Top 10 Winners Include Videos From All Genres Including Celebrities, Politics, Music and Humor

This year’s finalists included the Barack Obama “Yes We Can” video by Will.i.am that caused an online sensation during the U.S. primary election campaign, Saturday Night Live’s Tina Fey impersonating Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and the “I Kissed a Girl” music video by pop star Katy Perry. The Best Online Video for 2008 was fourteen months in the making, filmed in 42 countries, featuring a cast of thousands. Matt Harding danced his way into the hearts of the world and to the top of the charts and has snagged the top prize for the 2009 Webcastr Awards.

Without further ado, The Webcastr Video of the Year Awards:

About Webcastr

Webcastr is a leading aggregator and distributor of professional online video content. Unlike the majority of video sharing sites, Webcastr features clips that come from licensed sources of professional and semi-pro content. The Company currently features content from nearly 200 different providers including CBS News, Reuters, MTV News, National Lampoon, AP, BBC, NBA.TV, Splash News, US Weekly, Warner Music, Sony/BMG, TV Guide, Barely Political, Newsmax, Ford Models TV and many others.

The John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair has been the talk of the Web since late last week, but a peppy, jagged little 2006 production called “Inspiring Politics: A Webisode Series Following John Edwards” has been attracting only a modest number of views on YouTube.

It surfaced there a week ago after being removed from Edwards’ website last year. Hunter, who by all accounts had a sketchy job history, including some off-the-radar acting and New Age spiritual advising, was contracted to make the videos soon after she met the candidate at an event in a New York City bar. The four short episodes are usually referred to as “campaign videos,” which might explain why they have not drawn much of a crowd. But they have nothing in common with traditional cleaned-up, on-message campaign videos. They’re a strangely watchable document of unbridled ambition — Hunter’s as much as Edwards’.

Hunter’s three-person production company, “Midline Groove,” was reportedly incorporated in June 2006, and she made the videos that summer and fall. YouTube was just more than a year old, and the notion of a “webisode series” was barely a twinkle in Hollywood’s eye. Lonelygirl15, the first such series to attract mainstream attention, did not get big until September of that year.

So Hunter’s “webisode” idea could reasonably have seemed to promise Edwards some political magic: a charmingly unpolished look at the candidate that would be at once high-tech and down-home, unpretentious yet cutting edge — the very essence of Internet culture. Her lack of “experience” could even be seen as part of the point of hiring her. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign had already begun to use a MySpace page that was started by a private citizen. Revealing video clips of candidates were being e-mailed around. Why not try to tap into the YouTube revolution and its fresh, daring, amateur energy?

But as with so much on YouTube, the videos turned out to be revealing in ways no one could have predicted.

At the beginning of Episode 1, “Plane Truths,” Edwards talks into the camera about what he hopes the videos will do, sounding like any YouTubing teenager earnestly trying to express his inner self. “I’ve come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I really am. Who I really am,” Edwards says, sitting back in his campaign plane. “But I don’t know what the result of that will be.” He is determined, however, to show people something other than the “plastic Ken doll” image he has acquired. “That’s not me,” he insists.

We soon hear the series’ theme song in the background: “True Reflections,” a solo effort by Dave Matthews Band member Boyd Tinsley. “When you look into the mirror,” Tinsley growls, “do you like what’s looking at you?” It’s a puzzling song choice that not only underscores the handsome and, yes, Ken doll looks, it also suggests that a central question confronting Edwards as he contemplates a run for the presidency is … how he feels about himself.

Edwards was on ABC News on Friday, talking about the “self-focus, egotism and narcissism” that led him to the affair, and that’s all in plain view on the videos. But much more fascinating is the view they give of Hunter’s self-obsession.

From the start of the four-episode series, Hunter slyly establishes herself as a character right alongside the presidential hopeful. She manages to insinuate herself constantly, even though she’s never on camera. Out of what must have been many hours of footage, Hunter chose to include in the final cut moment after moment of Edwards talking flirtatiously to her. The making of the webisode series itself is a running theme. In the first minute of the six-minute “Plane Truths,” we see Edwards moving his legs aside so Hunter and her fellow videographer can walk onto the plane. Soon he’s saying, “Glad to have you. And if any of these guys aren’t nice to you, you tell me.”

At times the flirtatious banter between Edwards and Hunter sounds right out of a romantic comedy (but the material isn’t exactly Hepburn-Tracy). “It’s a great speech!” he says as he looks over some notes. “So glad you like it!” we hear her say from behind the camera, her laugh trilling out. “I like it,” he says, then stares out the window for a second with a big grin. He turns back toward her to beam and say, “Wait till you hear me give it live.” Then he collects himself and looks at the shoes of the guy sitting next to him. “So the way his shoes are shaped, are those cool?” he asks.

Episode 2, “The Golden Rule,” shows Edwards preparing for and making a speech condemning the “corporate greed” of Wal-Mart. It ends with an outtake of Edwards joshing Hunter, apropos of nothing we’ve seen: “Very graceful, camera girl.” (Was Hunter dreaming of a sequel, “The Camera Girl Chronicles”?)

Only in Episode 3, “Plight of Uganda,” are we able to forget that Hunter is holding the camera, as the dire situation in a refugee camp takes over the narrative.

