Online humor site CollegeHumor has signed with one of the leading talent agencies in Hollywood, the United Talent Agency. UTA is known in the entertainment industry as one of the largest talent reps, with major stars like Harrison Ford, Ben Stiller, Johnny Depp, and the Olsen Twins on their client list.
UTA also has a reputation of striking out onto the Internet to find talent and represent “lonelygirl15” Jessica Rose, one of the Internet’s most well-known stars. We reported in July that UTA had teamed up with SpotRunner to create 60Frames Entertainment, an online media production company, and they run UTA Online, a division that specializes in finding talent via web video.
According to CollegeHumor, their site is trafficked by 6 million unique visitors every month and gets better than 20 million pageviews. Originally founded in 1999 as a respository for funny stuff found on the Internet — and copyright be damned — the site has since transitioned to creating much of its own content and is responsible for many of the more memorable viral videos of the past few years. Most of them are NSFW, but I’ve embedded one of the more tame clips below.
CollegeHumor already has two books in stores and are teaming up with MTV Films as part of a feature film deal with Paramount.
I find it rather humorous (no pun intended) that all the big media companies are trying to get online (in the past two days our network blog last100 has reported on NBC and ABC planning new online services or strategies), while small-time, web content creators such as CollegeHumor, Jessica Rose, or Andy Samberg are figuring out ways to get offline.
