Tag Archives: college humor

Which Will Last Longer: MTV’s PRANKED or COLLEGE HUMOR

I heard rumors that MTV isn’t going to renew College Humor, but I quite like the Pranked show staring Amir Blumenfeld and Streeter Siedell (haven’t these guys heard of friggin’ stage names)?

The College Humor brand is strong, and the web content is exceptional. But for reasons I can’t explain, this stuff doesn’t transfer to 20-minute shows. My frog prank video was on Pranked last night, which prompted me to watch it for the first time. I liked it… Amir and Streeter have good rapport, and added to the clips more than the typical WebJunk racket. I loved the teaser and outro… “This wife finds something slimy in her bedroom and it’s not her husband,” and “that poor frog had to touch those disgusting feet.” Playing it via TiVo was a fun way to wake up my wife this morning.

Hey- at least the show probably costs virtually nothing to produce (relative to a typical network show). We’re talking about a small crew in an apartment and paltry license fees for the clips. If MTV can’t profit on this show, then there’s too much overhead upstairs.

amir blumenfeld mtv

Branded Entertainment Gone Sour

This is a cute parody video about branded entertainment– courtesy of Nicholas Carlson, who looks a lot cooler on his Business Insider profile than hisĀ dorky Twitter pic from G4.

It shows the College Humor guys (I’m a big fan) struggling with a fictional company that wants to brand the crap out of their video (but of course sets the stage by saying they don’t want to interfere with the creators’ voice). But don’t forget that Nalts was spoofing “sellouts” more than 2 years ago… before YouTube was bought by Google and the sellouts were rare.
In my experience, the marketer interferes in more subtle but equally funny ways. The biggest challenge is meeting the marketing/legal requirements without muting the humor.
I’ve had great experiences where the video actually gets funnier through a healthy discussion. But I’ve also seen a video lose it’s quirky feel because few are comfortable with the tradeoffs. Will taking away that edgy moment reflect better on the brand, even if it drops views by 20%? It’s really subjective. Or objective. One of those.