For those hoping that the high-pitched, hyperactive “Fred” was just a passing sensation — guess again. The Fred YouTube channel today surpassed 1 million subscribers, the first channel to do so — and he got all of those subscribers in less than a year. (Suck on that, Jonas Brothers! Get your paltry 471,910 subs out of here.)

When asked for comment, Lucas Cruikshank, the Nebraska teen who plays Fred (and was a hit at our NewTeeVee Live Conference last year) sent us the following email:

“I wanna thank everyone who has supported the Fred series. It means a lot when something you created becomes popular. Oh, and Fred? He can’t count that high so he has no comment.”

While that’s a nice enough quote, to get the full effect, you need to watch his 1 million subscriber-mark celebratory video.

From what we can gather, Fred became the No. 1 most-subscribed channel back in October of 2008, passing other YouTube stars like Smosh.

And it’s not just having those subscribers — they keep coming back to watch more. In the last six months, only one video has gotten less than a million plays — the “Fred Thanks You” video released an hour ago. Most are in the 4-6 million plays range. (Note to self: Ask Fred to host a NewTeeVee Video Podcast.)

Movie rental chain Blockbuster’s troubles aren’t over yet. The company painted a grim picture for itself through an SEC filing yesterday, saying it might not be be able to meet lender conditions needed to complete financing deals, throwing its ability to continue as a so-called “going concern” — auditor-speak for staying in business for the foreseeable future — into doubt.

The LA Times writes:

Last week, Blockbuster said its revolving and term loan agreement was amended, giving it a $250-million revolving loan refinancing that matures Sept. 30, 2010. Lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co. also agreed to waive any default that could result if auditors attached a “going concern” classification.

But lenders weren’t obligated to fund the $250 million credit facility unless Blockbuster met certain conditions. Blockbuster said yesterday that those conditions might not be met, and that even if the loan did get funded, its ability to operate was still in doubt.

The writing’s been on the wall for Blockbuster for some time now. We outlined some of the (many) missteps the company took in a post last month when the company insisted that it was not going bankrupt this year.

SNIKT! The illicit copy of the upcoming summer blockbuster Wolverine, err, clawed (< — sorry!) its way to the top of TorrentFreak’s Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent. In less than a week, more than 1 million copies of X-Men Origins: Wolverine have already been downloaded. Hopefully the leak won’t hurt ole Wolvie in ticket sales too much, and he’ll fare better than the second-most pirated movie, The Spirit, did at the box office.

Read more of this story

Break Media has purchased HBOlab, a.k.a. Runawaybox, Break CEO Keith Richman confirmed to NewTeeVee today. This was a deal we’ve been following for a couple months now, but according to Richman, this morning he is meeting with HBOlab team for the first time as Break employees.

Richman called the deal price “not overly significant.” It includes HBOlab’s existing shows, equipment, and 3-4 employees. HBOlab general manager Fran Shea will not be joining Break. Despite continued investment over the years, HBOlab had languished at HBO, where it was hampered by fear that original web content would dilute the HBO brand (hence the “Runawaybox” moniker).

Read more of this story

A new report by Credit Suisse projects that video-sharing giant YouTube is on track to lose $470 million this year, writes Multichannel News.

Credit Suisse says YouTube will generate $240 million in revenue, but those revenues will be dwarfed by the $711 million in licensing, hardware, marketing and other expenses the site will incur. About half of that expense will go towards bandwidth, which Credit Suisse pegs at $360 million through the following math:

To arrive at the estimated $360 million bandwidth tab for YouTube, the analysts assumed the site will receive 375 million unique visitors in 2009 and that a maximum of 20% of those users are on the site at any given time. Credit Suisse’s analysis then assumed each user downloads a video at 400 kilobits per second, to yield a peak bit run-rate for YouTube of 30 million megabits per second.

Read more of this story

The Chinese government issued an edict this week that all movies, TV shows and cartoons distributed over the Internet or on mobile must first get approval from censors. The new rules are an expansion of the oversight the The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) applies to traditional media, and will impact Chinese web video sites that host content that was not approved to be shown in theaters or on TV but has become popular online.

According to Forbes: “Content involving religion, sex, violence, sensitive political issues, or perceived damage to national image, social harmony or interests — as always — could be banned or edited.” The new SARFT rules will make web distribution of U.S. shows such as Gossip Girl and Prison Break, as well as popular Korean and Taiwan shows, illegal.

The Chinese government clarified its rules governing web video last year, and in keeping with that upbeat tone, Victor Koo, founder of Chinese video site Youku.com, told The Hollywood Reporter that these latest rules, issued on March 30, are more of a “clarification” than something new. During a recent visit to NewTeeVee, Koo indicated to us that the Chinese government was loosening its grip on web video that it might have at one time deemed inappropriate.

The Financial Times notes that included in this round of clarifications is the rule that video sites must target content that “maliciously damages the image of the People’s Liberation Army, the armed police, the police or the judiciary, or which relates to the torturing of prisoners and the questioning and torturing of criminal suspects.” This particular wording follows recent actions by the Chinese government to block access to YouTube after a video was uploaded supposedly showing police brutality in Tibet.

The gods of sports and online video do not want you to get any work done. How else to explain that live coverage of the Masters will be online just days after March Madness concludes?

The famed golf competition is back starting April 9 on CBSSports.com and Masters.com, but will not be a simulcast of the television coverage. Instead there will be live streaming of the “Amen Corner” (holes 11, 12, and 13), the “15 and 16 Live” (holes 15 and 16) as well as the Masters Extra, which will cover the entire course for one hour prior to the televised coverage.

And just as the March Madness On Demand player got a makeover, so too will you be able to watch all the Masters action in a high-quality stream this year.

For golf on the go, there is also a Masters App for the iPhone (free!) that will provide all the same coverage as online plus the Par 3 Contest and player interviews from three locations.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, YouTube has once again had to pull music videos from a particular region over payment disputes. This time around, the video site has yanked music videos from the major record labels in Germany after negotiations with the country’s biggest royalty collections group, GEMA, fell apart, reports Billboard.

Earlier this month, YouTube blocked access to music videos in the UK after a spat with its royalty group, the Performing Rights Society. Why all the fighting? Money, of course. YouTube blamed the breakdown with the PRS partially on “prohibitive licensing” and according to CNET, GEMA is asking for royalty rates 50 times higher than what the PRS was asking.

Given all the distress music has caused YouTube recently, we checked in with the company today for an update on its music relationships. A YouTube rep told us that the site has agreements with Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI; Warner Music is still gone, and no videos have been pulled from any other country beyond the UK and Germany.

Music generates big plays for the video sharing site, 12 of the 20 most-viewed videos of all time on YouTube are music videos. Now where will Germans go for their David Hasselhoff fix?