In a game of Bout, one player chooses a prompt like, “Something you wouldn’t want to find in your bed,” or “You’d be surprised I own,” and friends respond by taking or finding a photo. Once five entries are submitted, the original player judges them and awards in-game points to the winner.

Bout is the first game for CollegeHumor, which is a division of IAC, and it was built in collaboration with independent game developer Awkward Hug. CollegeHumor writers will be contributing funny prompts, including a daily global Bout that all users can join.

“Usually we have the set-up and the punchline. In this, we’re just giving the set-up, and letting other people provide the punchlines,” said CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen in an interview Wednesday.

“There’s nothing people like more than to let other people know how funny they are,” he added. “If we set it up and have someone else spike it, that’s a win.”

Bout judging is entirely subjective — much like in board games such as Apples to Apples and Cards Against Humanity — so it’s all about figuring what will appeal to your friends.

One issue with Bout may be that, because there’s no way to create new challenges with strangers, there’s not very much to do within the app until you spam five friends and get them to download the app, as well.

On that front, Bout is already set up with ways to share little summaries of completed games directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram (as in the screenshot above).

Bout also opens up a new business model for CollegeHumor. “Most of our business is ad-driven, but we plan to make money from in-app purchases,” Van Veen said.

Coincidentally, Van Veen will be a speaker at our Dive Into Media conference in Southern California in a couple weeks, so we’ll have to check in with him there about Bout’s progress.

Redmond is facing all sorts of challenges, but its Xbox is a clear success, not only as a gaming console, but as an Internet-connected entertainment device, which gives users access to video services like Netflx and HBO Go, and, increasingly, cable programming from the likes of ESPN. Microsoft says Xbox users now spend more time consuming media than playing games.

Which is why we’re very excited to bring two key Xbox executives onstage next month at D: Dive into Media: Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive who is building a new production studio for the device.

Mehdi is the man running marketing, strategy and corporate development for Xbox, and he’s the guy who links the console up with all the studios, networks and publishers who are creating content for the device. Prior to this job, he oversaw Microsoft’s media presence on the Web.

Tellem, a veteran TV executive, is the former CBS president now tasked with creating new programming for the device. She’s building out a Hollywood presence for Steve Ballmer, and her hire last fall was Microsoft’s most aggressive move into the content business so far.

They’re joining a stellar lineup of speakers Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen.

And, yes, we’ll have yet more names to announce in the coming weeks. But if you want to see these folks in person, register now, and we’ll see you soon.

But while lots of pay-TV operators are happy to keep things the way they are, Ergen keeps trying to blow them up: The Dish Network co-founder and chairman is constantly fighting with the rest of the TV Industrial Complex, in disputes that often end up in court.

His most recent and prominent battle is also the most important one: Dish’s new “Auto Hop” technology lets satellite TV subscribers automatically skip commercials, and that has both advertisers and TV networks in fits, for obvious reasons.

But that’s just one of Ergen’s recent adventures. He has also bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy in an attempt to take on Netflix, engaged in bruising battles with Cablevision and its AMC Networks spinoff, and rattled his saber against ESPN and its ever-increasing sports fees.

Oh. He’s also talking to Google, and everyone else, about getting into the wireless business.

All of which means the former blackjack and poker player is someone everyone in the media world watches very, very closely, even though he doesn’t say much in public. Which means we’re very excited to interview him at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February.

Ergen will be joining an all-star cast on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, and USA Today publisher Larry Kramer.

And there’s more to come! Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we’re getting close to showtime, so make your reservations now.

Ask Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer.

Hughes, one of the original Facebook friends, used a bit of his newfound wealth to buy the storied New Republic earlier this year. A few months after that, Gannett put Kramer, a longtime digital media pro, in charge of its iconic USA Today.

Those are two very disparate publications, but they share a similar challenge: It’s very easy to find the stuff they’re best at — political opinion and general news — for free, all over the Internet. So how do you get readers and advertisers to pay attention, and/or money?

There’s a very good chance Hughes and Kramer won’t solve that one by February, when they appear at our D: Dive into Media conference in Laguna Niguel, California. But we’ll get a very interesting progress report. And since they’ll be onstage at the same time, we should get a very entertaining conversation, too.

Kramer is a former reporter and editor who ended up building and running big Web businesses — most notably MarketWatch, which he sold to CBS in 2005. He then stuck around long enough to help the TV giant embrace digital, via deals like the ones that put March Madness on the Web and CBS TV shows on iTunes. For a smart overview of his challenges at USA Today, see Ken Doctor’s take from earlier this year.

Hughes, quite famously, was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s roommates at Harvard, and became Facebook’s first marketing and PR head. Then he joined Barack Obama’s first presidential run, where he played a key role in the campaign’s pioneering use of social media. Now he’s trying to revamp a 98-year-old magazine that used to play a key role in Washington politics; for more on that see this excellent New York magazine profile.

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos and The Person From “Arrested Development” We’d Like to Name But Can’t (Yet).

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

Now it’s a bit of everything: Old and not-so-old TV shows, movies you haven’t heard of, movies you have heard of, and starting next year, TV shows that Netflix is making for itself.

The man in charge of all that is Ted Sarandos, who negotiates all of the Silicon Valley company’s deals with Hollywood. So he’s a perfect guy to bring onstage for our upcoming D: Dive Into Media conference, which is all about the confluence of tech and media.

And appearing onstage alongside Sarandos will be … well, we can’t come out and say who, exactly. (Believe us. We’d like to. And we will! But not today. Hollywood is an odd place.)

But we can tell you that it’s someone intimately involved in Arrested Development, the much-loved Fox comedy series that Netflix is reviving next year.

