TVSquad

Did you see the Heroes spoof on YouTube? It's called Zeroes, and it features a familiar voice talking about regular people with "Pointless Abilities". For example, one guy can ripple his stomach and a girl can put her entire fist in her mouth. You get the idea. It's worth a chuckle or two.

It turns out, the 2-minute spoof was an NBC creation. Marketing guru Vince Manze admitted to Variety that he created the spoof without any fanfare or even a tease to the real series, just as an experiment. He didn't even tell Heroes creator Tim Kring about it. The video short got more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. Minze seems to be one of the few marketing guys who "get it". He knows that people aren't going to YouTube to watch advertisements or promos (unless they're exceptionally creative).

How do you guys feel about this? The network is getting buzz for its show by spoofing it. Is it sneaky or is it creative marketing?

Zeroes is after the jump:

According to this morning's edition of The Hollywood Reporter, YouTube will announce a deal today to put viral videos on Verizon mobile phones. YouTube will become one of the channels on Verizon's VCast service, which costs subscribers $15/month. But that's not all. The deal also allows Verizon cell phone users to send videos from their phones directly to YouTube.

In addition, VCast will also have mini-episodes of the telenovela featured on Ugly Betty, called Vidas de Fuego.

A little bit of late news for you: Jim Breuer is the new host of Web Junk 20. He actually premiered on Friday, but I'm a little slow this week. Web Junk 20 is a weekly countdown-type show on VH1 that airs all the biggest viral videos of the week. You may remember Jim Breuer as 'Goat Boy' for four years on Saturday Night Live. He also has a hilarious comedy special that occasionally airs on Comedy Central, and he's currently hosting the second most popular radio show on Sirius (behind Howard Stern) called Jim Breuer Unleashed.

Best Week Ever has a clip of Breuer here. While it's great to see Breuer again, I don't like the show's format where the host interrupts video clips to make remarks that aren't all that funny.

Amanda Congdon, co-founder and former host of comedy video blog Rocketboom.com, is working with HBO to develop a multiplatform comedy series with televised and online components.

In addition to owning Rocketboom, Congdon has appeared on stage and in commercials. She intends on both writing and starring in the new HBO series. Most networks are exploring working online and on television simultaneously thanks in part to YouTube, iTunes and the online success of show's like The Office whose public service announcements and deleted scenes have become popular virals driving traffic to NBC's website.

Between this and the blogger who went on to become a non-unionized writer for America's Next Top Model, which path from the internet to television industry fame would you choose? It pays to be cute, blonde and videocast.

Viral video stars Luke Barats and Joe Bereta were just the subject of a bidding war that ended with a victory for NBC. The two fellas are recent graduates from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington and now they have a one year production deal with NBC, with an option for a second year. No pressure, boys!

The two met in an improv class in 2003, which is when they started creating comedy skits, improv, and music videos for the internet. NBC, and the rest of the world, found them on YouTube and CollegeHumor.com. Their most popular sketches are Mother's Day and Cubicle War, which is embedded after the jump.

I'm going to go ahead and predict an ironic future ala Andy Samburg for these two. Something they do on NBC will become popular on YouTube, but NBC will insist the video gets taken down