YouTube sensations will get an opportunity to walk down a virtual red carpet.
The video-sharing Web site announced Monday that it will hold the first YouTube Video Awards to recognize the best-user created videos of 2006. The awards will be handed out in seven categories: most creative, most inspirational, best series, best comedy, musician of the year, best commentary and “most adorable video ever.”
Babysitter of the Year - Janice
The nominees, picked by YouTube, are compiled in a gallery at www.youtube.com/YTAwards. YouTube community members can vote on their favorites beginning Monday and concluding on Friday. The winners, as chosen by the community, will be announced March 25. Each will be prominently featured on YouTube and receive a trophy, the design of which will be revealed later.
Success on the site has previously been defined largely by rankings of the most-viewed or most-discussed videos.
“We wanted to call out some of the most popular videos and let the users choose which ones deserve some additional recognition,” said Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing at YouTube.
The vast and varied world of online video has gradually formed styles all its own, which figured into the formation of the categories.
“We looked at the genres of content that were the most popular last year,” Byrne said. “We’ve seen and continue to see exciting new developments in the online video space where genres are being created.”
Among the nominees are noted “vloggers” Paul Robinett (”Renetto”) and Peter Oakley (”Geriatric1927″). The comedy of Barats and Bereta, and Smosh, is also nominated, as are series such as Lonelygirl15’s and “Ask a Ninja.” The power pop band OK Go is perhaps the most professional of the nominees; it’s nominated for the famous treadmill-choreographed music video, “Here It Goes Again.”
Whether the YouTube Video Awards becomes a permanent, annual affair is likely, Byrne said, but it will depend on how the first awards are received.
“We want to see how the community responds to it, but we can see this being something that grows as we continue to grow and becomes a bigger and more exciting event in the future,” Byrne said. An in-person ceremony is possible in the future.
Google-owned, San Bruno, Calif.-based YouTube Inc. was founded in February 2005. Last week, media conglomerate Viacom Inc . sued YouTube for $1 billion, claiming the site infringes on copyrights on a “huge scale.” Several other media companies have reached agreements to supply YouTube with clips.
According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube attracted 133.5 million visitors worldwide in January.
Todd Leopold offers CNN.com’s top 10 entertainment stories of the year:
1. The ubiquitous YouTube, MySpace, etc. Time magazine may have overstated the case with its Person of the Year, but certainly these Web sites are redefining who makes entertainment, when it’s available (whenever you want) — and what it is, for that matter. Not bad for that series of tubes called the Internets.
2. Britney Spears. Didn’t she used to sing?
3. Major deaths: James Brown, Ahmet Ertegun, Robert Altman. All incredibly influential, all deserving of more due. The world is a lesser place with their losses.
4. Mel Gibson. His drunken, racist tirade made him the center of attention in July. "Apocalypto" put him on top of the box office in December.
4a. Race and rants. Gibson’s outburst (and others, notably Michael Richards’) started talk about race, ethnicity and prejudice, but whether the discussion was enlightening or simply a frenzy of yelling is an open question. (a certain reporter.
7. Steve Irwin. The "Crocodile Hunter’s" death in September shocked the world.
8. Borat. Sacha Baron Cohen’s clever Kazakh character topped the box office and started discussions on the value of satire. High-five!
9. Celebrities and Africa. Some attracted cameras (George Clooney in Darfur, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Namibia), some appeared to invite them (Madonna). Regardless of the reasons, perhaps the exposure will do some good.
10. The old folks still have it. In an entertainment world, where youth is deified, Bob Dylan (65) topped the album charts; Clint Eastwood (76) made two of the best movies of the year; Judi Dench (72) earned raves for "Casino Royale" and "Notes on a Scandal"; and that’s not to forget Peter O’Toole (74), Helen Mirren (61) and that whippersnapper Meryl Streep (57).
What about the TomCat phenomenon? People obsessed for months on when and if Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes would get married, when their baby would be born, what its name would be, when the first pictures would come out, why they were seen around town without said baby (Suri), and so forth.
At least in the online world, “crotch shots” and its variants would be high on the list, with Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton all having well publicized (and searched) incidents. Ditto “beauty pageant scandals,” with the drunken behavior of Miss USA Tara Conner and Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees getting so much attention over the last couple of weeks. Of lesser note would be the Scarlett Johansson phenomenon, with the starlet suddenly appearing at the top of all the hot celebrity superlative lists.
Martha Stewart recently chatted it up with shock jock, Howard Stern and ended up revealing something “naughty” to some… “nice” to others. Question is,… what will Santa Claus have to say about it?
So it’s official. Martha Stewart is a badass. Earlier this morning, the Queen of Domesticity was interviewed by King of Shock Jocks Howard Stern on his satellite radio show to commemorate their one-year anniversary at Sirius. For a woman who has her own line of linens and a guy who could own a porn empire, one would have surely expected a conversation between the two to be, um, a recipe for disaster. But Stewart was game. Yes, there were some mildly awkward moments — no matter what, we do not, I repeat, we do not want to hear about Thumper, Lady Martha’s sex toy — but it’s a rare and cool occurrence that a woman of her caliber could roll with Stern’s trademark punches without being offended or emotional, and at times, even give him a taste of his own medicine.
The best moments came when Stern asked questions that would make most people wriggle, Michael Richards-style, in their seats.
When Stewart mentioned that she’d like to go out on more dates, Stern said, “But I thought you wanted me.” She responded, “I did. But then I met you.”
