Revision3 Beta’s Starting Lineup: Home Runs and Strikeouts

In a move to broaden its roster of offerings, Revision3 today launched Revision3 Beta, which has been equated to “a farm team system” for the San Francisco-based online video network. If you’re not up on your sports references (or never saw Bull Durham), that means shows on Rev3 Beta will get a chance to build an audience and develop their skills in anticipation of one day being good enough to make it onto the official Rev3 network. So which of the seven are worthy of the big leagues? Here’s our breakdown:

BATTING .300

Your Weekly Music Lesson With Walt: Walt Riberio has been applying his training in music composition to educate the general YouTube population since January 2007. Riberio’s energy for his subject is incredibly infectious and his breakdown of music basics is easy enough to grasp; the one catch is that the first episode’s opening is so loud and jarring that it could damage your hearing.

The Slice: The official podcast of Cake Financial, an investing web site that enables stock market investors to share tips, this weekly series suggests and rates various stocks. Production values are solid, and there’s some nice dry humor used to spice up what, these days, is a pretty depressing topic.

BASE HITS

Bottles Blends Brews: Dana Schuermann and Zack Luye are beverage connoisseurs — which means the show consists largely of the hosts standing in a kitchen, drinking soda and Frappuccinos and chatting about them. Schuermann’s performance is somewhat dead-eyed, but the footage of jasmine-blooming tea brewing in the first episode is awesome.

What Should You Know?: At times, Ethan Bloch seems to be channeling Jerry Lewis’s “Nice LAAAADY” persona, but the series’ format enables it to cover a wide variety of topics, from the financial crisis to Pownce to the Dalai Lama. None of the information imparted is anything you couldn’t find on Wikipedia, but if you’re looking for a short rundown of a recent news item, you could do far worse.

Hack College: The fact that the hosts of the college-focused chat series consider a 15-minute episode to be “shorter and denser” is terrifying, as the show’s pace is already pretty slow and rambling. But hosts Chris and Kelly are endearing (although, wow, these kids are not 21 — does their Rev3 contract include cases of Bud delivered to their dorm room, no questions asked?). It’s hard to imagine there’s much appeal in study tips for anyone now paying off student loans, but college students do spend some time on the Internet, I hear.

STRIKEOUTS

That’s Awesome.tv: Scott Aubuchon’s how-to approach to a wide range of tech subjects (for our purposes, we’ll pretend like a trailer lift is technology) is smart — however, the presentation is dull. The first five minutes of the 30-minute episode on setting up your wireless router consist solely of Aubuchon talking about modems while fiddling with the router he’s about to install; even when the show shifts to a screencast, it’s still a snooze.

Minx Mandate: The series’ log line — “The future of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, sex, fashion, crime, celebrity, robots, and so much more…” — is definitely intriguing, and at five minutes the first episode is one of the more condensed of the Rev3 Beta launch. But host Madeline Minx is just flat-out annoying. Beyond the superficial (her voice is reminiscent of Fran Drescher’s, pitched one octave higher), her coy, sex-kitten hosting style is just painful. Her interview with A.I. expert Bruce Klein, for example, is all flirting and digressions, and leaves Klein clearly embarrassed.

As these are quasi-amateur productions, the quality of them is just that — quasi-amateur — especially the sound work. But there’s some talent in there: talent that may not be stuck on a farm team for much longer.