SMOSH! Announces YouTube Animation Channel, Shut Up! Cartoons
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES, April 13, 2012Â — SMOSH, an online leader in teen and young adult comedy content and the third-most subscribed to channel on YouTube, today announced that its Shut Up! Cartoons will launch April 30 as part of YouTube’s original channel offering. SMOSH, owned by Alloy Digital, a leading creator and distributor of high-quality digital content, boasts a stellar roster of irreverent creators producing content for Shut Up! Cartoons, including those behind some of the most popular and recognized animated properties.
“We are very excited with our initial batch of programming for Shut Up! Cartoons and are grateful to our partners at YouTube for offering us the opportunity to participate in their unprecedented original programming initiative,” stated SMOSH President and Alloy Digital EVP Barry Blumberg. “This ambitious undertaking provides these brilliant creative minds with a tremendous platform to showcase their talent and passion projects.”
Shut Up! Cartoons is the brainchild of Blumberg, the former longtime chief of Disney Television Animation, and his partners, SMOSH co-founders and comedic dynamic duo, Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox.
The animation channel has attracted a diverse launch group of creators and producers that will initially deliver 18 short-form web series comprising 180 episodes in the first year. Three series will premiere the week of April 30, 2012, leading with Do’s and Don’ts: A Children’s Guide to Social Survival debuting on Monday April 30, Pubertina on Wednesday May 2 and Zombies Vs. Ninjas on Friday, May 4. All three series will debut promptly 12:00pm Pacific Time.
New series will be added throughout the year, featuring a dynamic array of animation styles and themes appealing to the 12-24 year old demographic. This audience is one that SMOSH – hailed by Time Magazine as “the Saturday Night Live of the internet” – has captivated through its unique brand of comedy from inception.
Among the acclaimed creative talent joining Shut Up! Cartoons is Cory Edwards (Hoodwinked!, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil), whose Krogzilla Gets a Job chronicles a downsized Japanese monster forced to seek a variety of jobs; Peter Hastings (Pinky and the Brain) and Prudence Fenton (Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Liquid Television), whose Sub: 3 provides a unique take on the premise “The pizza must be delivered in three minutes!”; and Peter Hannan (Nickelodeon’s CatDog), who animates real audio answers to embarrassing questions with Really Freaking Embarrassing.
Padilla and Hecox will work closely with the creative team while also delivering their own project, Teleporting Fat Guy, in which the time-traveling hero of many SMOSH sketches lands his own animated series.
“We’ve set out to establish a welcoming environment to entice a diverse and extremely talented group of individuals to the channel, covering the entire spectrum from accomplished filmmakers to college students – we even got a pitch from a 10-year-old kid,” continued Blumberg. “We have given our creators the creative freedom to be as off the wall as they want within content guidelines. In fact, we take the Shut Up! from our name as marching orders for how we work with talent. We just try to ‘shut up’, let them do what they do best, and deliver what could be the next huge breakthrough multi-platform hit.”
Having joined SMOSH in 2006, Blumberg leads the property’s business and audience development initiatives that have catapulted the channel to its continued top-ranking YouTube status, and is also responsible for its thriving marketing and merchandising extensions, as well as the SMOSH website (www.smosh.com).
At Disney, Blumberg led the development and production of all TV animation series, series-based theatrical releases and video premieres/compilations from 1994-2006 (including the first Disney Channel series, the Emmy-winning Kim Possible, as well as guiding animated franchises such as Disney’s Recess). During his tenure, he took ABC’s rebranded Saturday morning kids’ block from #4 to #1 in one season and expanded the production slate to include branded programming blocks for terrestrial Television and Disney Channels worldwide.
Blumberg has recruited several former Disney colleagues for Shut Up! Cartoons, including Lenora Hume, who he tapped to lead production following her award-winning tenures with Nelvana, Walt Disney Television Animation, DisneyToon Studios, and HIT Entertainment.
Shut Up! Cartoons will benefit from ongoing cross-promotion through other Alloy properties, including SMOSH’s two YouTube Channels, with established audiences of more than six million subscribers from the coveted 12-24 year old demographic, and www.smosh.com, which draws more than 13 million monthly visitors. Shut Up! Cartoons will additionally work closely with Alloy’s in-house production division, Generate Studios.
The animation channel will also receive significant media promotion through targeted websites across the Alloy Digital Network, the top-ranking digital and video network in its category, according to comScore, as well as through extensive social media promotion. The network is comprised of Alloy owned-and-operated sites appealing to the 12-34 market. Alloy Digital acquired SMOSH in July 2011.
Scheduled initial programming will include:
Do’s and Don’ts: A Children’s Guide to Social Survival (Ryan Naumann): Horrible lessons for youngsters in trying situations.
Pubertina (Emily Brundige):Life is hard when you’re an eleven year old going through that awkward stage.
Zombies vs. Ninjas (Michael Granberry): Stop motion series filled with over the top zombie vs. ninjas battles
Krogzilla Gets a Job (Cory Edwards): Japanese monster shrinks down to human size and is forced to seek a variety of jobs.
Snowjacked (Kelsy Abbott, John Olsen): An action comedy that follows the search for our protagonist’s snowjacked family.
Nature Break (Mike Hollingsworth): Nature vignettes with horrible outcomes
Weasel Town (Nathan Hamill, Eric Filipkowski): Traditional buddy comedy from superstar creators
Oishi High School Battle (Daniel Dominguez, Joe Gressis): Hanna Montana meets Sailor Moon. What would happen if an Anime character is forced to attend regular High School?
Subscribe to Shut Up! Cartoons: http://youtube.com/ShutUpCartoons.
