Not too shabby at all.  Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele — stars of Comedy Central’s Key & Peele — have earned the number 18 spot on Fast Company‘s annual list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.  Regardless of what you think of listicles, reporter Joe Berkowitz’s cover story on  the duo contains some pretty awesome insights into their creative process.

This sense of co-conspiracy extends to Key & Peele’s creation process, a rigorous winnowing down of more than 330 sketches to the 82 slots for the upcoming season. A giant whiteboard in the creators’ office is awash with notecards bearing neatly scrawled words such as “honest bully.” Many represent “dooks”–half-baked scenes unloaded at the writers’ meeting. Everyone dog-piles on these ideas, trying to figure out the comedic engine that will make them work as sketches. Once that’s thought through, the dook originator writes a draft. Then come notes from Key and Peele, an internal table read, and more than three presentations to the network before Key and Peele decide which sketches get on air. “Anyone who’s really utilized collaboration,” says Peele, citing Pixar and the Muppets, “has a philosophy like, ‘Let’s throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.’ That’s how we do it. At a certain point, we’re cutting scripts that we love.” Key adds, “When it gets heart wrenching is when it gets exciting. And that’s where we are with the third season right now.”

If you’re an aspiring comic studying Key and Peele the way they’ve studied Chaplin and Chappelle, the article also includes Jordan Peele’s tips on “How to Create a Catchphrase.”  But, perhaps most encouragingly, Fast Company reports that season 3 of Key & Peele — premiering September 25 — will see the return of Samuel and LaShawn (WE’RE HAVING A BAAAAAABY!!!!) and a “spiritual sequel” to the East-West College Bowl sketch.  Cannot wait.

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SpongeBob SquarePants: Passionate about chasing jellyfish.

Does the man who created Walter White, antihero of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” (with a heavy emphasis on the anti), think there’s room for nice guys in today’s television landscape?

Do animated sponges who live underwater count?

Vince Gilligan thinks so.  In an interview in today’s New York Magazine, the creator and showrunner of “Breaking Bad” makes his pick for the last interesting do-gooder on television.

Are there any honest-to-God nice characters on TV that you still find interesting?

SpongeBob SquarePants is a great show, and it centers on a character that is courageously nice. Why is SpongeBob interesting? It’s because he has passion. He has a passion for chasing jellyfish. I’m very glad people love Breaking Bad, but the harder character to write is the good character that’s as interesting and as engaging as the bad guy. My hat is off to the SpongeBob showrunners. It’s like how Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in high heels. That’s kind of the struggle you face when you’re writing the good guy now instead of a bad guy.

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Today’s New York Times includes a report on the Obama Administration’s decision to release to Congress classified Justice Department documents detailing the legal justification for killing American citizens abroad who are considered terrorists.

The report notes that White House aides point to President Obama’s appearance last October on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (btw, New York Times, that’s the full name of the program) as the instance where the President had pledged to further share the legal framework for such decisions with Congress.

From the Times piece:

Administration officials said Mr. Obama had decided to take the action, which they described as extraordinary, out of a desire to involve Congress in the development of the legal framework for targeting specific people to be killed in the war against Al Qaeda. Aides noted that Mr. Obama had made a pledge to do that during an appearance on “The Daily Show” last year.

Newshounds can find that clip above – the specific mention comes at about the 00:57 second mark.

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Viacom and Hulu today announced an expansion of their partnership, meaning that users of the Hulu Plus subscription service can now watch recent live-action and animated episodes from Nickelodeon, and will gain access to programming from Tr3s in the coming months, too.  In addition, fans can continue to catch recent episodes of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” on Hulu.com (and in HD on Hulu Plus), and a selection of current and classic series from Comedy Central, MTV, BET, VH1, SPIKE, and TV Land on Hulu Plus.

You can read all about it in the official joint press release here, or in a post from our blogging brethren at Hulu here.

