From YouTube to the Cineplex

LOS ANGELES â€" How fast is YouTube building new media companies Consider the case of AwesomenessTV, a YouTube-based channel for teenagers.

Last year at this time, Awesomeness had not introduced its MTV-esque programs. Now the channel has about 400,000 subscribers and 80.6 million video views. A Nickelodeon show based on its programming is planned. And on Friday an Awesomeness movie release will open in AMC theaters.

“Mindless Behavior: All Around the World” is a concert film â€" part singing, part documentary â€" that focuses on the boy band Mindless Behavior. It will run in about 120 AMC theaters in neighborhoods where based on data culled from social networks, the group has its strongest fan base.

“It’s an experiment,” said Brian Robbins, the impresario behind AwesomenessTV and a former child star (Eric Mardian on the ABC sitcom “Head of the Class.”)

Mindless Behavior, which toured with Janet Jackson in 2011 and is preparing to release its second album, became part of the AwesomenessTV lineup last summer. Mr. Robbins’s company had the movie idea and agreed to pay for it and handle distribution. He declined to disclose the movie’s budget but said it was “very independent-film sized.” A DVD release is planned.

The Nickelodeon show, meanwhile, is tentatively named “Awesomeness” and will include sketch comedy shown on Mr. Robbins’s fledgling YouTube channel.

Nickelodeon, which has committed to 13 ! episodes, recently described the show to advertisers as part of an effort to “reinvent sketch comedy for this generation” and to “aggressively pump new talent” into its schedule.

While AwesomenessTV will continue to look for opportunities in traditional media, Mr. Robbins said his company’s primary focus would remain online. “We’re making snack food â€" the entertainment equivalent of potato chips and Twizzlers and cookies,” he said.

“But as AwesomenessTV is understanding more and more every day,” he added, “snack food is a really enormous business.”

For Marvel Comics, a Renewed Digital Mission

Marvel Entertainment A new 13-chapter story about Wolverine will be featured in Marvel’s Infinite mobile comics, with new chapters weekly.

LOS ANGELES â€" Like the rest of the publishing industry, comic books went digital long ago. You can catch up on Batman via mobile app and unfurl Wolverine’s claws from your laptop. But Marvel Comics upped the ante significantly on Sunday, unveiling a superhero-size slate of new and expanded mobile and online initiatives.

Using the South by Southwest festival n Texas as a backdrop, Marvel said it was temporarily making more than 700 of its No. 1 issues â€" the first issues of various comic book lines â€" available free through a redesigned app and Web store. The promotion, meant to attract new readers, runs through Tuesday at 11 p.m. Eastern time. Prices normally range from $1.99 to $3.99.

“What all of this comes down to is finding ways to reach the broadest possible digital audience,” said Axel Alonso, editor in chief of Marvel Entertainment, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company.

The comics publisher also announced speedier delivery of its Infinite mobile comics, which were introduced last year. New installments will arrive weekly instead of monthly starting July 9, with four of Marvel’s best-known characters fea! tured in 13-chapter arcs. Wolverine, who returns to movie theaters on July 26, is one.

Mr. Alonso also said that more comics-related original video was on its way to Marvel.com and other streaming sites. The company announced one new video series: “Marvel’s Earth’s Mightiest Show,” essentially a weekly “Entertainment Tonight” dedicated to comic characters and artists. It arrives this summer.

Mr. Alonso hinted that future video programming would include “documentaries and reality television,” but gave no details.

Finally, Marvel offered fans a peek at a technology called Project Gamma that it plans to introduce this year. Mr. Alonso described it as an “audio score” for digital comics, but it is not a looping soundtrack. Using a patented system, nonlyrical music plays at the same pace as a reader flips through the digital pages.

“As yu move through the digital book, the music builds or moves back with you if you move back,” Mr. Alonso said. “I was skeptical, too, but trust me, it’s cool.”

2 Awards Given to Promote Multicultural Children’s Books

A month ago a nonprofit called First Book, which promotes literacy among children in low-income communities, announced the Stories for All project, a program intended to prod publishers to print more multicultural books. Kyle Zimmer, First Book’s chief executive, says that part of the motivation was the “chasm” between the number of people who want such books and what is available.

On Wednesday, First Book will announce that awards of $500,000 will go to two publishers for their proposals for the project: HarperCollins, the big publishing house owned by News Corporation, and Lee & Low, a minority-owned independent publisher.

In a 2012 study, the CooperativeChildren’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison evaluated some 3,600 books, looking for multicultural content. Of the books examined, 3.3 percent were found to be about African-Americans, 2.1 percent were about Asian-Pacific Americans, 1.5 percent were about Latinos and 0.6 percent were about American Indians.

Some 24 publishers responded to the competition, Ms. Zimmer said, and First Book felt that the submissions were so good that it decided to give two awards, instead of one. As part of the arrangement, First Book will add nearly 500 new books to an online store for purchase at a low cost by its member organizations, which all serve children in low-income communities.

Money for the grants comes from donations and the proceeds of sales by First Book to its members.

Ms. Zimmer said that because of the short lead time for the competition, not all of the books submitted were by new or minority authors. She said those would follow as! the award and related market became better known, likening this phase to the first step in a marathon.

First Book serves people whose incomes are in the bottom third of Americans. It says that while there is great interest within low-income communities for high-quality books featuring diverse characters and cultures, publishers have not served them well because they are unsure of the market. Ms. Zimmer said that in challenging economic times, publishers “make very conservative decisions and revert to market strategies that have served them historically, but the problem is that they are missing the larger market.”

First Book argues that it is in a position to cater to that larger market and make it a force. In the last year, it has grown from roughly 23,000 member organizations, including schools, churches and shelters, to more than 50,000.