Michael Gregory, the creator of the YouTube remixing phenom Auto-Tune the News, (if you haven’t seen it, drop what you’re doing and go watch this clip) expects that remixed online videos will eventually lose their current extreme buzzy status and settle down to just another art form (like ventriloquism and yodeling, he joked). But as long as vocoder and Auto-Tune the News is still at the height of hipness, the team and Gregory are going to take advantage of it. At our NewTeeVee Live conference, Gregory said that Auto-Tune the News would be launching a viral video campaign with Sony “very soon.”

While Gregory wouldn’t give too many details about the Sony partnership and the content, he said that it would still include the “absurd irreverent take,” that Auto-Tune the News fans have come to know and love. Sony approached the Auto-Tune crew and asked them to provide their take for Sony content, said Gregory, which he added is a positive contrast to companies that want to work with you but end up “putting you in a box.” The content will also be “interactive,” said Gregory, which he’s particularly excited about. Read more of this story

Nielsen has been tallying TV ratings for years, but with shows and video offerings proliferating online through various distribution points, what a TV audience actually consists of is shifting. At NewTeeVeeLive today, Brian Fuhrer, SVP and Media Program Leader at The Nielsen Company, weighed in on the need to measure video audiences across TV, the web, mobile devices and more.

Fuhrer showed data emphasizing that both television and online video consumption are rapidly growing. He said that as people watch video and television on “extended screens,” including on mobile devices, advertisers are putting increasing pressure on audience metrics providers to deliver accurate numbers.

How can Nielsen accurately measure viewership on extended screens? One initiative that the company is focused on is measuring Internet usage data and TV viewing habits for homes included in the National Television Panel. The hope is to quantify video viewing patterns on TV and online. Fuhrer said that getting to accurate Internet video viewing patterns will take 6-7 months. “It will give us a very robust sample that we think we can do a lot with regarding extended screens,” he said.

In the same way that the iPhone helped sell more Macs for Apple, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told the audience at the NewTeeVee Live conference today that Netflix can help sell more broadband and broadband services. We’re a killer app for broadband data, said Reed. GigaOM founder and interviewer Om Malik explained it in more Twitter-friendly terms: “Netflix is the iPod of broadband.”

Here’s Reed’s logic: Customers don’t upgrade to faster broadband for email or web surfing, they do it for high-bandwidth online video services like Netflix’s streaming video. Over the next 5-10 years, Internet video technology will expand cable’s broadband relevance to customers, said Reed.

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The race to bring the flexibility and variety of online video delivery to the comfort of your couch was taken to a whole new level in 2009 — soon, the content you want to watch will be accessible wherever and whenever you want. With that in mind, the theme our third annual NewTeeVee Live event is TV Everywhere. Join us today here at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco as we talk to some of the industry’s key players to learn about the future of this increasingly exciting industry. Our livestream — which includes a chat feature — will start at 9 am PT, and we will be live-blogging the onstage sessions throughout the day. The Twitter hashtag is #ntvl. Enjoy! Read more of this story

Online video and copyright have been through a lot in the past few years, evolving from a highly contentious relationship to more a transactional partnership. But media creators and technology companies have learned about each others’ businesses largely in conference rooms and in courts. Today, at the NewTeeVee HQ here in San Francisco, we’re holding an event aimed at bringing the discussion into the light, giving stakeholders the chance to talk to one another constructively. Participants today will include content owners, video sites and copyright service providers, such as Ethan Applen, director of technology and business strategy, Warner Bros.; Betsy Zedek, counsel, content protection, Fox Group Legal; David King, senior product manager of Content ID, YouTube; Michael Seibel, CEO, Justin.tv; and Yangbin Wang, CEO, Vobile.

We will be live streaming the event, starting at 9:30 am PT, for two hours. We hope you can join us — please leave your thoughts as to what’s being discussed in the comments section. And for those who want to talk about it online, the Twitter hash tag is #NTVL.



To follow along via liveblog and get access to post-game analysis and video interviews with attendees, head over to GigaOM Pro. Sign up today with the discount code “BUNKERNTVL″ to get an additional $20 off our $79 annual subscription price.

Rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures is allowing its fans to stream its new album a week ahead of release, using YouTube as the preferred method of delivery.

The group, which consists of drummer Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters and Nirvana), keyboardist and bass guitarist John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), and vocalist and guitarist Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), has posted all 13 tracks from its upcoming self-titled album on the video site. The songs are also available through an embedded YouTube video player on the band’s official site.

Surprisingly enough, there are no advertisements associated with the YouTube page, other than a pre-order link running across the top banner of the page. A YouTube representative said the company was not involved in the creation of the band’s page.

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I’ve mentioned previously that I’m a movie trailer junkie, and because I don’t get out to the movies that often, most of the time I’m watching trailers online on sites like joblo.com). Will I see either of these? Honestly, probably not — the trailers were enough to get the taste, for good or for bad. But the trailers, they are so good!

When you think “dark, dystopian sci-fi romance,” would you necessarily think of the title Boogie Town? Well, I guess I didn’t mention the part where it’s also a dance movie. Watching all of those elements get smashed together into one trailer…well, it’s special, I’ll give you that. Summer 2009 can’t get here fast enough! (The film is now set for a 2010 release.)

Meanwhile, I’ll be upfront about this and say that the reason the trailer for The Fourth Kind is awesome isn’t because Milla Jovovich tells us how to properly pronounce her name; it’s because by doing so, she breaks the fourth wall and sets up this alien abduction thriller as the most terrifying kind of truth.

Are there other awesome or awful trailers you’ve seen recently? Tell us in the comments!