Those who thought the secret to fame and fortune was being big on YouTube might have to reconsider that position, given Ryan Higa’s comments during this morning’s fireside chat with Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee Live.

Creator of the now No. 1 most-subscribed channel on YouTube, Higa still shoots his videos, some of which stretch to 25 minutes, on a small unfancy Flip camera — when asked if he was saving the money for college, he admitted that he was “just saving the money.” Higa downplayed his earnings via YouTube ads and product placement deals as “better than a part-time job… definitely not enough for my mom to quit her job.”

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I’ve never had an iPhone. When I was in college, I got a deal on a free cell phone through Sprint, and since then I’ve stayed with that carrier. And not out of blind loyalty: Its service was reliable overall, its rates reasonable, and I go to a lot of tech conferences. Why is that important? Well, because I’ll stand outside a conference hall, phone in hand, and watch the 10 people near me poke at their iPhones impatiently, hoping to retrieve the calls dropped by AT&T. As spiffy as some iPhone apps are, it was little incentive to change.

But a recent spurt of ads from Verizon have been kicking the iPhone where it hurts, attacking AT&T’s service, the lack of open development, and other consumer complaints. And those ads have gone viral. After two years of Apple’s dominance, it appears that the rival service provider finally feels safe enough to throw some punches.

I still remember the halcyon days of the iPhone, where any video even mentioning the sacred device would go viral instantly, commanding millions of views. This would be June 2007, when it was just about to launch and, to paraphrase the mood back then, “change the way we did everything.” We as a community will probably never experience such a juggernaut of hype again — which is why this new backlash feels ever so slightly blasphemous. Read more of this story

As part of the launch of its 40th anniversary season today, Sesame Street debuted a new series called Abby’s Flying Fairy School featuring a computer-generated version of one of its Muppets. New Jersey animation studio SpeakeasyFX developed 136 minutes worth of animation centered around Muppet Abby Cadabby and a set of new Muppet friends, who fly and even go underwater — near-impossible feats for the long tradition of hand-driven live-action Muppet puppets.

Plus, the CG content — made entirely using Autodesk’s Softimage, according to Speakeasy — wasn’t just developed for TV. In tandem with the 13 segments to be aired and repeated on Sesame Street throughout the season, Speakeasy created content for a choose-your-own-adventure game for kids to play on Sesame Street’s web site. The first game, to be released Dec. 9, is called “Sleeping Bloggy,” about a character who’s part fairy, part troll.

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I apologize in advance if the tone of this review comes off as frustrated, but here’s the deal: I should love How It Should Have Ended, a recently relaunched series of movie satires produced by Starz Digital. Targeting major blockbusters, the series purports to offer “new” endings for big movies like Terminator and Braveheart. Using relatively well-executed Flash animation to recreate the films, it also mocks them: The director of The Blair Witch Project yelling at his heroine for dropping the camera, for example, or the eponymous Borat thanking America for giving him a dump truck of money. That sort of thing. It’s the kind of satire that usually hits the sweet spot for pop culture nerds like myself. However, as good an idea as it is and as solid as the execution might be, there’s something slightly off about these shorts.

Part of it comes down to the fact that they typically fail to live up to their premise. Take, for example, the Terminator short, which finds some clever gags in splicing together the entire Terminator franchise with Back to the Future (setting the Terminator loose in the world of 1955 Hill Valley being the source of most of them). But even looking past the fact that it structures itself as a trailer and not a traditional “final scene,” it’s still just a bit too long and a bit too ham-fisted in its humor. And it fails to really mock what’s actually dumb about the latest Terminator installment — which, speaking as someone who paid money to see it opening night, is a huge disappointment. Read more of this story

MySpace will exclusively host a live-stream of the red carpet activities before the premiere of the new Twilight Saga installment, New Moon, the site announced today. The video goes live at 6 p.m. PT on Monday, Nov. 16.

Can we just say, if the Internet were ever to break under the stress of it all, you can bet the cause would be a lethal combination of Twilight and live video. Which stars will bring which other stars as their dates to the New Moon? Heck, the whole world might come to an end.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon Trailer and Premiere Announcement

New Moon Premiere | MySpace Video

MySpace said it will pick one lucky fan to co-host red carpet interviews alongside Anya Marina, writer and performer of the song Satellite Heart from the New Moon soundtrack. Other fans will be able to participate via questions posed online to the stream and later, live chats with the cast during the film’s opening week (it actually comes out to the public Nov. 20).

Red carpets are the hot new category in live-streaming events, with the premiere of Michael Jackson’s This Is It drawing 1.8 million viewers late last month. Though as we’ve said in the past, live access to the red carpet is a painful tease as Internet fans always get cut off when the event actually starts.

