Mingle Media TV Sponsors 2nd “Audience Choice” Category at Upcoming 3rd New Media Film Festival

MMTVN expands Audience Choice category sponsorship in the New Media Film Festival 2012, for web series, live stream, and trailers. Online voting by fans will create additional buzz to support new media filmmakers and independent content creators.

Online media and live web TV network company; Mingle Media.TV announced today that they will be expanding the categories that they sponsor for the “Audience Choice” category in the New Media Film Festival. The new categories “trailers” and “live stream web shows” will join the “web series” category and will benefit from online promotion, visibility to distributors, prizes totally over $5,000 as well as the opportunity to have their project selected to screen at the 2012 New Media Film Festival.

The New Media Film Festival brings together Industry Professionals and Content Creators across Film, TV, Games, Publishing, Mobile, Web, and Tech. The two-day event features the Best of New Media and includes Short Films, Mobile, Games, Web, iApps, Animation, Music Videos, Digital Comics, Web Series, Live Stream, Technology Platforms, and New Film Technologies. Screenings include Sundance, Cannes, and World Premieres as well as the best talent working in new media.

“We’re excited to support the New Media Film Festival by sponsoring the “Audience Choice” category for these three areas of growth.” Said Stephanie Piche, Executive Producer, Mingle Media TV. “With more and more independent digital film makers creating projects, we wanted to showcase their work through the online voting to help them gain exposure and find new fans.”

Call for Entries: New Media Film Festival
The New Media Film Festival is now accepting entries for the June 2012 Festival including the Mingle Media TV “Audience Choice” sponsorship.

The “Audience Choice” categories invite web series and LIVE stream video creators who have three or more episodes, less than 60 minutes in length to submit their project in the following unscripted and scripted genres: Action/Adventure, Animation, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Horror, Music/Performing Arts, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Special Interest, Sport/Fitness, and War. Filmmakers can also submit a pilot or trailer that is under 3 minutes in length to the competition. The audience gets to vote online for their favorite submissions in two rounds of voting before the winners are selected. The Grand Prize winners will be announced at the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles, 2012. For more details, please visit: http://www.minglemediatv.com/NMFFAudienceChoice.html.

Mingle Media TV currently broadcasts over 100 live and episodic web TV interactive programs each week. MMTVN has produced over 6,000 hours of live stream interactive talk shows where audience members can interact with hosts and viewers online or via mobile devices. Show sponsors and advertisers benefit from an integrated ad approach, where the hosts talk about products, which later become meta-tagged content on the Internet within social networks as part of their sponsorship.

About New Media Film Festival
The New Media Film Festival brings together Industry Professionals and Content Creators across Film, TV, Games, Publishing, Mobile, Web and Tech. Founded by Independent Filmmaker, Susan Johnston and launching in Los Angeles, June 2010, the three-day event features the Best of New Media and includes Short Film, Mobile, Games, Web, iApps, Animation, Technology Platforms, and New Film Technologies. New Media Film Festival-SF Bay Area is produced in partnership with Producers Guild of America, NATPE, IAWTV, and San Francisco Writers Conference. New Media Film Festival (San Francisco and Los Angeles) are currently accepting submissions athttp://www.NewMediaFilmFestival.com. For more information about the Festival and/or sponsorships, please contact Susan Johnston, the Founder, and Director of the New Media Film Festival, at 310-288-1100 or info@NewMediaFilmFestival.com

About Mingle Media
 TV Network
MMTVN is an online media and interactive web TV network that executive produces, curates, and broadcasts 100 weekly web series shows along with entertainment industry event coverage. Our video coverage, web series and live broadcasts are promoted via Twitter, blog posts, Facebook and other popular social networks; in addition to airing live on the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android platforms and syndicated through Blip.TV and over 15 syndication sites including AOL Video, YouTube, Samsung, Vizio, MeeFeedia, Blinkx, Daily Motion, Boxee, Roku and as an iTunes podcast. Our audience reach online is over 250,000 weekly views of our video coverage, web series and live broadcasts and are currently in the top 20,000 websites in the US. MMTVN’s live web TV shows feature lifestyle subject matter experts and social media content providers from celebrities, authors to bloggers including executive producing two shows with Emmy award winners. MMTVN has expanded its curation of web series with a growing number of independently produced shows from science fiction to drama, action to teen soaps now playing on the network. In addition to curating produced webseries, MMTVN is promoting and securing sponsors for INDIE creators. MMTVN also covers Hollywood celebrity and charity events from the red carpet and behind the scenes. MMTVN has covered the Oscars on the Red Carpet along with Golden Globes, IPTVFest, HollyShorts, LA Shorts Fest, AOF Fest, Daytime Emmys, Saturn Awards, Streamy Awards, People’s Choice, NAACP, SAG , plus numerous Web Series Premieres and A-list Celebrity Fundraisers. Mingle Media TV is also sponsoring the Audience Choice Category in the New Media Film Festival for Web Series Creators. For more information, please visithttp://www.minglemediatvnetwork.com.

How You Can Make the Most of #WebSeriesChat on Twitter

Why #WebSeriesChat?

Over a year ago Patrick from Slebisodes and Stephanie from MingleMediaTV decided to host a weekly chat to help bring together independent filmmakers, writers, actors, fans, producers of web series to share ideas and build community.

Initially, we were pulling in guests which was really fun to meet people outside of the LA web series world and then we would have topics from funding to marketing to budgets. But sometimes it gets old. We have always been open to suggestions from our community and have supported community events from festivals to Celebrate the Web.

With that said – there are some rules of the road that we all should follow. Here’s the business side of my brain along with feedback we’ve seen from others in the community who have tried to join the chat but have found it somewhat disjointed at times.

We are not “Cat Herders” 

• We announce via Twitter and Facebook the topic of the day before #WebSeriesChat starts, we also tweet it during the chat – so @MingleTVNetwork @Slebisodes or searching on #WebSeriesChat in Twitter will provide you with what we are talking about for that week.
• If we have an invited guest, we encourage you to join in the conversation and ask questions about their series or expertise.
• We ask that you keep OFF TOPIC conversations off #WebSeriesChat during the hour – you are free to chat with anyone on Twitter – but keep the #WebSeriesChat hashtag off if it is not related to the current topic
• We ask that you keep your promo tabled until the end of chat as the last 5 minutes are dedicated to self-promo.

Respect your fellow creator.

Twitter is not like a BlogTalkRadio or Stickam show where the hosts can hold the conversation / topic without being interrupted by the chat room. In a Twitter chat – your off-topic tweets are in the stream. These tweets to other participants are a distraction and are disrespectful to the guests who have agreed to join the chat and share their expertise for that brief time period.

• If you don’t like the conversation topic – then don’t use the #WebSeriesChat hashtag and hold your own conversations separately.
• If you don’t like the conversation topic – and have a topic you’d like covered – tweet to @Slebisodes or @MingleMediaTV and suggest it for coverage for a future #WebSeriesChat session – that way your topic will get the attention it deserves
• The weekly #WebSeriesChat is hosted by @Slebisodes @MingleMediaTV and we’re the hosts and the leaders of the “show” – so respect us, the guests and or the topic selected for the week – we’re trying to support the community and it is not all about YOU when it’s time for the weekly #WebSeriesChat on Twitter – it’s about the topic/guest.

With that said – we are huge supporters of the Web Series community – we provide services to many web series by promoting their series through listings and hosting on our respective sites. We are panelists at festivals and industry events and have made the weekly chat something we didn’t give up on like so many others before or during us – it’s not easy to promote and hold chat every week – and we do it. We also are trying to bring NEW people into chat so you are exposed to other ways to launch your series successfully.

You may agree that sometimes the topic has been beaten to death over and over  in chat and nothing new is shared – hence the need to come up with new and fresh topics that are planned by @Slebisodes & @MingleMediaTV for that next #WebSeriesChat.