We’re particularly excited about the addition of Nickelodeon to Hulu Plus. Nick will have a dedicated space on Hulu Plus where fans can watch the latest five episodes of each Nickelodeon series, 21 days after air on television – a “catch-up window” to help audiences stay up to date on their favorite shows. The new Nick real estate on Hulu Plus will include tune-in information and other promotional elements to drive viewership of Nickelodeon’s new and upcoming shows on-air among Hulu Plus’s more than two million subscribers.

With all this great content available from Viacom and Hulu, you may be feeling an embarrassment of entertainment riches. Don’t worry – there’s help. You don’t have to suffer through through Sudden Wealth Syndrome in silence.

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Spain finished off the UEFA 2012 European Football Championship in typical dominating fashion on Sunday, beating Italy 4-0 to win its third consecutive major international tournament.

Among the many subplots of the dramatic international contest was a tale of two Viacom cities: the company’s Spanish HQ in Madrid and its World Design Studio in Milan.

Ok, so maybe it’s a sub-subplot, but we checked in with our teams in both Spain and Italy for a peek at the excitement. Our Madrid team sent us the pic above from Plaza Colón, the main square right next to Viacom’s offices. Fans watched on screens that stretched the length of el Paseo de la Castellana from the Plaza to Bernabeu Stadium. The few businesses that were open on Sunday dedicated their storefronts to team merchandise.

Our Milan team sent along the photos below from Piazza Duomo, Milan’s biggest town square that sits just a few blocks from the World Design Studio. We’re told that employees there have become quite accustomed to the blare of vuvuzelas and igniting flares over the past few weeks.

Alicia Hosking of the Italy press team described the scene from Sunday’s match. “It was a sea of blue shirts, Italian flags, wigs, face paint and, typically, thousands of arms flailing in the air whenever the ref made a questionable decision,” she said.

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On Thursday, Viacom President and CEO Philippe Dauman hosted a seminar discussion entitled, “Millennials and the Future of Creativity,” featuring guests Selena Gomez, director Jon Chu, and MTV President Stephen Friedman.  The conversation covered the Millennial Generation’s effect on the expression of creativity across platforms, how it’s redefining the relationships between art and commerce, brands and consumers, and what it all means for creative communicators.

Thanks in part to the social power of Selena and Jon, the Viacom seminar was the most buzzed about event on social media of Cannes Lions.  Mashable has a great breakdown of the social reach of the Viacom seminar here and you can scroll down for an infographic, created by SapientNitro, which recaps the entire week-long festival.    In fact, we’d recommend checking out the Cannes Lions Pinterest page for a great visual, day-by-day overview of Cannes Lions.

For those looking to read about the Viacom seminar, we’d recommend this recap from Barbara Lippert of MediaPost.  And Patricia Sellers of Fortune.com wrote about how millennials were a hot topic overall at the festival – you can check out her take here.

If you’re more inclined to watch, Cannes Lions posted a video recap of the panel, along with backstage interviews with Selena and Jon.  See all three embedded below.

Finally, for those of you who ventured out of the Riviera sunshine and into the Palais des Festivals to attend the seminar live in Cannes, thank you for joining us.  We hope you had fun and learned a little bit about a generation Viacom works hard to understand and entertain every day.

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Cannes Lions at the Palais des Festivals

There are 2.4 billion of them worldwide.  They’ve recast the mold of the music industry.  They’ve pulled television and film out the theater and home and into every corner of everyday life.  They’ve shattered the walls between between creator and consumer.

The Millennial Generation is the most powerful and transformative force in creativity today.  So what do brands and marketers need to do to connect with this generation and tap into that power?

That’s the trillion-dollar question at the center of “Millennials and the Future of Creativity,” a Viacom-hosted seminar discussion today at the Cannes Lions Festival of International Creativity.  Viacom President and CEO will moderate, joined by guests including actress and singer Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and G.I. Joe: Retaliation director Jon M. Chu, and MTV President Stephen Friedman.

For those of you in Cannes hoping to catch the conversation, buzz is building, so get there early.  The seminar kicks off at 1:30 p.m. in the Theater Debussy.

The free-flowing discussion will touch on a few of the defining characteristics of the Millennial Generation, including their need for collaboration and connection when it comes to creative content.  What drives this expectation among millennial consumers that they’ll be empowered to interact with the media and brands they love, and how do we feed that need?  On the flipside, for an artist like Selena who has in excess of 23 MILLION fans and followers, how does that constant connection with her audience inform and influence her creative choices?

Philippe will also look to hit on the acceleration of the creative cycle.  Millennials are looking to continue the conversation around their favorite brands and content 52 weeks, 365 days a year.  What does that mean for a director like Jon Chu, who is now engaged with his films’ audiences well before – and long after – opening weekend at the box office?

Finally, Philippe and his guests will take a look ahead.  How do we separate the myth from reality when it comes to millennials?  At the helm of MTV, how is Stephen Friedman seeing this generation evolve before our eyes?  What does the future hold, and how can brands and marketers remain on the leading edge of this constant wave of change.

Those are just some of the burning questions to be explored under the sun on La Croisette today.  Follow us on Twitter or search #canneslions for live tweets from the seminar!

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"Victorious" castmembers lend a Big Help off-screen

Jezebel isn’t your typical mommy blog, but we very much appreciated the maternal perspective that contributor Angela Hunt, a university educator and mother of two, offers in her post yesterday, “An Oasis of Racially Diverse Television Is Right Under Our Noses.”

There’s ongoing debate about whether television and film accurately reflect the diversity of American life, and Hunt argues that critics overlook one area that’s getting it right:  kids’ programming.
She calls out Nickelodeon, in particular, and deservedly so, in both our biased and unbiased opinions.  At Nickelodeon, and across all our networks at Viacom, we work hard to reflect the diversity of the audiences we serve – in the programming on our screens, and in the talented people we employ.  She points to a number of Nick shows that are marketed broadly but feature diverse female lead roles “that could be written for any girl,” including How To Rock, Rags, Victorious and True Jackson, V.P.

Hunt believes positive depictions of diversity in kids’ programming could have a powerful impact in entertainment and beyond:

“If this generation of kids regularly watch and enjoy shows that feature multi-ethnic casts, that center around girls of color that are universally accepted in their worlds as intelligent, funny, talented and beautiful, then when they are adults who earn and spend their own money on films, they will happily pay to see these same and other actresses of color on the big screen.”

We agree.  Check out Hunt’s thoughtful column in its entirety here.

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Singer/songwriter Juanes performing onstage during Tr3s Upfront Presentation at The Highline Ballroom on May 16, 2012 in New York City. .(Photo by Leon/PictureGroup)

“We need to do better.”

Not something you hear very often from a television network, much less amidst the cacophony of self-congratulation that is Upfront Week.

But those were the very words uttered by Wilmer Valderrama last week, as he took the stage to host the Tr3s Upfront presentation to advertisers at New York’s Highline Ballroom.

Valderrama was speaking not of only Tr3s, but of the entire media industry.  With the Latino population in the United States surging past 50 million in the 2010 Census, the bilingual/bicultural Latino experience has become pervasive in America.  But even as advertisers and politicians court this expanding audience, the media is still catching up.  Tr3s is working harder than anyone to change that.

“We need to create content that appeals to our fused values, not the one’s back home – but the ones shared among Latinos in NY, LA, Miami, Chicago, Dallas and even places like Raleigh, Nashville and Atlanta,” he said.

Jose Tillan, General Manager of Tr3s, affirmed that mission, and the network’s desire to lead the charge in reflecting the lives and aspirations of bilingual/bicultural Latinos.

“We are the network for bilingual/biculturals because we target them directly,” said Tillan.  “They have dominated the teen demo, and now they dominate the 18-34 segment, growing at a yearly rate of 12% since 2010. They are an original audience… and we reach them through our original content.”

