online since way back in 2003 will look like.
Written by RvB‘s Eddy Rivas and Rooster Teeth CCO Burnie Burns, Red vs. Blue: The Ultimate Fan Guide will cover the entire scope of RvB’s history and more. The print iteration of the Halo-inspired, comedic, machinima sci-fi program will include an official story timeline, explanations of all the maps used to create the web series, character biographies, behind-the-scenes commentaries, and famous quotes from the show.
The RvB team also revealed info about the show’s upcoming season, which won’t follow the overarching storyline and saga-style feeling of the previous 13 seasons. Instead, RvB director Miles Luna said season 14 will be function like an anthology, where each episode will tell a one or ore complete short stories focused on any one of the characters from the decade-plus’ worth of RvB programming. Episodes in the season will also be written by a variety of different creators and led by several different directors.
“Right now it’s just a plan,” Luna explained during the RvB panel. “I don’t see this going longer than one season.”
You can pre-order a copy of Red vs. Blue: The Ultimate Fan Guide from various retailers by visiting redvsbluebook.com. The book will officially be released on November 17, 2015. No release date has been set as of yet for season 14 of Red vs. Blue.
On the Vice Sports channel, a new series is a confluence of rising trends. The Moment, sponsored by Reebok, is a series of high-quality branded videos that use 360-degree angles to offer a first-person look at the world of extreme sports.
The first episode of The Moment features Ronnie Shalvis, a parkour master whose exploits we’ve written about before. For the first four-and-a-half minutes of the video, the viewer watches as Shalvis unleashes a series of gravity-defying flips. Then, we’re offered a choice: Continue to watch Shalvis in standard HD, or switch to a 360-degree mode. No matter which option you choose, Shalvis’ moves are extraordinary.
According to Adweek, future episodes of The Moment will feature an MMA athlete, a professional basketball dunker, and a rock climber. “The Moment really captures the focus and preparation required of some of the best athletes in non-traditional sports,” said Will Kiersky of Vice Sports. “What’s even better is that we can leverage the 360-degree view on YouTube to really provide our audience with a fully immersive and interactive experience from wherever they want to watch.”
While its 360-degree option is a nice touch, The Moment doesn’t need technical wizardry to impress. Thanks to its pulse-pounding pace, it’s branded content that works, no matter which format you watch it in. Check it out over at Vice Sports.
Collective Digital Studio’s growing online video network is split across a number of of category-specific verticals, and one of those sub-networks has a new executive at its helm. Melody Hammer, who worked at The Collective between between 2010 and 2012, has rejoined the company as Collective Digital Studio’s VP of Lifestyle.
In her new role, Hammer will work across CDS properties that deal with lifestyle, fashion, and beauty topics. That list includes I love makeup., a channel formed out of a 2013 partnership between CDS and Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, as well as Project Beautiful, a destination that features insights from more than 200 content creators around the world.
Hammer’s new job will call upon her previous experience in the online video world. She worked at Stylehaul for nine months before departing to run Seventeen Magazine’s official YouTube channel. It was under her guidance that Seventeen emerged as a thriving web video destination; it currently has more than 500,000 subscribers.
Hammer first joined The Collective after it acquired Adept Entertainment, a company she founded in 2009. “I am so excited to be coming back home to Collective Digital Studio,” she said in a press release. “I left Michael Green, Reza Izad, Gary Binkow and Dan Weinstein almost four years ago with much respect for them as pioneers in the digital space. They taught me so much and gave me the tools to pave my own way in digital. I can’t wait to apply my expertise in fashion, beauty and all things lifestyle at CDS.”
CDS is currently connected to more than 900 partner channels that collectively (no pun intended) score more than two billion views per month.
After making headlines last year with a memorable ad, Always has continued to make an impression on YouTube. The feminine hygiene brand’s latest video, which characterizes women as “Unstoppable,” scored more than 30 million views in its first 25 days on the web and snagged the top spot in the July 2015 edition of the YouTube Ad Leaderboard.
The “Unstoppable” ad asks its female stars to write societal expectations on plain white boxes. They are then invited to knock over those boxes, thus conveying a powerful (if somewhat on-the-nose) message.
As a reminder, the YouTube Ad Leaderboard tracks the most-viewed videos from among all advertisements posted to the site each month. In July, Always’ stereotype-smashing hit crushed all comers; it ended up accounting for 37% of the views generated by the top ten ads of the month. At the same time, we must remember that views don’t tell the whole story; “Unstoppable” has accumulated more than 18,000 likes since its upload; when we sort this month’s Leaderboard ads by that metric, Always’ effort comes in fifth.
The rest of this month’s top ten includes a Coca-Cola ad aimed at the Muslim world, a branded video from BuzzFeed, and two entries from GoPro, which according to YouTube is the number one brand across all Ad Leaderboards thus far in 2015. Here, courtesy of YouTube, is the full July Leaderboard:
