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CollegeHumor

URL	http://www.collegehumor.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Entertainment website
Registration	Optional
Owner	IAC/InterActiveCorp
Created by	Josh Abramson, Ricky Van Veen
Launched	1999

CollegeHumor is a comedy website owned by InterActiveCorp and based in New York City. The site features daily original comedy and other videos and articles pertaining to recreation of a college student created by its in-house writing and production team, in addition to user-submitted videos, pictures, articles and links. In late 2008, CollegeHumor's editorial staff wrote and starred in their own TV show, The CollegeHumor Show, on MTV. CollegeHumor is operated by Connected Ventures, a New York company that also owns Defunker, BustedTees, Sports Pickle, and Vimeo.^[1]

History

The site was created in 1999 by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen. Abramson and Van Veen were high school friends from Baltimore, Maryland. Site traffic averages over 7 million monthly unique visitors, according to Quantcast direct measurement.^[2] According to Fox News, "[We wanted to start] an advertisement-based business," Abramson said, "because at the time the advertising market was pretty hot and we’d seen other people develop Web sites that were popular making a lot of money." Their aim was to create a humor site that would appeal to the advertiser-friendly college-aged demographic.^[3] CollegeHumor, along with its parent company, Connected Ventures, was acquired by Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp in August 2006.^{[citation needed]} In recent years, the site has become known for its original comedy content. In 2008, CollegeHumor was nominated for a Webby Award in the Humor category.^[4] Their videos Awkward Rap and Hand Vagina were nominated for the Webby Award for Best Comedy: Individual Short or Episode in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Features

Videos

CollegeHumor produces original comedy videos under the CH Originals (formerly known as CHTV) banner. In addition, the site hosts a large collection of user-submitted viral videos, encompassing home movies, bizarre sports highlights, sketches, and the like.

Pictures

CollegeHumor's Pictures section features user-submitted photographs. Like the site's videos, CollegeHumor's pictures are of a humorous or bizarre nature. CollegeHumor also occasionally holds photo-based contests for its users. CollegeHumor also provides a hottest/cutest college girl contest almost every day throughout the year.

Articles

CollegeHumor posts original writing from its staff and users, including humorous essays, comics, interviews and weekly columns on sports, video games, college life, and dating. Contributing writers to the site include notable comedians Christian Finnegan, David Wain, Paul Scheer, and Judah Friedlander.

CH Originals

CH Originals is CollegeHumor's original comedy video section, featuring sketches and short films written and produced by the CollegeHumor staff. The site releases over ten new videos per week. CH Originals videos include sketch comedy, film and television parodies, animation, and music videos. In addition to stand-alone viral comedy shorts or "one-offs," which are usually shot on location and feature hired actors, CH Originals also produces a number of series - notably "Hardly Working," "Jake and Amir," and "Bleep Bloop" - which are shot in the CH office and star the CH staff members themselves. ^[5]

CollegeHumor's original videos average over 17 million views per month on the site. In addition, their videos are collected on the CollegeHumor YouTube Channel, which currently has over 500,000 subscribers. ^[6].

CH Originals produces The Michael Showalter Showalter, a Charlie Rose-style comedic interview series hosted by Michael Showalter. Past guests on the show include Paul Rudd, Andy Samberg, David Cross, and Michael Cera.

In 2008, the CH Originals series "Street Fighter: The Later Years" was nominated for "Best Series" by YouTube's Video Awards ^[7].

CH Originals' "Prank War" series, which documents the escalating practical jokes between two members of the CollegeHumor staff (Streeter Seidell and Amir Blumenfeld), gained national notoriety after one of the two employees staged a public marriage proposal to the other's girlfriend on his behalf. The incident was known as “The Yankee Prankee," and was later featured on VH1's "40 Greatest Pranks Part 2." ^[8]

List of Sketches

CollegeHumor is known for creating mini-videos containing comedic sketches, parodies, reviews or stand up comedy videos. These videos normally have time run of 2-3 minutes. The videos are posted on the website, a month before it is posted on the CollegeHumor's Youtube channel. These skits include:

Hardly Working

A series of comedic skits involving all the CollegeHumor staff.

