Game Faces

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How do you score copies of Microsoft’s “Halo 3” video game four months before it is released?


You could build entertainment programming around it, the way Beverly Hills-based No Good TV has done. The edgy entertainment company is one of the most prolific producers of funny, uncensored celebrity content for the Internet, targeting mainly 18-to-34-year-olds. It recently landed an exclusive deal with Microsoft so that guests and hosts of NGTV’s “Game On” can play and rank the unreleased “Halo 3.”


The guests will go head-to-head in matchups of “Halo 3” for the series. Celebs who have recently filmed spots playing the first-person shooter game include Zachary Quinto and Missy Peregrym from the NBC series “Heroes” and NFL tight end Antonio Gates from the San Diego Chargers.


The company is more than fun and games, though. Over the past three months, NGTV has become the 10th-most-watched partner channel on YouTube. It has had the most-viewed daily clip on the site almost every day this month, and has more weekly views than CBS and NBC combined.


NGTV was funded by a round of angel financing in late 2000, and rounds of institutional capital in 2004 and 2006. Kiss front man Gene Simmons is an investor in the company.


“We had produced for TV initially, then with the emergence of video and broadband we knew it was time to launch this format here,” said Koroush Taj, NGTV’s president and head of programming.


In 2004 the company moved into the former World Savings Bank building at 9944 Santa Monica Blvd. in Beverly Hills. Within a few months the firm began to convert the high security structure into a functioning entertainment, production, graphics and post-production facility. The d & #233;cor of the 24,000-square-foot studio facility is sort of den-of-iniquity meets Toys-R-Us


Besides video games, gadgets and robots, it has faux fur-lined walls, plush couches and a full bar on the set.


“We don’t do celebrity gossip or paparazzi-type content,” said Taj. “Here the celebrities are in on the joke. We hate that negative stuff.”


Hip clubhouse feel aside, NGTV is one of only two entertainment companies on the West Coast with the digital storage capacity to function as a content vault.


The company’s archive system is capable of storing multiple Petabytes (a quadrillion bytes of information) of both Avid and non-Avid data.


NGTV has a 10,000-hour content library, including uncensored music videos from artists such as Snoop, DJ Khalid and Akon. Six more shows are to launch this summer.

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