AllThingsD » Ricky Van Veen

Serious Business? CollegeHumor Tries Selling Web Video.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:02:29 +0000

Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld are Web stars. The twentysomethings draw an audience of 500,000 people, twice a week, for their three-minute “Jake and Amir” shows on CollegeHumor.com.

But those fans watch Hurwitz and Blumenfeld’s buddy/frenemy comedy clips for free. What would happen if they had to pay?

We’ll find out this afternoon, when the duo rolls out “Jake and Amir: Fired,” a 30-minute special. CollegeHumor will sell streams of the show on its site and via Facebook for $2.99 a pop, and DVDs for $13 apiece.

It’s the first time IAC’s comedy site — which has carved out a nice niche for itself in the low-budget Web originals business — has tried selling anything beyond T-shirts to its audience.

And it’s very much a test. CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen isn’t convinced that it will turn a profit, but he’s okay with that. “If this is a loss leader for us, but we learn a lot about paid content, how it works, then it’s worthwhile,” he says.

Van Veen puts the budget for the special at “low five figures.” That’s a sum which would barely register on a Hollywood expense account, but it’s 10 times more than an average “Jake and Amir” episode. The extra money paid for more crew members and editors, etc., as well as the cost of taking a camera crew out of IAC’s offices and onto bona fide locations.

CollegeHumor CEO Paul Greenberg figures the company will need to sell a combination of about 15,000 DVDs and digital streams to break even on the project. And even though that’s a fraction of the duo’s regular audience, Van Veen isn’t convinced they’ll get that.

And the video itself — filmed and edited this summer while Hurwitz and Blumenfeld continued to put out their normal episodes — is still a work in progress. Original plans called for CollegeHumor to sell streams of the show on Apple’s iTunes and DVDs via Amazon, but technical issues have held that up for now.

So how do you get viewers who have been conditioned to watching stuff for free to pull out a credit card or tap their Facebook Credits fund?

Van Veen isn’t sure, and that’s the point of the experiment. “Jake and Amir” has built up a loyal fan base over its four-year run, and Van Veen figures that’s the first part of the equation.

“I think you could only charge money on the Internet if you have people who are rabid — a fan base that’s very invested in the product,” he says. “You already have to have an established property.” If this works, CollegeHumor will try repeating it with other Web video shows, Van Veen says.

Meanwhile Hurwitz and Blumenfeld are intrigued by the idea of selling stuff directly to fans, because it allows them to try more ambitious material without having to worry about appealing to advertisers.

Even if it does work, they don’t see themselves sticking around on the Web forever: Both want to move up to TV and movies. Blumenfeld has already appeared in an (excellent) episode of Louis C.K.’s “Louie”; Hurwitz has moved from New York to Los Angeles to try to land some writing work. “Internet video is cool, but anyone can make an Internet video,” Blumenfeld says.

But not everyone can sell it. Here’s an interview I shot with the pair last month, followed by a trailer for their new show, which should be available later today:

[ See post to watch video ]

College Humor Gets a New Grown-Up: Time Inc. Digital Dude Paul Greenberg

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:44:40 +0000

Here’s the new adult supervisor at College Humor, Barry Diller’s much-smarter-than-you’d-think humor site: Paul Greenberg, who most recently had been running digital operations at Time Inc.’s Lifestyle group.

But only very recently: Greenberg started at Time Warner’s (TWX) publishing unit at the end of February, and resigned yesterday to become CEO at College Humor Media. Prior to Time Inc., he put in time at TV Guide.com, MediaNet and MTV.

Greenberg’s new job is a newly created position, which puts him in charge of the main College Humor site as well as satellites like SportsPickle and Dorkly (that was fun to type!).

College Humor co-founder Josh Abramson will stay in his current position as president; co-founder Ricky Van Veen remains occupied with TV projects at IAC’s Notional. But he had time to send me a note about the new hire:

I couldn’t be more thrilled. We knew instantly upon meeting him that Paul was the right person for the job. Plus, to me the choice was pretty obvious — who wouldn’t want to trade up from a goofy little startup like Time Inc to a more established and venerable institution like CollegeHumor?

