Lil’ Bush & the gang

Expanding their partnership, MTV Networks and youth-oriented Amp’d Mobile announced Wednesday that they plan to develop original episodic shows exclusively for the Amp’d phone (from MediaPost).

The agreement builds on two previous projects: “Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States,” mobisodes now being adapted for Comedy Central later this year, and mtvU’s “Sucks Less, With Kevin Smith,” which appears on Amp’d and features filmmaker Kevin Smith teaching the first-ever mobile media production class at UCLA.

Programming through the new partnership may appear on any of MTV’s channels on Amp’d, including MTV, mtvU, VH1, Comedy Central, Spike and Logo. The original mobile shows are not expected to carry advertising, according to an MTV spokesman.

Despite original content, several mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, have struggles to stay afloat. ESPN shut down in September, but so far Amp’d is staying afloat with 100,000 subscribers to date. Virgin Mobile USA is the most successful with more than 4 million.

Disney’s decision to break from the rest of the movie industry and offer its films for sale on iTunes continues to pay dividends, with over 1.3 million movies sold via the service since October.

Disney’s exceptional sales may cause other studios to rethink their policy toward iTunes, the Financial Times writes. Studios have resisted offering films via iTunes in fear of alienating retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target - major purveyors of studios’ DVDs. Retailers have said movie downloads may force DVD prices down and reduce retail sales.

But Disney seems to be proving detractors wrong. Its recent hit Cars was a strong DVD seller, and its Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is on pace to become the best-selling DVD ever.

“The message that we deliver to our traditional [retail] partners is that the pie is getting bigger,” said Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive.

MTV Networks will license the Warner Music Group’s music video catalog to create programming for mobile devices - the mobile industry’s first deal between a major label and MTV - reports Reuters (via MediaBuyerPlanner). The service will be available either by subscription or as video on demand, and pricing will be determined by the mobile network. The music industry now draws about half of its digital revenue from ring tones, so on-demand music programming may be the logical next step.

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MTV wanted its own YouTube, and Viacom has obliged, continuing its thrust into the digital realm; it plans to acquire Atom Entertainment in a bid to expand its online video and game holdings.

Viacom’s MTV Networks will acquire Atom for $200 million, bringing under its aegis several popular online video and gaming destinations, including Atom Films, AddictingClips, Shockwave.com and AddictingGames, ClickZ reports. The sale is expected to close this quarter. Atom Films was a dominant source of online video and film before the meteoric rise of consumer-generated content and video-sharing sites like YouTube and MySpace. MTV’s deal with Google this week calls for the distribution of MTV video content, along with in-stream ads, to third-party sites.

Acquiring Atom Entertainment advances Viacom’s multiplatform strategy of building an engaging universe of music, gaming, entertainment, news and interactivity for targeted audiences, the companies said in a statement. The acquisition is in line with Viacom’s digital strategy and “adds great scale with users, improves our growing casual gaming position, and brings a world-class digital video library and a fantastic management team,” Viacom CEO Tom Freston said.

Atom’s videos will be made available across MTV’s 24 broadband channels, writes Reuters, adding that Viacom in May acquired a builder of online game forums, Xfire, for $102 million. Atom Entertainment was formed about five years ago with the merger of Atom Films and Shockwave.com, which offered online games.

ViTrue, a user-generated advertising platform that considers itself “brand-safe,” has partnered with Viacom’s VH1 to create a user-generated music video site.

The new site, talentload.tv, will allow users to create and upload music videos using ViTrue’s platform and tools, iMedia Connection reports. The site “empowers us to collaborate with our audiences and have them contribute to our network and our partners’ properties in ways never before possible,” VH1’s Fred Graver is quoted as saying.

VH1 has used talentload.tv in previous promotions, partnering with Warner Brothers to hold a songwriting contest to promote the film Music and Lyrics, starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, to be released Feb. 14.

The campaign has already generated over a million pageviews and 400 original, user-generated love songs.

via CyberSource

Online-payment security company CyberSource has named Nigeria the riskiest country and New York the riskiest U.S. city for e-commerce transactions reports Internet Retailer.

The two locales have the highest concentration of e-commerce transactions that turn out to be fraudulent - conducted via a stolen credit card or other dubious method - according to a CyberSource survey of retailers.

New York City received the highest number of mentions for fraudulent transactions; it was cited by 9 percent of respondents. That’s down significantly from last year’s 18 percent. Nigeria was cited by 31 percent as the highest-risk country, easily beating second-place Russia (9 percent).

The higher awareness of fraud and more specific reporting are good signs, CyberSource’s Dough Schwegman says, because it means more e-tailers are employing safeguards against fraud and are maintaining a high level of vigilance.

Otherwise staid NBC has launched Early Nightly, a video blog informally covering upcoming news stories.

Featuring NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, the 1-2-minute vlog debuted Monday afternoon and will henceforth report, after the morning’s editorial meeting, on what the day’s big stories are likely to be, reports MediaWeek. Williams has kept a “traditional” blog, the Daily Nightly, since May 2005. The new vlog is available at DailyNightly.MSNBC.com, NBC affiliate sites, and NBC Mobile.

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NBC Universal said on Monday it plans to launch a new television show based on its iVillage internet community for women - which it purchased earlier this year - over its Bravo cable network and its 10 owned-and-operated TV stations.

“This is a real interactive, online and on-the-air television program that we are not going to judge by its ratings,” NBC Universal Television Chief Executive Jeff Zucker told the Credit Suisse media and telecom conference in New York, according to Reuters. He did not elaborate on the program’s format.

NBC said in October it planned to cut about 700 jobs and slash annual operating costs by $750 million to overhaul its media businesses and invest more heavily in growth businesses such as the internet, where it expects to generate about $300-$400 million in revenue in 2006.

On Monday, NBC also relaunched the website for its top-rated business cable TV network CNBC, focusing more heavily on originally produced online video and more videos from its on-air broadcasts.