As Stern was wrapping up, he advised that the next time Stewart is on the show she go commando. “Wait, are you wearing underwear today?,” he asked. Stewart, without missing a beat, said, “No… bye Howard.”
The reports of the death of Mel Gibson’s career have been greatly exaggerated:
Mel Gibson’s bloody epic “Apocalypto” debuted as the No. 1 weekend movie, proving the filmmaker still can deliver a winner despite his drunken-driving arrest and anti-Semitic rant last summer.
Let me hereby predict that, Michael Richards’ tirade notwithstanding, “Seinfeld” DVDs will sell as well as they ever have and that the show will continue to thrive in syndication. On the other hand, Andy Dick’s career is toast.
According to sources, the hopped-up comedian hopped onstage Saturday at L.A.’s Improv comedy club and dropped the n-bomb on a room full of stunned clubgoers. Andy was heckling comedian Ian Bagg during his routine, when Dick allegedly got out of his seat, jumped onstage and began joking with Bagg. The subject of Michael Richards came up, but the two comics quickly moved past it. As Dick exited the stage, he suddenly grabbed the mic and shouted at the crowd, “You’re all a bunch of niggers!”
Unlike the Richards incident, there’s no video of this one. My guess is that he was trying to be funny by mocking Richards, since there’s no provocation here and thus no context for a racial outburst. Either way, it doesn’t appear to have come across as funny. It may be that racial humor is best left to black comedians.
TMZ has a very blurry video of what purports to be Michael Richards launching a bizarre, racist tirade at a black member of his audience.
Richards, who played the wacky Cosmo Kramer on the hit TV show “Seinfeld,” appeared onstage at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. Kyle Doss, an African-American, told TMZ he and some friends were in the cheap seats and he was playfully heckling Richards when suddenly, the comedian lost it.
The camera started rolling just as Richards began his attack, screaming at one of the men, “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass.” Richards continued, “You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!”
The crowd is visibly and audibly confused and upset. Richards responds by saying, “They’re going to arrest me for calling a black man a nigger.”
One of the men who was the object of Richard’s tirade was outraged, shouting back “That’s un-f***ing called for, ain’t necessary.”
After the three-minute tirade, it appears the majority of the audience members got up and left in disgust.
One would think.
Here’s the video:
Even compared to the infamous Mel Gibson rant, this is quite inexplicable.
Update: Shakespeare’s Sister writes, “I’ll never be able to watch an episode of Seinfeld again without thinking about that loathsome tirade—and I certainly won’t be completing my collection of the series on the DVD, lest another penny of my money end up in his pocket.” I’m generally able to compartmentalize my views of performers’ personal lives and their entertainment value; otherwise, I would be boycotting most of Hollywood. (I won’t be buying the Seinfeld DVD’s, either, but then I wasn’t before this.)
She links an interesting CNN report on the incident at YouTube which, interestingly, does not allow embedding but works at the moment on the site. Richards is back at work at the comedy club, it seems.
Meanwhile, Pajama Media’s Tel Aviv correspondent quips, “[I]t’s not like his career can afford to take the hit. But who knows? Maybe Mel Gibson has a part for him in his next movie.”
A pretty good discussion is going on in the comments sections at both Althouse and Unfogged, too.
He called two black hecklers the “n-word” and enthusiastically referenced a time when blacks were often victims of civil rights abuses, but Michael Richards said his verbal barrage during a stand-up routine was fueled by anger and not bigotry. “For me to be at a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I’m deeply, deeply sorry,” the former “Seinfeld” co-star said during a satellite appearance for David Letterman’s “Late Show” in New York. “I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this,” Richards said, his tone becoming angry and frustrated as he defended himself. Richards described himself as going into “a rage” over the two audience members who interrupted his act Friday at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood.
His explanation was reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s assertion that he wasn’t anti-Semitic after he let off a barrage of Jewish slurs during a traffic stop last summer: despite what came out of his mouth, that’s not what is inside him.
Industry colleagues were in no hurry to accept Richards’ apology.
“Once the word comes out of your mouth and you don’t happen to be African-American, then you have a whole lot of explaining,” comedian Paul Rodriguez, who was at the Laugh Factory during Richards’ performance, told CNN. “Freedom of speech has its limitations and I think Michael Richards found those limitations.”
Veteran publicist Michael Levine, whose clients have included comedians George Carlin, Sam Kinison and
Rodney Dangerfield, called Richards’ remarks inexcusable. Comics often face hecklers without losing their cool, he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Levine said Monday. “I think it’s a career ruiner for him. … It’s going to be a long road back for him, if at all.”
It’s ironic that Sam Kinison’s former publicist is outraged by this, as Kinison’s entire act was over-the-top misogyny. And I disagree with Rodriguez that the use of the “N-word” exceeds the boundaries of permissible free speech.
Still, speech has social consequences and Levine is likely right that this will cause substantial damage to Richards’ career.
The nominees, picked by YouTube, are compiled in a gallery at www.youtube.com/YTAwards. YouTube community members can vote on their favorites beginning Monday and concluding on Friday. The winners, as chosen by the community, will be announced March 25. Each will be prominently featured on YouTube and receive a trophy, the design of which will be revealed later. 
, but certainly these Web sites are redefining who makes entertainment, when it’s available (whenever you want) — and what it is, for that matter. Not bad for that series of tubes called the Internets.