I’ve asked Time Inc. if they have a replacement lined up for Greenberg; I’ll update if I hear back.

Video: College Humor's Ricky Van Veen on How to Make Web Stuff That Doesn't Suck

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:06:04 +0000

Some of you may have already read Mashable’s summary of the “10 Web Content Urban Legends” presentation that Ricky Van Veen delivered yesterday. But I got to see the College Humor co-founder do this in person, and I can vouch that it’s well worth watching.

Check it out. It’s a very quick 30 minutes–the picture of the Obama inauguration is worth it by itself. But there’s no reason to watch the Q&A that follows, in which Van Veen is queried by a dolt.

Supershort attention span? That’s okay. You’re on the Web! Here’s the “show, not tell” version–the “Font Conference” video Van Veen holds up (correctly) as an example of non=sucky Web content.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Why TV Still Won't Embrace the Web Quite Yet

Peter Kafka — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:30:33 +0000

What’s the future of TV? For the near future, it’s more TV.

So says TV producer Steve Levitan.

Levitan has made a bunch of money working on hit TV shows like “Just Shoot Me,” and he’s likely to make some more with ABC’s “Modern Family.” So it’s not a huge surprise to hear him make a case for the status quo.

But Levitan is also a self-professed nerd who loves technology and has tried hard to figure out how to incorporate it into his TV show. He has played around with Twitter and has created special clips for Web viewers. Problem is, he says, he can’t figure out how Internet eyeballs do him any good. And that includes the two million viewers he believes watch his show every week on Hulu.

One day, that’s going to change, as advertisers start to value Web viewers as much as TV viewers. But they’re not there now. Here’s Levitan explaining the state of the business at the D8 conference last week:

[ See post to watch video ]

Anyone feel differently? Happy to hear from you. And I’ll put the same question to Ricky Van Veen, the College Humor co-founder who is now trying to make TV shows at IAC’s (IACI) Notional. We’re chatting this morning at Mashable’s Media Summit in New York. Here’s a conversation we had on the topic last fall:

College Humor Dudes Grow Up, Move Into Dad's House

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:42:19 +0000

College Humor dude Ricky Van Veen has graduated from his old gig to a new one, running a TV and Web video production company for Barry Diller. But he’s not leaving his old crew behind: They’re about to pack up and follow him to Diller’s IAC headquarters.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote about a corporate real estate move before, but this one strikes me as interesting: Ever since Diller bought up College Humor in 2006, a big part of the site’s identity has been its distance from its corporate masters.

Diller and company worked out of a shiny and imposing new structure designed by Frank Gehry; his new charges got their own play room (one big enough to accommodate a taco truck) across town.

I always thought the College Humor guys got a better deal. The IAC building has great views and a lobby with a trailer-sized video screen, but it’s in a really inaccessible location along the West Side Highway at the edge of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. College Humor’s real estate didn’t have an architectural pedigree, but its location near Union Square was really easy to get to–and a good place to host a beer pong tourney, if necessary.

Anyway, now you get to pick your metaphor. Either the College Humor guys are growing up and moving into an adult office or they’re boomeranging back to daddy.

Probably some of both. Diller has plenty of cash on hand at IAC (IACI), but there’s no reason to burn it on a lease when he has empty office space to fill.

And College Humor is an increasingly grown-up business. Two of the company’s four co-founders have moved on, and remaining co-founder Josh Abramson, who will continue to oversee his company, has been known to wear a pocket square.

Meanwhile Van Veen is running Notional, a new venture that is supposed to translate College Humor’s acumen at making funny, cheap and popular Web video aimed at twenty-something guys into a production company that makes cheap, popular Web video and TV shows for all sorts of audiences.

Here’s an interview I taped with Van Veen in his new building last month, where he noodles on the future of entertainment and explains how he and former NBC executive Ben Silverman will work together.

[ See post to watch video ]

Why Online Video Ads Still Don't Work

Peter Kafka — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:12:03 +0000

From the funny-and-true! department: A biting clip from the dudes at College Humor satirizing the lousy ad options and mind-numbing ad jargon that dominate the online video business.