There are other weekly chats from other industries on Twitter and they are very focused and the audience is very in-tune with what is going on for that week. We want #WebSeriesChat to be fun and engaging – but if you aren’t happy with the topic, you don’t have to stay and disrupt it – we won’t hold it against you.

We want to make this chat something that helps all involved with web series meet new people, learn new things and we always welcome your suggestions AHEAD of TIME to making it even better.

Thanks for participating and supporting the weekly chat.

Content Farm, Scraper Site or Community? Who’s Getting Paid for Your Content Web Series Creators?

Mingle Media TV Network is a member of the online web series community. We support web series, produced, live and have our entertainment reporting division where we cover festivals, red carpets, premiere’s and so on. We have grown our community online to support creators and we co-host weekly #WebSeriesChat with @Slebisodes and we participate in seminars and events held by WebSeriesNetwork.

We have LIVE web talk shows that are in their second year of production with a huge online audience and national sponsors. We are working with and will be rolling out a new program for web series producers to help them build and fund their series later this spring.

What we don’t do is TAKE your content off the web and promote it to bring traffic to our site. We ask you if we can host your series (curate it) we add you to our site, roster, and tweet your series out on a regular basis while exposing you to the daily traffic that come to our live, lifestyle talk shows and red carpet report. We create a branded page for YOUR series, we have links back to your blog, website, twitter and Facebook accounts and we even have Clicker.com check-in so people watching can share your show online. We do NOT put advertising on the content we feed to your show page and you do get those views in your YouTube channel from our site. Win-Win. As we expand our network and roll out our new program for web series creators this will be even more exciting as we want to help build visibility for your work and help you on the business side of the equation.

Mingle Media TV Network also sponsors the Audience Choice Awards for the New Media Film Festival… helping get more visibility for your series during the season leading up to the Festival event held in May in Los Angeles and their sister event in San Francisco in November. The festival also has monetization programs based on your content and the opportunities available.

Why am I writing this?

Today, I saw a tweet that followed the announcement of a partnership between Tubefilter and Sidereel.com. You can read about the community feedback regarding this topic on WebSeriesNetwork by clicking here. I’m not going to rehash that conversation here, what I am going to offer up is the BUSINESS side – reality of what is going on as I have heard many of you not understanding the impact to the community i.e. those out there like Mingle Media TV (using the example from today).

Side Reel Tweet - Tubefilter Partner - LINK BAIT

I saw this Tweet a few hours ago… we had 7 LIVE web shows during the past 5 hours so I was a little distracted and now am writing this post and what it means to me.

Mingle Media TV is a BRAND – it is one that we work very hard on developing… we do not endorse SideReel.com nor were we asked to offer our curated content to their site. Why would we? We curate, create, produce and promote content on our site we work long hours and support a community and now SideReel.com is taking our BRAND name and lending it to LINK BAIT (a method to grow traffic to your site using topics that “catch people’s attention”).

Who gets paid? Not Mingle Media TV Network – and not the content creator.

Did that wake you up? Yes, SideReel.com’s Tweet above using MY BRAND to get you to click on their link to their website landing page where TUBEFILTER’s brand was posted in a widget scrolling their feed but no where did you find MY BRAND or MyDamnChannel’s brand. What you did see if you scrolled down further on the page were the thumbnails to the shows that Tubefilter recommends from content on Mingle Media TV and MyDamnChannel. So who did the work to originally contact the CREATOR and get their permission to be on MMTVN? We did.

What’s on the page you linked to from the TWEET? Several display ads. Nothing to watch but then you click on the thumbnail and go to another page with several display ads and the web series. Of course, they have to pay for their site and the “SideReelAdam” Twitter person who link baits you to the site. But are they paying the creator? What deal do they have? Is this how SideReel.com and Tubefilter are supporting webseries? Linkbaits and content farms?

