"DELETED: THE GAME" WINS AT WEBBY AWARDS 09

GEN247 makes interactive web TV series. We combine original web serials with ARGs. One of our recent titles, DELETED: THE GAME, was nominated for two Webbys, won one and was honored in the other.

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web's infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of

leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.

Jamison Tilsner and Joshua Cohen conceived the Onfronts as an opportunity to elevate the status of original online programming. GEN247 attended as an one of ten Official Selections in the Independent Producers category.

Joshua writes, ""Internet video is still in its infancy and many advancements - in the form of distribution strategies, content quality, last mile technologies, and electronic program guides - need to take place before the medium fully matures. But one of the biggest deciders of online video’s eventual size and the speed of its growth is the extent to which brands are willing to invest in its development.

Onfront NYC was designed to accelerate that investment. By bringing together premier new media studios, major advertisers, and brand representatives, we hoped that all three parties can learn from one another on how to facilitate more ad buys in the online video space. And what better person to convey that message in the keynote address than Jordan Levin.

As the youngest major broadcast network CEO in television history, and the CEO and co-founder of multiplatform media company Generate, Levin has a a particularly unique purview of this nascent industry. Having developed pop cultural hits like Dawson’s Creek, Felicity and Buffy the Vampire Slayer for The WB, and Pink and The Lake as original series for the web, Levin’s resume is equal parts creative and business. He’s played an instrumental role in bringing engaging programming to the masses and successfully selling that programming to advertisers. From his experience in the TV industry and his time atop The WB, it’s obvious Levin is intimately familiar with how brands respond to and invest in television.

Part of Levin’s keynote highlighted the fact that brands have been the driving force behind some of radio and television’s most “durable and popular programming genres…Soap operas, called soap operas because they were developed as vehicles to sell soap and detergent, situation comedies, serialized dramas, variety shows, essentially television as we know it bloomed thanks to brand sponsorship.”

At a time when old media platforms were in their infancy, brands took chances on the fledgling mediums. The key takeaway from Levin’s speech was a call to action. Brands need to take changes again. Significant investments from both technology and production companies have spawned the start of what is a thriving and incredibly passionate entertainment industry. It’s time for brands to start investing, too.

Levin’s full, unedited keynote address is below. I highly recommend you read it."

JORDAN LEVIN'S FULL SPEECH