Yahoo Music's "Nissan Live Sets," an online "MTV Unplugged"-esque concert series taped before a live audience, has just inked a deal with MTV to bring the Yahoo Webcast to the Viacom company's high definition channel, MHD. "Live Sets" was borne out of a multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal inked a year ago between Yahoo and Nissan North America; it has featured performances from Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson and Avril Lavigne, generating more than 10 million views, according to Yahoo. The MTV crossover is one of the few times a show produced for the Web has made it to television. …

It's a sign of things to come: big-time Hollywood producers are starting to create content specifically for the Web. Former Disney chief Michael Eisner, one-time Yahoo Media Group Head Lloyd Braun, Paramount Pictures' Gail Berman, and My Damn Channel President and CEO Rob Barnett have all shifted their time, focus and money to various Web-only ventures. Other big-name producers like Joel and Ethan Coen, Will Ferrell, and now, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, are creating Web-only content through their respective ventures. The new series from Herskovitz and Zwick, makers of "Blood Diamond," "The Last Samurai," and the ABC series "Thirtysomething," …

The so-called "Britney Bomb" at MTV's Video Music Awards was certainly a ratings boost for Viacom's MTV, but it was also, significantly, a great day for online video providers--particularly MTV. According to the Street.com, MTV's strategy to show the awards once on cable television provided the boost it wanted for its Web site. And Britney Spears' "universally celebrated" disaster comeback helped drive the highest day of traffic ever on MTV.com in terms of unique visitors and video streams. However, the Spears-driven online frenzy also proved to be a red-letter day for Google's YouTube. TheStreet.com says that--to the chagrin of Viacom--Spears' …

For the online ad industry, the "good news" from yesterday's TNS report, which showed that advertising had declined for the second straight quarter, is that Web spending rose 17.7 percent, as marketers took money from their TV and print budgets and poured it into online endeavors. But GigaOm's Om Malik says to take the "good news" with a pinch of salt. For one thing, the effects of the housing bust and the tightening credit squeeze haven't really been felt yet. In its report, TNS says as much: "Given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core …

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are still in the very nascent stages of development, but the niche genre--which it most certainly is--are set for a sustained period of big growth, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics. The measurement firm says the overall online gaming market--advertising included--is set to hit $11.5 billion by 2011, growing at an annual compounded rate of 25.2 percent. However, by that time, revenues from MMORPGs like the "World of Warcraft" are set to double--while online gaming swells to 11 percent of the market. Ars Technica says MMORPG growth will come from North America in …

Yahoo is taking a cue from Facebook's playbook, encouraging outside developers to create new software programs that would make Yahoo's pages "stickier." The company has already released the source code for Yahoo Mail and aims let users embed non-Yahoo products and services into their My Yahoo homepages. The company hopes that developers' programs, also called widgets, will entice users to hang around Yahoo's pages longer. Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo senior vice president of communications, communities and Front Doors, is the man who sternly identified those problems. Yahoo's disparate businesses were spread thin -- like peanut butter over toast. Garlinghouse, …

Apple partner News Corp. responded to NBC Universal's decision not to renew its contract selling content via iTunes, agreeing that pricing should not be the sole province of the iPod maker. News Corp. has no plans to pull its movie and TV content from the Apple media store, but does want "more flexibility" when it comes to pricing its content. The News Corp. stance runs contrary to what many industry watchers expected in the aftermath of NBC Universal's decision last month, especially since News Corp. is partnering with NBC in a new online video distribution venture, dubbed Hulu. Vivendi's …

The networks, confused about what to do with their Web distribution strategy, are trying to make friends with the Web's major audience holders. News. Corp.'s Fox and GE's NBC partnered with MSN, Yahoo, News Corp.'s own MySpace and others to create a digital distribution venture called Hulu. CBS Corp. has also forged distribution deals with many of the same players for its CBS Interactive Audience Network, and ABC is now looking to do something in the same vein. The Walt Disney Co. company is said to be in talks with AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo (nearly the same …

CBS Corp. is adding its local TV and radio station Web sites to its Web distribution venture, CBS Interactive Audience Network, which will place its programming on the Web sites of some 29 CBS owned and operated affiliates, 144 CBS Radio Web sites and 183 additional sites owned by CBS affiliates across the U.S. The move will assuage the network's nervous local affiliates, which feared they would be left behind as CBS and others move forward into new Web ventures. The Web sites will host CBS programming, in addition to providing local news, sports and weather to the CBS …

For the $13 billion-and-expanding video game industry, it's all about newbies this Christmas. Professionals in the 30-year-old-plus industry are counting on a sizable chunk of sales coming from a whole new audience this holiday season, as video games become more mainstream. Most of these so-called "noobs" will be casual gamers crossing over to console gaming. In a way, video game makers owe their expected growth to the proliferation of casual games on the Web. Game publishers are starting to churn out a wider breadth of games, especially Nintendo, whose wand-waving Wii game controller was designed with the casual gamer …