Entertainment
Midwest Teen Sex Show’s Nikol Hasler Twitters About Poop
Sex sells, especially on the Internet, but The Midwest Teen Sex Show brand of sex is in a class of its own. Where else can you find syphilis portrayed as a chainsaw-wielding murder or learn about the truth behind towel-snapping in the guys’ locker room?
We got to sit down with the show’s host and one of its creative minds when Nikol Hasler left behind the cow pastures and horny teenagers of Wisconsin to visit San Francisco, land of fewer cow pastures but equally horny teenagers. It was a casual chat, with the conversation swinging from her Twittering habits to her childrearing techniques to the fact that she very much wouldn’t want the show to be part of sex ed curriculum. Here are just a few highlights from the intelligently coquettish and inimitably colloquial Ms. Hasler.
Hasler told us that talks are already underway with television networks about moving the Midwest Teen Sex Show to the mainstream, but stressed that the TV execs all seem to understand that the show’s inherent irreverent edginess is key to its success. While the show is ostensibly aimed at teenagers, the audience is primarily of an older (sketchier?) demographic, but Hasler says they are still making sure that everything in the show is teenager appropriate. Hence their “Abstinence” brand of condoms.
Rickrolling: A Timeline
On April 1, Rickrolling became Public Enemy No. 1 to those devoted to serious Internet browsing. Since it’s always best to understand one’s enemy — and since tracking the evolution of this meme is a challenge worth undertaking — we thus present:
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Rickrolling: A Timeline
1969: First message is sent via ARPANET (precursor of the Internet).
1987: Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up hits Number 1 in the United Kingdom.
2005: YouTube lauches online.
June 20, 2006: First appearance of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up video (as dubbed from VH1’s Pop-Up Video) appears on YouTube, uploaded by user belgianpassion. (As of April 2008, it has been viewed nearly 1.2 million times.)
Weekend Vid Picks: Your Week in PSAs
Good PSAs, with their short runtime and punchy conclusions, have always done well in the online video world. This week, an assortment of odd clips came together with nothing in common other than a desire to educate people on serious (and not-so-serious) matters.
Public Service Announcement: Test your awareness
Pushing viewers to examine the action on screen — all the action — this heavily circulated ad (reaching almost 2 million views on YouTube in two weeks) has a bit of a twist. But that just makes Transport for London’s message all the more effective.
Public Service Announcement: Jeff Zucker is…funny?
Starz to Sell on iTunes
Starz will launch on iTunes tonight, said Marc DeBevoise, SVP of business development and strategy for the production company, speaking at a panel at the Future of Television West conference in Hollywood.
DeBevoise said that consumers have demonstrated that they will buy content “as long as it feels like free,” attributing that idea to Fred Seibert of Next New Networks.
Food Fight: History as Told by Cuisine
Bratwurst assault destroys a population of fish and chips. Kebabs and lox bagels engage in a lethal standoff. And Vietnamese spring rolls face off against croissants and hamburgers. Food Fight, Stefan Nadelman’s epic short depicting the history of 20th century American warfare with food, uses computer-generated stop-motion techniques to depict real food engaged in deadly combat. And it’s racked up more than 1.5 million views in the two weeks it’s been on YouTube.
“Before and after the film was completed,” Nadelman writes on his web site, “the friends I screened it to fell into two camps: You Should Have Captions and You Shouldn’t Have Captions. I felt that if I added captions it would be too easy.” He made the right choice; the lack of captions inspires a level of engagement that enhances the film’s power. Without reading Nadelman’s cheat sheet, I didn’t immediately understand some moments, notably the kimchi and the Cuban sandwiches. But there are some beats — some battles — that require no context.
Ninja to Hang Up His Mask?
When do you kill the one-trick pony? Kent Nichols, in a blog post about he and partner Douglas Sarine’s deal to write and direct a new version of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, says he sees the duo’s signature three-year-old project, Ask a Ninja, tapering off.
Nichols writes that he and Sarine have committed again to ad-seller Federated Media to produce their “weekly-ish” show for the next year, and will release their Ask a Ninja: The Ninja Handbook.
