Read, watch, review and rate Operation Midnight Climax »

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• Premiere: June 8, 2009
• Length: 10 minutes
• Budget: Medium

Cast

• Millie: Meredith Salenger

Crew

• Director / Co-Producer: Zach Jordan
• Writer / Co-Producer: Ramesh Thadani
• Producer: Juan Reynoso
• Cinematographer / Co-Producer: Glenn Sauber

Links

• Operation Midnight Climax on Wikipedia

Independent production company Strange Science LLC stumbled across the story of Operation Midnight Climax while writer Ramesh Thadani and director Zach Jordan were working at Videojug.com, where they were asked to research conspiracies for a potential video piece. There’s a full write-up on the operation at Wikipedia, but the Cliff’s Notes version is this — during the 1950s, as part of their experimentation with LSD and other mind-altering substances, the CIA hired prostitutes to dose their customers with drugs so that agents could observe the effects via two-way mirror.

Climax adds an element of fiction by depicting one of these brothels, run by Millie (Meredith Salenger, best known as Natty Gann from The Journey of Natty Gann), and its regulars, who have no idea that they’ve just become the subjects of a government trial in mind control. By putting the premise out front and center in a nicely rendered opening sequence, there’s minimal suspense in the first two episodes, which are mostly about the set-up of the experiment.

Instead, these episodes are more character study than narrative, establishing relationships and providing glimpses of backstory. Read more of this story

Read, watch, review and rate That’s Gay »

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• Premiere: June 2009
• Length: 3 minutes
• Budget: High

Cast

• Host: Bryan Safi

Crew

• Producer : Natalie Proctor

In the first installment (which racked up over 70,000 views on Current’s site), Safi lashed out against the gay best friend stereotype, before moving on to discuss gay marriage and whether or not Sasha Baron Cohen’s Bruno is the new Malcolm X. We spoke via phone about reclaiming the word “gay,” Safi’s previous work at Funny or Die, and what, if anything, would be too gay to do on That’s Gay. An edited transcript follows.

NewTeeVee: What inspired the first episode of That’s Gay?

Bryan Safi: I think from watching Millionaire Matchmaker and being so offended when [Patty Stanger] asked a guy she’d never met if he was a top or a bottom. And I love Kathy Griffin, but all the stuff with her shouting “Where my gays at?” bothered me. It just seems kind of antiquated — I just wanted to say “Enough!”

NewTeeVee: Were you surprised by how fast it spread? Read more of this story

Here a Fred, there a Fred, everywhere a Fred-Fred. The specter of 15-year-old Lucas Cruikshank has seemed to haunt NATPE’s LA TV Fest this week, with mentions of his hit web creation, Fred Figglehorn, on many a talk or panel. Here’s our report from the conference hallways.

Whether you’re wearing a suit or jeans, everyone has the same disclaimer about Fred: “Personally, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m just too old.” But then it becomes clear that each and every one of them is in awe and fear of the Fred phenomenon. Cruikshank has created the most-subscribed channel in the history of YouTube by depicting a chipmunk-voiced 6-year-old with anger management issues.

EQAL’s Greg Goodfried displayed perhaps the most stunning case of Fred envy, talking about his guy-with-a-Flipcam-and-Final-Cut work on the new EQAL project Get Cookin’ with Paula Deen. “Literally we sit around and say, ‘Is this as good as Fred? Does it feel like Fred; is it cut like Fred?’”

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Read, watch, review and rate James Franco »

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• Premiere: May 2007
• Length: 5 minutes

Cast

• Internet James Franco: James Franco
• Internet James Franco's Brother Davey: Dave Franco

I’ve got a thing for Internet James Franco.

Let me be clear about this. I have no actual interest in the talented and reliable co-star of Milk, Freaks and Geeks, and the Spider-man films, who is now pursuing a master’s degree at Columbia University. For, with the exception of Pineapple Express, James Franco has never shown much range in his film work, sticking mostly to roles that fit within his James Dean-esque image. James Dean was pretty, sure, but he spent a lot of time crying.

