<![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, tmi weekly]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: valleywag, tmi weekly]]> http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/tmiweekly http://gawker.com/tag/valleywag/tmiweekly <![CDATA[Julia Allison Loses One of Her Nontrepreneurs]]> NonSociety, the attempt by unduly well-known dating columnist Julia Allison to blog for dollars, will soon be down to just two. Mary Rambin, her vapid handbag-designer gal pal, is quitting the startup.

Allison, in a drunken moment at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, admitted to Rambin's impending departure from the lifestreaming venture, in which Allison, Rambin, and Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh posted constant blog entries, photos, and videos from their empty lives.

Rambin was the least prolific blogger of the three. And yet she contributed so much to NonSociety in contributing so little. True, her "speach" often lacked "coherance" (two actual recent typos). But there's nothing as entertaining as watching a rich girl who recently spent a month on a yacht opine about what it takes to make money. (Which, apparently, she needs.)

Here's Rambin's ramble about the future of Web video:

Here's my answer: I think the key to web video is creating all different formats that can exist together. Create a show with a relatively high production value with approachable characters or personas. Have these people or actors make their own unedited videos so the audience gets to know and love them. Concurrently, short, edited videos should be shot with experts and celebs to show a different perspective in an entertaining way. Approach major brands with sponsorship packages that supplement their current traditional campaign (so they don't get their panties in a bunch). Pitch brand awareness and your distribution channels (which should be any website that will have you). License the show to a major network to increase your eyeballs and the show's value and revenue.

She seems to be talking about TMIweekly, a Web-video show which recently got picked up by NBC's most obscure TV channel. Rambin, Allison said, is sticking with the show even as she's dropping NonSociety. Can you blame her? It's the only part of Allison's laughable startup which is showing even a glimmer of commercial promise. It almost makes you feel sorry for Rambin, when her best prospect for making money consists of unwatchable video on a channel no one watches.

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<![CDATA[Julia Allison to Air on Most Obscure Channel Possible]]> Relentless egoblogger Julia Allison took a break from hurling ladyparts labels at bloggers to inform us of breaking news: Her videoblog, TMIweekly, has been picked up by NBC's New York Nonstop. How appropriate!

Appropriate, because New York Nonstop is as close as one can get to the Internet in obscurity, and yet still claim to be on television, making it an appropriate home for the contentless musings of Allison, an inappropriately well-known dating columnist Time Out New York, and her two friends, Silicon Valley heiress Meghan Asha Parikh and vapid handbag designer Mary Rambin. (Or perhaps just Rambin: Rumors are spreading that Parikh may have quit, though Allison denies this.)

Episodes of TMIweekly, a videoblog, have featured the three talking about uninteresting aspects of their lives. (Imagine Twitter, but videotaped.) It's part of a pseudo-business called NonSociety. Allison recently informed me that NonSociety had taken in $60,000 in revenues in all of 2008. Using the advanced business metric known as earnings before expenses, that would give NonSociety's three foundresses a living slightly above minimum wage. Parikh's family fortune must surely throw off more interest than that in a month.

The 24-hour news channel broadcasts in Manhattan, sort of, on digital channel 4.2, and Time Warner Cable carries it on channel 161. So if you avoid triple-digit cable channels and haven't upgraded to a digital converter — since the government has pushed back the deadline for the digital transition, you probably haven't — you can remain blissfully Allison-free. New York NonStop claims a theoretical reach of 5.7 million, though, so it's possible someone, somewhere, in the New York area might accidentally be exposed to her work.

Whatever NBC is paying Allison for this 24x7 filler, it's surely too much. As NBC officials themselves seem to realize! Meredith McGinn, senior manager of special products for NBC4, explained to the New York Daily News:

You'll get your meat — your news, weather and headlines — every 15 minutes. In between those 15 minutes, you may have a two-minute segment, a two-minute pod, a five-minute pod. So the shows we're looking at are in little bits, not your traditional half-hour newscasts.

So the news is the meat, which makes TMIweekly, what, exactly? Shredded lettuce? Mayo? Anything, surely, except relish.

Rather than force you to watch TMIweekly, we will show you Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley's much funnier parody, "NomSociety":


Welcome To NomSociety from Richard Blakeley on Vimeo.

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<![CDATA[NextNewNetworks now supplying Julia Allison with better lighting]]> OMG you guys gadgets and girls and hey it's the rich girl from Los Gatos and her iPhone and her friends and one is Julia Allison! Julia Allison you guys! Who is totally not the point of this story, because wow NextNewNetworks is really producing this?

NextNewNetworks, an online-video startup better known for nerdy boy animated series and the comely political satire of Obama Girl, has been trying to break into the girly dating bracket for some time. The result: Allison's TMI Weekly. Tim Shey, NextNew's head of entertainment programming, told the Los Angeles Times:

We see it as an underserved community — young women who aren’t really reached by television. They’re watching a lot of YouTube. They care about style, tech, iPhones — how do they balance their career, their life and their relationship?

But the real draw here isn't women's "underserved" needs. It's watching these women — the Julia Allison Girl Army. They froth as sincerely as they can, but they're still doling out the same television-ready advice. Is anyone really watching for iPhone app recommendations? There'd be no show here at all if there weren't already an audience of women and men just waiting to see what mess Julia makes next. After this show inevitably flops, will NextNew adopt Allison's soon-to-be-rejected reality show, The IT Girls, and run that instead? There's a reason that Allison and friends haven't made it even onto cable yet — TMI Weekly is an apt showcase for the extreme dislikeability which will keep them sequestered to a third-rate online-video startup. But that doesn't matter for Shey and company: They can safely sit back, flip the switch, and collect.

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