By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/15/2016
Speak of the devil! The great sunsetting of nerd/geek themed news claimed another victim yesterday when Alex Zalben tweeted: Hey, today was my last day at MTV News. It's been really cool. Bye. — Alex Zalben (@azalben) January 15, 2016 In a subsequent tweet, Zalben explained he had been part of January layoffs. Zalben’s departure […]
By: Jerry Beck,
on 7/13/2015
Viacom, the parent company of Nick, MTV, and Comedy Central, insists it's still relevant. No one else thinks so.
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By: Lizzy Burns,
on 7/22/2014
New teen show alert! MTV's Finding Carter! MTV, Tuesday, 10 p.m.
Carter is out one day, having fun with her friends, as one will. Which includes breaking into a carousel, as one will. The police come and bring everyone to jail. Carter is the cool one, shrugging it off as no big deal. Except, when her friends are released into their parents' custody, her mother is no where to be seen.
Instead, Carter is taken aside by the police and it's patiently explained to her how her photo and fingerprints were entered into the system. Carter isn't fazed, since she has no priors.
What the police tell her does faze her: her parents, her mother and father, are on their way.
Her real parents.
Over a decade earlier, three year old Linden Wilson was kidnapped.
Carter is Linden.
Carter's going home, to people she doesn't remember.
By: Jerry Beck,
on 3/8/2013
I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge that the TV series Beavis and Butt-head premiered twenty years ago today—March 8, 1993—on MTV. The show’s crude production values and even cruder humor look quaint today in a South Park/Adult Swim/Webcartoon world, but it was a bold experiment in its time and cleared a path for much to follow.
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By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 5/4/2012
Today we bring you our weekly sampler of cool youth media and marketing gigs. If your company has an open position in the youth media or marketing space, we encourage you to join the Ypulse LinkedIn group, if you haven’t yet, and post there for... Read the rest of this post
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By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 5/3/2012
We shouldn’t be surprised that 37% of teens video chat (with friends and family using Skype, iChat, and Googletalk, according to a new study. It seems like a lot of kids using the Jetson-age technology, but it makes sense with the ubiquity of... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 4/27/2012
DoSomething.org has learned that using text messaging (is not only better at engaging teens than email — texting gets a 100% open rate! — it also leads to a dialogue. Sometimes, however, that takes an unexpected twist with teens texting to ask... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 3/23/2012
The Angry Birds Space app has flown to the top of the charts (in more than 28 countries just hours after its release! We bet the promo video that was filmed in space is partially responsible for the games’ rocket speed success. In other Angry... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 3/19/2012
Following in the footsteps of ABC Family and MTV (The CW just launched a free mobile app that lets fans stream full episodes of its current programming the next day. Given Millennials’ busy lives, we bet they’ll soon expect to access all their... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 3/14/2012
Today we’re checking in with A Thin Line, MTV’s campaign against digital abuse and winner of Ypulse’s 2011 GennY Award, which recognizes best practices and new techniques in youth marketing campaigns. A Thin Line hasn’t stopped innovating in... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 2/10/2012
In a total game changer for the worlds of toys and technology (Hasbro and Zynga have teamed up to make toys and board games based on Zynga’s popular online video games. Starting with Words With Friends, the partnership will also see FarmVille,... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 2/8/2012
As if we need more social networks to follow, Lady Gaga (has just unveiled LittleMonsters.com her very own social site that’s all about her and her fans. If you haven’t received your invite yet, here’s a tour to fill you in on what... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 2/2/2012
If you’re like us, you can’t wait for the next Maggie Stiefvater book (to hit the shelves. We still have several months to wait for “The Raven Boys,” the first in a four book series called the Raven Cycle, which follows... Read the rest of this post
By: Maryann Yin,
on 1/25/2012
Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog
Over at MTV News, sixteen upcoming movies were pitted against one another to determine the winner of the “MTV Movie Brawl 2012.” In the final round, almost four million votes were cast and Cosmopolis (a Don DeLillo adaptation starring Twilight actor Robert Pattinson) emerged victorious over The Hunger Games (starring Oscar-nominated actress Jennifer Lawrence).
In an interview with MTV, director David Cronenberg explained how he first learned about the brawl: “Cosmopolis, while I think in terms of what it is as cinema is pretty hefty, but in terms of budget and promotion, it’s an underdog compared to something like the Dark Knight franchise. I really didn’t think we would have much of a chance. That really got my attention.”
In the video embedded above, MTV caught up with Cosmopolis actor Paul Giamatti to get his reaction on the movie’s win. Several of the Movie Brawl film are literary adaptations including John Carter, The Avengers, Snow White & the Huntsman, The Hobbitand The Dark Knight Rises.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 1/23/2012
The number of Americans who have a tablet or e-reader (jumped significantly between December 2011 and January 2012, thanks to robust holiday sales, according to Pew Research. In fact, among Millennial adults, tablet ownership — at 24%... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 12/9/2011
Today we bring you our weekly sampler of cool youth media and marketing gigs. If your company has an open position in the youth media or marketing space, we encourage you to join the Ypulse LinkedIn group, if you haven’t yet, and post there for... Read the rest of this post
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By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 11/7/2011
MTV aired the latest episode of its ‘True Life’ documentary series over the weekend (focusing on the young people protesting in Zuccotti Park. The episode seems to have the same issues as the Occupy Wall Street movement itself: a lack of... Read the rest of this post
By: Jerry Beck,
on 10/27/2011
MTV revives its commitment to animation with the much ballyhooed revival of Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-head and the premiere of David Gordon Green’s Good Vibes.