After that contract? Who knows. We love the ninja and we want to be a part of our lives for a long time to come. But at the end of that term it will have been over three years since Ask A Ninja has been in production and over four since we’ve been writing ninja-related things. I’m sure we’ll take a bit of a break (at least in terms of producing weekly-ish). We’ll definitely keep the archive online and hopefully the fansite will continue to thrive. And there’s always the Ninja movie…
Dear Comcast, Why Is My DVR So Dumb?
At the risk of sounding like an infomercial…”Has this ever happened to you?” You set your Comcast DVR to record only new episodes of your favorite TV series, but it winds up recording every…single…showing, including all repeats? The problem is especially bad with a show like Project Runway, which Bravo seems to run on a continuous loop, clogging my DVR and requiring constant deleting. So I called Comcast to find out what the problem is. Turns out there are two main reasons, and neither of them are really excusable.
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The first concerns the cable provider’s Interactive Programming Guide (IPG), the TV listing you interact with as a Comcast subscriber. It’s called the i-Guide and it was developed by Comcast and Gemstar-TV Guide.
Networks provide all the data about each show for the i-Guide to Gemstar-TV Guide — things like episode synopses and whether each airing is new or a repeat. But sometimes networks forget to provide this information, which means your DVR can’t differentiate between what’s new and what’s old. “[The networks] are not malicious, not irresponsible, they just haven’t provided this data historically,” Todd Walker, Comcast senior vice president of product management, told me. Walker said that when a network is alerted to the missing data, they are generally quick to fix it. (A Bravo spokesperson assured me that it provides all the correct data to its cable partners.)
Family Guy, Family Ties Stars Head for Web
In the last day we’ve heard of two more web video projects from established Hollywood talent. Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy is making a web show for Google, and actress Justine Bateman (Family Ties), writer and producer Jill Kushner (The Ellen DeGeneres Show), Peter Murrieta (Wizards of Waverly Place), and Alan Sereboff (Snowblind) have started a web video site called FM78.tv.
MacFarlane has cleared his digital work directly with the Writers Guild of America. “He’s doing a series of webisodes called Cavalcade, original programming that’ll be distributed through some Google portal,” was the word from WGA West President Patric Verrone, whom I met at a Harvard conference yesterday (we’ll post video from that interview tonight).
CONFIRMED: quarterlife Yanked from NBC, Headed to Bravo
quarterlife, following its unimpressive debut on NBC last night and creator Marshall Herskovitz’ comments that the show would work better on cable, will no longer be shown on NBC. The show is headed to Bravo, according to an NBC spokesperson. Bravo is committed to showing all remaining episodes, but has not yet determined air dates.
Herskovitz, who was getting tens of urgent emails from NBC as he chatted with us last night about the show’s low ratings, issued more presentable comments today via PR, but it seems he and NBC agree the show is better suited for cable.
A couple weeks ago, Herskovitz told us,
If under some very painful circumstance we don’t get enough viewers on NBC we could go on cable — A&E, Bravo. Within our economic model we’re more versatile in that way.
Warning: This doesn’t necessarily mean Internet TV and network TV are incompatible; remember the show was much different and had a much bigger budget than anything else online.
quarterlife Remembers to Thank NBC
Web series quarterlife “bombed” in its debut on NBC, Marshall Herskovitz told us yesterday. Backpedaling on his candid in-person remarks, Herskovitz’ PR issued a statement today:
“I am happy to say that the reports of quarterlife’s demise are exaggerated. We’re deeply grateful for NBC’s efforts to make quarterlife a success on network television. However, I’ve always had concerns about whether quarterlife was the kind of show that could pull in the big numbers necessary to succeed on a major broadcast network. It is important to remember that quarterlife has already proved itself as a successful online series and social network with millions of enthusiastic fans. We live in a media world today where many shows are considered successful on cable networks with audiences that are a fraction of those on the Big Four. I’m confident that quarterlife will find the right home on television as well.”
Another good comment I marked down yesterday from Herskovitz, unfiltered by PR and NBC oversight:
“It ain’t a television show, and as proven last night it ain’t a television show, and somehow in a weird way I’m happy about that.”
All tonal nuances aside, the show had just 3.86 million viewers.
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