And a good reminder that even though Google’s (GOOG) YouTube generates more than five billion streams a month and Hulu has grown 490 percent in the last year, no one has really figured out a good way to turn all those eyeballs into dollars. Yet.

A short cheat sheet: The guys on the left side of the table are College Humor co-founders Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, who sold their company to IAC (IACI) in 2006, yet remain employed by Barry Diller. They’re also pretty sharp business guys, it turns out. The guys on the right side are Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld, College Humor employees who have had a long-running series of clips on the site. Dina Kaplan, who gets name-checked several times, is COO of New York-based video site Blip.tv, which happens to be the distributor of this clip.

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen Gets a Crash Course in the TV Business

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:00:50 +0000

When I first met Avner Ronen in January, the Boxee CEO was beaming. His Web video company was one of the breakout hits at the Consumer Electronics Show.

But when I had lunch with Ronen yesterday, he was much more subdued. Going head-to-head against the TV establishment can take the wind out of you.

In the span of two months, Boxee has gone from obscure start-up to an irritant or worse for the TV business.

That’s because Boxee, which makes it easy to sort and play video you grab from the Web, symbolizes a real threat for the established players: That one day, many consumers will consume most of their TV via video they find on the Web. And then they’ll cut TV networks and cable operators out of the picture.

That’s a long way from happening, but just the notion of it seemed to be enough for GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, which apparently forced their Hulu joint venture to stop working with Boxee last month.

Now Hulu and Boxee are in a cat-and-mouse game, whereby Boxee’s engineers try to find ways to get Hulu’s stuff onto their browsers and the Hulu guys try to stop them. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.)

Ronen isn’t optimistic that this is going to change anytime soon. He also says the past few months have taught him how little he knew about the media business prior to starting Boxee in 2007. Had he known how entrenched and complicated the relationships between broadcasters, programmers, cable networks and cable operators are, he says, he might never have tried to get the company going.

But Ronen still figures he’ll thrive in the long run. He notes that some big media companies that aren’t NBC and Fox–Netflix (NFLX) and Disney’s (DIS) ABC, for instance–have been happy to work with Boxee, or at least not to complain about the service.

I’ll let him explain why, and lay out Boxee’s future plans (which included a beta launch this summer and Boxee-enabled devices next year) in this video interview.

And if, like me, you’re going to be in Austin for South By Southwest on Saturday, you can ask him yourself, at a panel discussion where he’ll share the stage with College Humor’s Ricky Van Veen and B.J. Novak of “The Office.”

[ See post to watch video ]

A Taco Truck in the Office and a Dude in a Cage: Behind the Scenes at College Humor's New MTV Show

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:04:09 +0000

What do you do after launching your own comedy Web site, selling it to Barry Diller–and then, just as impressively, managing to stay employed by Barry Diller? You get your own TV show, of course.

Also, did I mention that Ricky Van Veen and Josh Abramson are still in their 20s? They are. But the College Humor co-founders are remarkably level-headed given their well-chronicled success so far.

That’s likely how they’ve survived multiple management shake-ups at Diller’s IAC/Interactive Corp. (IACI). And it seems to be why they can handle their day jobs while simultaneously producing a new TV show–which is shooting in their office.

The show is scheduled to start airing on MTV in February; Viacom’s (VIA) cable network has bought six episodes, but the boys are hopeful this will turn into a longer engagement. They gave me a brief tour of the office/set and talked to me about the show and the business in general yesterday. The upshot: Making content is hard. Also, you need to dress up if you’re going to the IAC Christmas party.

Note to demanding video viewers: Per your request, I’m trying to shorten these things up, but this is still a whopping six minutes long. So if you want to jump around: The dude in the cage is around the 1:30 mark, and the taco truck appears about two minutes in. Ricky says something off-color around 2:50, and Josh appears shortly after that.

[ See post to watch video ]

Here’s a College Humor best-of video announcing the MTV show:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

But here’s a clip that’s much more representative of what the site’s up to:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.