So that should be fun! And informative, too: Sarandos can explain what it’s like to haggle with partners who can’t figure out if they want to cash your checks, or kill you off, or both. And … person to be named later can explain what it’s like to create a big TV show for a digital-only audience. Among other things!

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun.

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

At our D: Dive into Media conference in February, we’ll be talking to people who make amazing content, the people who make a living selling amazing content and the people who help distribute all of that stuff.

But if you want to figure out the future of media, you also have to talk to the people who make the boxes and gadgets you’ll use to consume all of that content.

That’s why we’re very happy to hear at Dive into Media from two heavyweights with important new roles: Intel’s Erik Huggers, corporate vice president at Intel Media, and Samsung’s David Eun, executive vice president for global media.

Intel’s chips have been powering entertainment boxes for a long time. Now the company is reportedly getting ready to plunge directly into the pay-TV business itself by trying to cut deals with cable programmers and rolling out a next-generation set-top box of its own.

Huggers, who used to run the BBC’s digital efforts, is heading up that push, but hasn’t talked about it publicly yet. For now, the company says his efforts are “focused on exploring new ways to access, interact with and share the latest in digital entertainment.” We’ll get a chance to figure out what that really means when he gets on our stage.

And Samsung is already a huge deal in the media world, given its position of power in both the TV and mobile markets. Eun, a tech and media veteran (Google, Time Warner, NBC, AOL), is supposed to leverage that clout to bring software and services to his company’s devices.

Now he’s trying to expand the company’s presence in Silicon Valley, where he’s opening up a new outpost in an effort to build out digital content and services. His Dive appearance will be his first public opportunity to make his case to tech and media hotshots.

Huggers and Eun are joining an all-star lineup in February. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith.

And we’ve got more great names to announce very soon: Watch this space. In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference, which will be held Feb. 11 and 12 at the stunning Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California.

Or you can save yourself a lot of hassle and ask two guys who are already making pretty good progress.

That would be CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media’s Shane Smith. And you can find them both at our Dive into Media conference next year.

To refresh your memory: Dive Into Media is our one-night-plus-one-day tour of the media landscape, and the way technology is changing that world day by day. That means unscripted, unrehearsed conversations with an all-star cast of moguls who hold very different perspectives. They’re all joining us Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, just south of Los Angeles.

Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines President David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.

And here are two more — both of whom have done very well on the Web and are now trying to figure out how to apply those lessons to more traditional outlets:

Ricky Van Veen co-founded CollegeHumor in 1999, when he and his buddies were actually in college. Seven years later, the site had evolved from a frat-tastic side project into an ambitious, successful content creation machine, and Barry Diller bought it for his IAC conglomerate. Now Van Veen is still working for Diller, but he’s moved from the Web to older media: He’s making TV shows like “Chopped” via IAC’s Notional production company, and next year he’ll release “Coffee Town,” a full-length feature film.

Shane Smith and his Vice Media co-founders started out publishing a raucous, no-holds-barred magazine back in the ’90s, and fumbled their way into the Internet during the first Web boom. Now they seem to have it figured out: They’re on track to generate $200 million this year, while making eye-popping videos — here’s a tour guide for Kabul — backed by blue-chip advertisers like Intel. Next up: An HBO series, and lots of attention from guys who run really big media empires.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now, you can find registration information here.

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:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111011/serious-business-collegehumor-tries-selling-web-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101007/college-humor-gets-a-new-grownup-time-inc-digital-dude-paul-greenberg/ http://allthingsd.com/20101007/college-humor-gets-a-new-grownup-time-inc-digital-dude-paul-greenberg/#comments Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:44:40 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24234 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101007/college-humor-gets-a-new-grownup-time-inc-digital-dude-paul-greenberg/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100609/video-college-humors-ricky-van-veen-on-how-to-make-web-stuff-that-doesnt-suck/ http://allthingsd.com/20100609/video-college-humors-ricky-van-veen-on-how-to-make-web-stuff-that-doesnt-suck/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:06:04 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=20342 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100609/video-college-humors-ricky-van-veen-on-how-to-make-web-stuff-that-doesnt-suck/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100608/why-tv-still-wont-embrace-the-web-quite-yet/ http://allthingsd.com/20100608/why-tv-still-wont-embrace-the-web-quite-yet/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:30:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=20285 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:

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:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100608/why-tv-still-wont-embrace-the-web-quite-yet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090909/college-humor-dudes-grow-up-move-in-to-dads-house/ http://allthingsd.com/20090909/college-humor-dudes-grow-up-move-in-to-dads-house/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:42:19 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=10789 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090909/college-humor-dudes-grow-up-move-in-to-dads-house/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090515/why-online-video-ads-still-dont-work/ http://allthingsd.com/20090515/why-online-video-ads-still-dont-work/#comments Fri, 15 May 2009 21:12:03 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=7442 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090515/why-online-video-ads-still-dont-work/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090313/boxee-ceo-avner-ronen-gets-a-crash-course-in-the-tv-business/ http://allthingsd.com/20090313/boxee-ceo-avner-ronen-gets-a-crash-course-in-the-tv-business/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:00:50 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=5230

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.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090313/boxee-ceo-avner-ronen-gets-a-crash-course-in-the-tv-business/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081219/a-taco-truck-in-the-office-and-a-dude-in-a-cage-behind-the-scenes-at-college-humors-mtv-show/ http://allthingsd.com/20081219/a-taco-truck-in-the-office-and-a-dude-in-a-cage-behind-the-scenes-at-college-humors-mtv-show/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:04:09 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2312 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.

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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081219/a-taco-truck-in-the-office-and-a-dude-in-a-cage-behind-the-scenes-at-college-humors-mtv-show/feed/ 0