Here’s more of the business side of why this has irritated me and why YOU should also be concerned:

Last week, Google made a massive change to its index, known as the Farmer Update, which affected more than 12% of US search queries. Startup and small business that depend on search engine traffic to thrive and grow might notice some key changes as a result of the Google change:

• Your rankings may have dropped
• You may notice decreasing traffic from shorter phrases
• You may notice your marketing efforts yielding diminishing returns

Who is Google Targeting?

• Content Farm Examples: Demand Media, eHow, Huffington Post, Mahalo
• Scraper Website Examples: Websites which scrape or steal content from other sites and then repost it — HMM, SideReel.com?

What does this mean? I’m putting on my propeller hat for this next section.

Search engines want to serve up quality, relevant search results. If you are competing with sites that use YOUR content without links back to YOU they are NOT building your brand, but using it to build theirs. Unless they are revenue sharing with you and you agree to it – you are getting ripped off. Google is taking steps to block or push back these sites so YOUR relevant content shows up on searches. For every site that has YOUR content and no reference back to help YOU build your audience and fan base, you are not #Winning (thanks Charlie Sheen for inspiring the right #word here). There are work arounds to everything and believe me – content farms and scraper sites are not your friends and they will keep changing things around. They have LOTS of ads and link bait people into clicking on an average of six (6) pages for every — ChaChing. Your page, not so much. No links back to your website, facebook, blog, twitter and no revenue share.

What should you do? Well, it doesn’t hurt that your content is being watched but you are not building an audience by linking to them and talking to them using Facebook, Twitter, your blog are you? Were you contacted and asked permission to have your content posted on their site? Are they displaying advertising on the pages to get to your content and NOT sharing that revenue with you? It’s up to you. Are you in this to partner with sites that promote you and do so without making money on your content without a revenue sharing model in place?

One more thing to think about, a Facebook fan is worth $136 on average. If people watch your content on scraper sites and LIKE them, and never know how to “like you” you are losing valuable fans and commerce for sponsorships. As I mentioned above, we will be rolling out a new, exciting program for web series creators who want to make this a business and are members of the MMTVN community. Conversely, banner ads serve up about $3-$10 per thousand views so these content farms and scraper sites need to have people click on 5-6 pages to get to the content they seek so they can serve up 5-6 ads per page x 6 pages (36 ads on average per visit – doesn’t make it hard to have millions of ads served up and paid to them when they link bait and have thousands of key-worded pages for people to click around on – and before you know it no one will see your content there because there is so much on that site it gets buried – so what is the value to you?).

MMTVN is not making money off of content creators on our site by doing this practice, it is not our business model, our focus is to help you build your brand and business… the business of entertainment. Feel free to comment or email me directly with any further questions.

– Stephanie, Executive Producer / CEO, Mingle Media TV Network

Please flip it off. Don’t flip us off. #EarthHour2010

Earth Hour: It’s a Choice To Turn OFF Non-Essential Electrical Devices

Last year I watched the Twitter feed about Earth Hour and was so amazed at the number of people who tweeted they did not care, they turned all their lights on, they did not believe in global warming, etc… You get my drift.

However, this act, of turning your lights and non-essential electronics off for one hour is more about being a symbolic gesture of honoring the Earth and sending a message to those around you from neighbors to politicians to the power companies that we do care.

When did we stop caring about causes? When did we stop wanting to be heard? Why do we not care about the planet we live on? For me, I’ve seen one too many SciFi movies about aliens coming to planet earth because they could no longer live on their planet as they used up all their resources.

If you don’t believe in global warming, nothing will change your mind. But if you do believe we should take care of the place we live then why not start tonight?

With over 125 countries and regions around the world participating in this small act of awareness, we join the world in showing we do care enough to stop and think about our  planet.

That’s all we can ask today and maybe all you are willing to do. We don’t have to ignore the gesture and tweet out we have all our lights on, it only proves one thing and I think you know what that is.

Tonight join all of us at Mingle Media TV and our friends around the world for Earth Hour > one hour > 8:30 PM YOUR LOCAL Time Zone.

Please flip it off. Don’t flip us off.  #EarthHour2010