HRTV Joins Internet Media Venture as Campus Affiliate

A rainbow-colored head fills the screen and devours its prey, chewing with its mouth open, smacking its lips and flashing its teeth.

This is not a horror movie; the screen is not the silver screen but a computer monitor, and the animated head is nibbling at the logo of Nibblebox.com--an Internet media venture that Harvard-Radcliffe TV (HRTV) recently joined as an affiliate.

The glitzy multimedia sequence is visitors' first introduction to the site, which shows short video, audio and animated productions called "nibbles."

With Nibblebox's technical help, HRTV plans to put its shows--including the occasional news show called "Harvard Television News" and "The Asylum," a sit-com about students who run a bar out of their common room--on its own website within the week. Until now, the programs have been shown in Loker Commons.

HRTV also plans to develop ideas for shorter segments for the Nibblebox website.

"They're a little more interested in short nibbles of content [than longer shows]," said HRTV President Michael E. Yank '02.

"They made a comparison to when television was invented," Yank said of the site's creators.

Early in the life of that medium, writers and producers found that 30-minute format of sitcoms and hour-long dramas suited their viewers. Yank said Nibblebox believes their short segments will become the staple of Internet entertainment in the same way sitcoms are television's standard fare.

Nibblebox's fare is flashy--and no longer than about five minutes.

But Yank said he hopes it will bring HRTV to a wider audience.

"An organization like HRTV that is greatly hampered by the lack of a cable network could really benefit from having a way of getting programming into everyone's dorm room," Yank said.

According to Yank, HRTV can now suggest new program ideas to Nibblebox, and possibly work with professional producers to put their programs on the Internet. He said other Harvard students can also forward their ideas to the site's developers through HRTV.

He said some HRTV members are "fleshing out" some ideas but declined to elaborate.

Nibblebox first contacted Harvard and other college radio and television clubs in January, and now it lists more than 80 college affiliates on its site.

It launched a preliminary version of its site earlier this month. A fuller version with more shows will be launched around October.

Current offerings include shows like "A Bunch of Villagers Getting Eaten," a serial where animated characters do the moonwalk as they wander around a tropical land searching for the culprit who is systematically eliminating their people.

In "American Standard," another serial program, two college-age characters both named Andrew look to improve their social lives by getting lessons in dealing with women from a character known as the Kung Fu Jew.

"Absurdity ensues," according to the Nibblebox.com website.

The site also includes an interactive program called "Virtual Rob," where viewers can click on the character and his surroundings and watch him respond, and "PopVox," which displays lyrics along side music videos.

Nibblebox is funded by about $5.5 million in venture capital, and Yank said the site's national conference in New York, which he attended two weekends ago, was a "classy" affair.

The festivities included a party at the SoHo loft of Doug Liman, producer of the successful films "Swingers" (1996) and "Go" (1999) and one of Nibblebox's developers.