We’ve been impressed with MySpace’s smooth and high-quality live streaming for previous events like Michael Jackson’s memorial service, but don’t recall who its previous tech partners were. The New Moon red carpet will be outsourced to Ustream, which is not always the best quality but tends to be reliable (so probably a good choice given the potential volume of interest for a Twilight exclusive). A representative for MySpace said the site was able to get the red carpet live stream exclusively due to a larger deal between MySpace and Summit Entertainment for New Moon that includes extensive promotion on the site’s movies, music and video sections as well as its homepage.

Joe and Kris Swanberg’s Young American Bodies, a cult hit and one of the great early pioneers in web-distributed drama, has been peeking in on the lives of the young and sexually active since 2005, providing a semi-scripted take on the tangled romances of a group of 20-something Chicagoeans. The decidedly NSFW series, distributed originally through Nerve, launched its fourth season today exclusively on IFC.com; I spoke with Joe Swanberg via phone about his approach to sexuality, his “fantastic” deals with Nerve and IFC, the show’s future, and the increasingly inaccurate title. An edited transcript follows.

NewTeeVee: Young American Bodies has always been known for its frank inclusion of nudity and sexuality. How has the adult content been a part of the show’s evolution?

Joe Swanberg: When we pitched Nerve in 2005, the model we were working on was a show that had a lot of realistic sexual content and a lot of realistic exploration of issues with parents and friends and whatever else. And as it’s evolved [the sexual content]’s remained important to us just because everybody’s sex lives are changing too, with commitment coming into it, and people getting older and thinking about having kids and stuff like that. Your reasons for having sex are starting to change. Read more of this story

1 vs. 100, the interactive trivia hybrid video game/show from Microsoft Xbox LIVE and Endemol, is one of the best examples we’ve seen so far of real-time entertainment. We’ve devoted more than a few words to the show’s first season, with an extended profile for our GigaOM Pro subscription service. If you missed out, or are raring to play again, we now have an appointment for the launch of season two: Nov. 19 at 5 p.m. PT. As we wrote in September:

What’s significant about “1 vs. 100″ is that it combines one of the best aspects of a TV show — the moment of people joining together simultaneously to watch a live event unfold — with the best of a video game — interactivity and competition. And because “1 vs. 100″ piggybacks on Xbox Live, it’s incredibly popular, making it a shining early example of a massive communal participatory experience.

Microsoft also said today that the 14-week second season will be accompanied by “1 vs. 100 Extended Play” weeknight trivia on topics like song lyrics and vampires. The first season of 1 vs. 100 had a high of 114,000 simultaneous players in North America, with close to 3 million downloads and an average of seven live games played per user.

When you sit down and think about it, it seems clear that there should be more game show web series than there are at present. After all, many companies prefer nonfiction to scripted programming, and the opportunities for branding and product placement are baked right into the structure via prizes and giveaways. The only factor possibly getting in the way of the genre’s success is that it has never really had much of a young vibe, being more “what you watch when visiting your Grandma.”

MySpace’s solution to overcoming that problem? College Humor’s Jake Hurwitz, the snarky, self-effacing 24-year-old host of BFF, a weekly series challenging self-declared best friends to prove just how friendly they are. The show’s BFFs are judged not by their history as friends, but their knowledge of trivia and how well they know each other — it’s not even an attempt to update The Newlywed Game. But the game changes when it’s between friends, not spouses, since, after all, friendship is a much different beast than a relationship.

While Married on Myspace definitely had elements of game-show-ery, BFF’s style is much less reality and much more straight-up “answer questions and win stuff.” Read more of this story

NewTeeVee Live is less than a week away! This year we’ve done away with the panel format and are sticking mostly with one-on-one fireside chats and solo presentations.

I’m super excited for the fireside chats I’m hosting as I get to talk with folks from Xbox LIVE, Comcast, Roku and Redbox. I know what I want to ask them, but just as Liz did earlier, I’m curious about what you want to know. Leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section.

We kick off the conference with Marc Whitten, general manager of Xbox LIVE. The Xbox video experience is getting more social with the addition of Netflix viewing parties and Twitter and Facebook functionality built into the platform. How will the company be able to transform this hard core gaming machine into a family-friendly entertainment system?

Next up is Comcast Interactive Media president Amy Banse. Obviously the cable co’s TV Everywhere initiative is top of mind as it and preps its move from trials to a national roll-out. How are those trials working? What has the company learned? What have been the challenges?

Roku’s CEO Anthony Wood is bound to talk up his just-launched new set-top boxes as well as the expanding number of channels his company offers. How will Roku stay competitive as more over-the-top devices come to market? How will it strike a balance between a clean UI and an ever-growing channel selection?

Redbox has disrupted the home video entertainment world with its dollar-a-night movie rentals that challenge perceptions of what a movie’s worth. Gary Cohen, Redbox’s senior vice-president of marketing and consumer experience, will be on hand to answer questions like how has the company managed its meteoric growth? Did it always know its bold value proposition would attract so much attention (and not just from consumers)? Can they keep rentals at just $1?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg and there are sure to be many more insights and unexpected revelations from the day. So leave a question in the comments and grab a ticket to the show so you can be first to know what these game-changing companies have in store.