Bleep Bloop

Videogame review hosted by Jeff Rubin and Patrick Cassels. They are normally joined by guest hosts.

Jake and Amir

Mini-skit involving Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld. The two play as themselves although with different characteristics than their real-life attitudes.

Streeter Theeter

Mini-skits involving Streeter Seidell. Seidell's starring videos were considered as a part of Hardly Working before. Streeter Theeter includes "The Overgrown Guy Girlfriend", "The Phantom of the...", "Time Traveler", "Gunter Granz" and "Best Buy Manager".

POV

Skits shot through someone's point of view, hence the name. The videos are in the POV of a guy normally voiced by Vinnie Peone and acted by Josh Ruben. Sometimes the videos are led by a woman. The POV videos are some of Collegehumor's most successful in terms of views and all have gained a million views or more on the CH's Youtube channel.

Josh's Mindhouse

Mini-skits starring Josh Ruben. This section was not used until early 2010 when it appeared on the video, "Mind Control". Josh's Mindhouse includes "Gale Beggy" and "Learon".

Animations

A series of animated cartoon videos and is normally drawn by Dan Meth. The Cartoon is also considered an animation although it is sometimes combined with Hardly working. It involves asking the CollegeHumor staff a series of question such as "Time Travelling" or "Animal Sex", then their replies then are converted into the voices in the cartoon.

All Nighter

All Nighter first started between 2006 and 2007. In this video series, the staff of CollegeHumor attempts to shoot videos from 9pm to 9am, posting one video every hour. By 2008, they added a livestream chat through ustream and twitter where they can communicate with fans while doing the event.

CH Live

A series of videoclips gathered during a live stand up comedy show by CollegeHumor staff.

Prank War

These are videos in which Amir Blumenfeld and Streeter Seidell plays pranks on each other. This includes the "Yankee Prankee" and the "Half Court Shot" which have both gained more than a million views on Youtube. Prank Wars have also been recognized on television, specially on the Jimmy Kimmel Show, where the latest prank by Amir Blumenfeld, "The Skydiving Prank", was premiered.

CollegeHumor Staff

The main CollegeHumor staff picture on the The CollegeHumor Show. (L-R) Sarah Schneider, Jake Hurwitz, Streeter Seidell (down), Sam Reich (up), Ricky Van Veen (middle), Dan Gurewitch (up), Jeff Rubin (down) Patrick Cassels (up), and Amir Blumenfeld

The CollegeHumor staff and writers are normally the ones acting or directing the sketches. Amir Blumenfeld, Sarah Schneider and Dan Gurewitch are considered as senior writers as they have started working for CollegeHumor since its creation in early 2006. Others such as Jake Hurwitz and Pat Cassels are junior writers. Sam Reich is the website's manager. Streeter Seidell is the front page editor while Jeff Rubin is the managing director. The owner Ricky Van Veen also appears on some videos from time to time. Directors (including Vincent "Vinnie" Peone and Josh Ruben), Interns (who some later became staff such as Jeff "Rosie" Rosenberg and Kevin Corrigan) and other staff also acts on videos sketches.

The CollegeHumor Show

On December 17th, 2008, CollegeHumor.com announced The CollegeHumor Show, a scripted comedy that premiered on MTV on February 8, 2009.^[9] The half-hour comedy was written by and starred nine actual CollegeHumor.com editorial staff members (Ricky Van Veen, Jake Hurwitz, Amir Blumenfeld, Dan Gurewitch, Patrick Cassels, Sarah Schneider, Streeter Seidell, Sam Reich and Jeff Rubin), who play fictionalized versions of themselves. The show did not get picked up for a second season.

Books

• The Writers of CollegeHumor.com (2006-04-06). The CollegeHumor Guide to College: Selling Kidneys for Beer Money, Sleeping with Your Professors, Majoring in Communications, and Other Really Good Ideas. Dutton Adult. ISBN 0525949399. 
• The Writers of CollegeHumor.com (2007-03-27). Faking It: How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself. Dutton Adult. ISBN 0525949917. 

References

External links

• CollegeHumor
• CollegeHumor at YouTube
• CHTV: CollegeHumor Original Videos at MySpace