But there she is again in Episode 4, jarringly named “Plugs,” which shows Edwards getting ready to go on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” With this perfunctory episode, Hunter appears to have run out of steam. Even she appears to be having a hard time finding Edwards scintillating as he sits in the back of a car discussing with great seriousness his decision not to announce his candidacy on “The Daily Show.” When Stewart walks into the green room and says hello, we hear a female voice from the general vicinity of the camera (it sounds like Hunter) calling out in an excited voice, “Hiii!”

In that helpless, automatic reaction to an even bigger male star than Edwards, Hunter is revealed as not simply a videographer hired by the Edwards campaign but a member of a much older profession: a groupie. And “Inspiring Politics” represents one of the most inventive ways a groupie has ever gained unlimited access to the power guy of her dreams. But it also, alas for both of them, set him up to lose everything and to have his weakness documented in excruciating detail on YouTube.

– Maria Russo

LOS ANGELES, Aug 08, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — On a story that the mainstream media refused to touch for months, Webcastr.com had been broadcasting the four original webisodes that were mysteriously taken down from the rest of the internet during the course of John Edwards’ presidential campaign.

Edwards today admitted he had had a months-long affair with the video’s director Rielle Hunter. Hunter, a 44 year old filmmaker Edwards met two years ago in a New York bar, was paid $114,000, despite little filmmaking experience, to create this series of webisodes on behalf of the candidate.

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Webcastr.com covered the festivities at the Bikini’s Travel Channel’s ‘Get Out’ 100th Episode on Mark Cuban’s HD Net party at the famed Les Deux nightclub in Hollywood, California. That’s Webcastr’s hostess Crystal Hoang along with Get Out and Deal or No Deal star Brooke Long along Webcastr CEO Tim Devine enjoying the red carpet event.

The results are as follows:– YouTube topped the General / Viral Video category, but following close behind are Blinkx, Webcastr, StupidVideos and Toxic Junction.

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Webcastr.com founder Tim Devine interviewed at OMMA Hollywood discussing the new internet television broadcast operation.

Interview with Tim Devine, founder of Webcastr.com, a new company whose slogan says it all - ‘the Best of Internet TV.’

Why would a well-known music business executive walk away from a successful career (and a seven-figure salary) to become the next Internet entrepreneur? Just ask Tim Devine, founder of Webcastr.com, a new company whose slogan says it all - ‘the Best of Internet TV.’

A year ago, Devine was sitting at the top of Sony’s Columbia Records West Coast operation as GM and SVP, Artists and Repertoire. A man whose shrewd skills as a talent scout, dealmaker and corporate player helped plump record company coffers to the tune of half a billion dollars across the last two decades, he’d been instrumental in the careers of such diverse artists as U2, Prince, Devo, Bonnie Raitt, the Beastie Boys, Blind Melon, The Offspring, Train, Switchfoot and dozens of other name acts. But now he found himself awash in an entertainment technology sea change that was swamping the traditional label model.

“There was a seismic shift happening,” Devine recalls. “It was painfully obvious – especially with the video revolution – that the frontier of opportunity in entertainment is in digitization and the web.” With every URL now the platform for a potential media empire, Devine opted out to build and rule his own.

Now sitting in the offices of The Devine Company at the center of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, Devine is excited about the pioneering feel of his new enterprise. “It’s early days,” he says with a gleam in his eye. “We’re helping to create a whole new kind of media.” Turning to his computer, he navigates briskly through a portfolio of web commerce ventures he’s currently developing that range from real estate to automobiles to entertainment. Webcastr.com, the crown jewel the collection, is focused on is the burgeoning field of internet television. Devine is quick to explain what that is.

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Website highlights best of professional clips on the web.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8

(Reuters) —
Webcastr.com, a video website featuring professional video content from over 200 channel providers, today announced the winners of it’s Videos of the Year awards. Webcastr’s viewers, along with it’s editors voted amongst over 2,500 professionally produced videos on the website to pick the best video clips of the year for 2007.Thirty finalists were chosen by the staff of the webbery with the final clips being voted on during the last two weeks of December.The winners are:

• Heidi Loves Her Bazooms — (Victoria Secret promo spot featuring supermodel Heidi Klum)
• D*ck In A Box (The popular SNL skit featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samburg)
• Led Zeppelin Reunion Concert in the UK
• Acting for the Greenscreen (a comedy sketch from Body of Art)
• Bob Dylan Cadillac Commercial
• Britney Spears VMA Parody (featuring Chris Crocker from National Lampoon.com)
• Don’t Taze Me, Bro (from the John Kerry speech at Univ. of Florida)
• Snoop Dogg in the UK (where the US rapper was hassled by Heathrow authorities)
• The Chemical Bros. “Salmon Dance” (computer animated music video)
• Bush vs. Miss North Carolina (a comedy mashup)

Honorable Mention:
SUV Driving Through a Shopping Mall (video surveillance tape)

Unlike the majority of video sharing sites, Webcastr features clips that come from licensed sources of professional and semi-pro content. “With so much of the user generated content out there being of questionable quality, we are happy to present these awards in recognition of the efforts of pro content creators who increasingly understand the value of the short form online video medium,” said Webcastr CEO, Tim Devine.

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Webcastr.com now distributing content from over 200 name brand channel providers including CBS News, MTV News, Reuters, Vanity Fair, Daily Variety, FHM, Speed TV, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal TV, Celeb TV, AutoTrader TV, Sony/BMG Musicbox, and many more. Alexa rankings increased 1,500% among all websites worldwide.