LOS ANGELES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Former UTA Online agents Jason U. Nadler and Jon Zimelis and Internet writer/producer Alex Blagg today announced the launch of Serious Business, a media company focused on the intersection of Internet and entertainment. Serious Business will partner with top creative talent to produce television formats with a web sensibility and build digital platforms with the potential to become larger media properties.
Jason U. Nadler, co-founder of UTA Online, will head up strategy for the company; Jon Zimelis, former UTA Online Agent, will serve as its Head of Partnerships; and Alex Blagg, founding editor of BestWeekEver.tv for VH1 and Wonderwall for MSN at BermanBraun, will serve as Head of Creative. Together, the trio will leverage their unique individual market insights and expertise to meet growing audience and advertiser appetites for premium web entertainment and bring new ideas and voices to traditional media.
"After representing clients such as College Humor, The Cheezburger Network and Smosh.com while at United Talent Agency, I am looking forward to shepherding established online creators into other mediums as a producer. I'm excited to join Jon Zimelis, my partner at UTA, along with our in-house creative mastermind, Alex Blagg, to build a new kind of production company that will specialize in harnessing the ever-increasing power of the Internet to make each of our projects grab the attention of a web-obsessed world," stated Nadler.
“As 'The Internetainment Firm' we see a lot of opportunity to develop and foster original and authentic voices where the Internet and traditional entertainment industry intersect, and have positioned ourselves to lead this market in every possible way. We even made up a word,” added Blagg.
Serious Business recently completed a seed round of funding from Brave New Ventures, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm investing in early stage media companies, and is currently working with the Cheezburger Network of blogs, which reaches over 20 million users a month, to develop projects for TV and digital. The initial slate of Serious Business projects also includes a new platform powered by the Twitter API in collaboration with AdGent Digital and a partnership with Funny Or Die to develop the satirical social media persona Blagg created at BajillionHits.Biz.
Sam Rogoway of Brave New Ventures stated: "Serious Business is disrupting the digital media space by taking an audience-first approach to producing cross-platform content that is actually entertaining. Jason, Jon, and Alex are uniquely situated to break down the wall between online and TV programming, and we're excited to work with them to pursue the tremendous opportunity ahead."
For more information about Serious Business, please visit www.serious.biz or e-mail the partners at team@serious.biz.
About Serious Business
Serious Business is a media company focused on the intersection of Internet and entertainment. We partner with top creative talent to produce television properties with a web sensibility and build digital platforms with television potential. Our goal is to find the most interesting people on the entire Internet and make sweet media together.
About Alex Blagg
In addition to being a serious businessman, Alex is the writer/comedian behind cross-platform social media satire site and video series BajillionHits.Biz. He has been called “The Stephen Colbert of New Media” by The Daily Beast and the “Most Influential Social Media Guru on the Web” by Fast Company. Prior to his role as a self-proclaimed “Internet Expert,” Alex co-founded and was Managing Editor of the Best Week Ever blog for Vh1, was the founding Editor-In-Chief of MSN’s Wonderwall at BermanBraun, and served as Head of Celebrity Programming for BuzzMedia, a pop culture publisher reaching more than 40 million monthly readers worldwide.
About Jason U. Nadler
As the Head of United Talent Agency’s Online department, Jason was the first traditional Hollywood agent to identify and represent emerging talent on the web. During his seven years at UTA, Jason was instrumental in bringing new talent to the agency, as well as in creating new business models to package and sell properties for the web, television and film.
About Jon Zimelis
Jon has spent his career in the entertainment industry working across the television and Internet mediums. Most recently, he was Director of Business Development and Talent Partnerships at OpenSky, an e-commerce platform. In this role, he was responsible for the firm’s West Coast operations. From 2007 to 2010, Jon was an agent at UTA Online, the pioneering digital arm of United Talent Agency, where he worked closely with Jason to create new opportunities that bridged the TV-digital divide. Prior to UTA Online, Jon was a TV literary agent at The Gersh Agency.