However, since 2007, Franco has been crafting a separate persona for web distribution only, and Internet James Dean might just be the man of my dreams. Internet James Franco doesn’t cry, but he’ll teach you his secrets for how to cry on camera. Internet James Franco doesn’t appear on the covers of magazines calling him “the Next James Dean;” Internet James Franco DOES his James Dean impression for you. Internet James Franco is a good older brother. Internet James Franco wants you to meet his mom. Internet James Franco is a catch. Read more of this story

Skyfire Gets a New CEO; Jeffrey Glueck joins the mobile browser company, was formerly chief marketing officer at Travelocity. (TechCrunch)

Cinemash Kicks Off Today with 500 Days of Summer Stars; Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt take on roles in a web remake of a scene from Sid & Nancy. (Tubefilter)

VOD Server Revenue to Triple by 2013; growth to come from operators beefing up services like remote storage DVRS, targeted ads and start-over services. (Infonetics)

Tribune Media Services Selects eGuiders; syndication partnership will put eGuiders’ curated video applications on Tribune’s web sites and networks in the U.S. and internationally. (emailed release)

Media Bigwigs Split on Monetizing Content; in unscripted comments at the Allen & Co. conference, Disney CEO Bob Iger says he’s confident people will pony up for content, other execs say that just ain’t so. (The LA Times)

Why Hulu Has Succeeded; Saul Hansell says that the premium content portal’s focus on being the online home of network TV went a long way to making it a hit (the exclusive content didn’t hurt either). (Bits Blog)

Read, watch, review and rate Michael Jackson Memorial »

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• Premiere: July 7, 2009
• Length: 2 hours
• Budget: High

Like any memorial service, this one was full of complicated but heartfelt emotion. There were moments that genuinely felt like the best sort of memorial, such as Berry Gordy’s speech, full of recollections about family baseball games and 10-year-old Michael out-Smokey-ing Smokey Robinson. “It was magic,” he said of seeing the Moonwalk for the first time. And Brooke Shields, who was actually a friend, made me tear up when she talked about Jackson laughing.

If you were wondering why this memorial was two hours long, that’s because everyone got a voice — Al Sharpton busted some rhymes before telling Jackson’s children that “there was nothing strange about your daddy; it was strange what your daddy had to deal with.” Queen Latifah acknowledged the 16,000 fans gathered in Staples Center, speaking to them as their representative and reflecting on her first Jackson 5 album purchase before reading an original poem for the occasion written by Maya Angelou. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee reminded us that just because Jackson dealt with many allegations of child abuse during his lifetime, he was innocent until proven guilty — then revealed House Resolution No. 166 to honor Jackson as an American hero. The feed cut to the Jackson brothers, who seemed genuinely moved. That was a nice moment. Read more of this story

10:30 a.m.: The Michael Jackson funeral has begun. Watching CNN.com Live feed with Facebook integration. Facebook reports 6,000 status updates/minute, on a more global scale than what they saw with live Obama Inauguration coverage. CNN doesn’t have audio from the Staples Center, switching to MSNBC.

10:35: MSNBC has Twitter integration — automatically tags posts “#MJ #MSNBC.” Updates are coming in too fast to read. Chris reports seeing a pre-roll on MSNBC as well as Hulu.

10:39: Checked back with CNN, it’s way behind the other feeds. Also the “friends” filter isn’t that effective for me since many of mine are not watching. There should be some sort of semantic filter to bring in friend updates that are actually relevant.

10:43: Here’s a screenshot of my overloaded desktop where you can get an idea of how the different feeds look:

10:45: Man, CNN is not handling all the traffic it’s getting. Keeps stopping up.

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The newspaper industry has been battered over recent years, as people migrate their reading online and sites like Craigslist steal classified dollars. Now newspapers may need to defend another revenue stream — the Sunday circular — as Office Depot has decided to take some of the money it spends on the stalwart print ad format and shift it to online video.

Circulars, or free-standing inserts, are the colorful collection of ads stuffed inside the Sunday edition of newspapers. (They’re perfect for lining bird cages.) MediaPost reports that Office Depot, which typically spends “hundreds of millions of dollars” on print circular ads each year, will shift some of that money into an online circular that features video, community and commerce — something a print publication can’t do.

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Photo Credit: The Bui Brothers

There’s nothing like star power to give a web series some extra pizazz. But what about Star Trek power? That’s what Goodnight Burbank/Abigail’s Teen Diary creator Hayden Black’s got working for him now — Nichelle Nichols, best known as the original Lt. Uhura on Trek, has joined the upcoming sci-fi musical comedy series The Cabonauts as a series regular.

Black secured the 76-year-old actress via Cabonauts casting director Erin Gray, who also runs the Heroes for Hire booking agency. Once he heard that Nichols was a possibility, he had about a day to develop a character that would interest her, and tailored the role of CJ, CEO of Cabonauts Incorporated, to her specifically.

“I didn’t want to write anything remotely stereotypical — or anything that smacked of Star Trek. I wanted to give her something she’d never done before. [CJ's] a very strong female, who comes from a long and powerful line of women CEOs,” Black said via phone.

After the jump, Nichols talks about what attracted her to the project (among her reasons: Hayden Black is a crazy person). Read more of this story