Can Beavis survive in MTV’s post-Snooky universe? Does Good Vibes hold its own against the animated shows from Fox, Adult Swim and Comedy Central? It’s your turn to let everyone know what you think. (Please only post below if you’ve watched tonight’s shows – we will delete those who haven’t).
Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation |
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Post tags: Beavis & Butt-head, Good Vibes, MTV
By: Jerry Beck,
on 10/27/2011
When it started airing on MTV in 1993, Beavis and Butt-Head was more than just a popular animated series, it was a cultural phenomenon. Its subversive humor centered around two terminally moronic teenagers became a hit with MTV’s viewership, not to mention a lightning rod for controversy and a focal point for discussion on the state of American culture: was the show promoting ignorance or a sly commentary on the inanity of contemporary society? The debate continued throughout the 1990s as Mike Judge’s dimwitted creations rocketed to stardom.
Tonight a new episode of Beavis & Butt-Head will air on MTV for the first time in 14 years. It remains to be seen whether the new incarnation can connect with a snarkier Internet-bred generation, but to mark the occasion, we thought it would be fitting to take a look back at the show’s roots. Cartoon Brew invited the show’s original producer, John Andrews, to write a personal essay recalling his experiences as a key member of the original crew and tell us about the behind-the-scene challenges of producing the show in the early nineties.
Andrews was hired in 1992 to produce MTV’s new series Beavis & Butt-Head and stayed for several years. He co-produced the 1996 feature Beavis & Butt-Head Do America with Abby Terkuhle. After a subsequent 13-year run at Klasky Csupo, he is now at Six Point Harness running 6 Point Media.
HOW BEAVIS SAVED MY LIFE
by John Andrews
I’m a fan of Mike Judge. In all my years working with animation creators, I have met very few others who have known their own creations with the thoroughness and vision Mike had from the very beginning. This is the true story of how Beavis & Butt-Head found me and changed my life.
As a budding animation producer with a few slightly tamer animation projects to my credit, mostly for PBS, I had the opportunity to jump into the job of producing the animated shorts and music video commentaries that MTV had ordered as the first season of Beavis & Butt-Head. For me this led to a five year run producing the series, co-producing the feature and launching a number of other MTV animated projects. But it all started with a leap onto a train that had already left the station, a series that already had an air-date, first scripts on the table and a whole lot of animation ahead with only a few months to make sense of it all and get something on air.
I moved to New York from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1981 with my rock band The Mundanes. The early eighties recession got the best of us and we all moved on. I settled in to a life of producing graphics and animation for TV and trade shows. I even won a few Emmys for the goofy Monty Python-esque animations that partner Todd Ruff and I put together for a business series called Adam Smith’s Money World in the mid to late eighties. But by 1990, life was getting dull.
Then I got the opportunity to produce the animation for a series called The Creative Spirit for PBS, underwritten by IBM. That series gave me the opportunity to sit at Chuck Jones’ feet for a day long interview/shoot and to meet many terrific animators including Alison Snowden and David Fine, Maciek Albrecht, the folks at Buzzco, Joey Ahlbum and several other denizens of the New York scene.
One relationship I gained out of working on that series was with John Canemaker. He created wonderful animations for the series and became a real friend in that period. One night I went to a party with John, a party thrown in honor of some animators from the film board of Canada. As we stood amidst the crowd, I said to John “Who should I
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By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 10/25/2011
Half of kids under age 8 have access to (a smartphone, and we suspect some might be better at using it than their parents. Although kids are mobile savvy, TV still rules the greatest part of their media day — 74% of the media kids consume is on... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 10/10/2011
As October marks Bullying Awareness Month, we’ve been hearing about dozens of initiatives that strive to end bullying — particularly cyberbullying — as it constantly affects Millennials. But one of the efforts that stood out to us the most is... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 10/3/2011
Ever since DC Comics launched the ‘New 52′ — a renumbering of its first issues along with same day digital downloads (its sales have transformed! “Justice League” has already sold 200,000 copies compared to 46,000 in the old... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 9/28/2011
Amazon’s new Kindle Fire looks sleek and cool (and at a mere $199 complete with Amazon’s Cloud storage (!), it bests Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color in cost and competes on functionality. We agree that it’s no iPad killer,... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 9/27/2011
Maybe it should be called Google++++ (considering the fledgling social network managed to post a whopping 1269% increase in traffic over the previous week. What drove the huge leap? The network is now open to everyone and no longer requires invites.... Read the rest of this post
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 9/15/2011
LeVar Burton takes Reading Rainbow into the 21st Century (by launching RRKidz. Just like its previous iteration, RRKidz is all about reading, but the twist is that it’s an app for iPad and Android featuring a curated collection of... Read the rest of this post
I just love Comic Book Club Live and am overdue for a visit to one of their shows.