National Lampoon Cuts The Raunch

National Lampoon has launched Togatv.com, a streaming video site that offers less dicey, more marketer-friendly content than the parent site, NationalLampoon.com.

Togatv.com offers a host of video clips from the National Lampoon College Network, with fare such as Comedy Academy's 3-minute interview with "Jesus is Magic" comic Sarah Silverman and "A/V Squad"'s clip of Franz Ferdinand playing "Do you want to?"

The site will not carry the most off-color features produced by the parent company, said Barry Layne, executive vice president at National Lampoon. For instance, the crass Internet cartoon series, "The Secret League of Legionnaires," will not be available on Togatv.com.

"Toga is much more advertiser-friendly than some other National Lampoon products that have existed in the marketplace," he said.

Aimed at an 18- to-24-year-old male demographic, Togatv.com takes its name from "Animal House," the 1978 movie that featured Baby Boomer icon John Belushi chanting, "Toga! Toga! Toga!"

The site, which quietly went live several weeks ago, runs campaigns for just one advertiser at a time; rotations can last as little as seven minutes, Layne said.

So far, marketers have included Warner Bros., which promoted the movies "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" and "The Pink Panther"; 20th Century Fox, which advertised "Date Movie"; and telecom AT&T. PepsiCo, which is promoting Sierra Mist, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi, will break a campaign on the site Sunday. Other marketers include Rohto eye drops, and ZOGO, a mobile dating service.

National Lampoon is using Internet TV service company Brightcove for video distribution and ad delivery.

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