Tr3s showcased a full slate of original programming at the event, headlined by The Ricardo Laguna Project, the Valderrama-produced program that chronicles the highs and lows of the titular BMX star.  Laguna appeared on stage with his mother and father – his familial foils in the show – to thank adoring ad buyers for their early support of the program.

Tr3s unveiled eight new originals in all, notable for their top-tier Latino talent behind or in front of the camera, including Mario Lopez, Oscar De La Hoya, Mexican songstress Dulce Maria, and the aforementioned Laguna and Valderama.

The network also affirmed its connection to music by announcing a new Unplugged with duo Wisin y Yandel, and gave a preview of its upcoming Unplugged with Colombian sensation Juanes, who closed out the presentation with an acoustic performance.  Tillan confidently predicted some Grammy love for Juanes later in the year.

Check out the slideshow below for photos from the Tr3s Upfront.

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Cyma Zarghami addresses the UVM Class of 2012 (Photo credit: Sally McCay)

Cyma Zarghami traveled to Burlington, VT this weekend to connect with an audience slightly older than her typical K6-11 demo.

The Nickelodeon President delivered the commencement address to the Class of 2012 at The University of Vermont, her alma mater, and received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Interim President John Bramley.

Unable to confer the Green Mountain State grads with a coat of green slime, Dr. Zarghami gave her speech a distinctly Nick feel by bringing along two of the network’s biggest stars, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star.  Or, at least their terrestrial alter egos.

See below for the full text of Cyma’s speech, and a little further below for video of a performance by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke – the voices of SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Starfish.

 CYMA ZARGHAMI UVM COMMENCEMENT

May 20, 2012

Thank you so much for having me here today. President John Bramley was nice enough to invite me, and I hope not to let him down.

I need to say thanks to Andrew Flewelling, who worked hard to get me back to Burlington. Thanks to the board of Trustees and congratulations to my fellow Honorary Degree recipients.

And a very big congratulations to you the graduating class of 2012.

I am honored and thrilled to be here.

Like you, I brought lots of family and friends with me today. My parents are here, and my parents in law.  My husband George and our three sons, Liam, Ethan and Wyatt.  Today is Ethan’s 10th birthday and I almost had him convinced this was his party.

And I am also lucky enough to have some colleagues and wonderful friends here as well.

The assignment was to tell my story, and hopefully give you something useful and relatable that you could take with you as you venture out into this next phase of your lives.

Honestly – a hard assignment. You guys need jobs, not advice. But I gave it my best shot.

I am here today because I was a student here in the early 80s, and because I have the privilege of running Nickelodeon, which I hope you spent a lot of time with growing up.  I was probably about four or five years into my entry level job on the day you were born.

I say I was a student here and not a graduate, because unlike you, I did not quite make it over the finish line.

I had a great four years here at UVM. But when I first came here I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I started in the School of Education; then became an English major.

But I sure loved Burlington. I loved the lake. I loved the people. I worked as a waitress in many fine establishments like The Last Chance Saloon, Leunigs and the Ice House. If waitressing were worth credits I might have had two degrees by the time I left…..I was a really good waitress. And I learned a lot doing it.

As it turned out, at the end of my four years at UVM, I found myself still three credits shy of my degree. So I stayed for that summer living in Winooski and took another class to earn those credits and graduate.

I completed and passed the class but it turned out to be the “wrong” credits, and after all that I still didn’t have my degree. But I left anyway – thinking when I apply for that entry level job no one is going to ask to see my diploma …

I was always honest about my story. So when I came back to UVM in the year 2000 to speak at the School of Education I was generously given my final three credits and my diploma. So I am a very proud member of the class of 2000.

You are the graduates of 2012. Today you should just be very proud of yourselves. And thankful for all the support that got you here.

Along the way there are two things that you have probably heard over and over. Work hard and have fun. If you are making a checklist for life, that is a really good start.

You are here today — so I know you worked hard. And because I used to live in Burlington I know you know how to have fun.

So in thinking about today I thought I would focus on the obvious and share with you my own checklist for life … here it is:

1. Sometimes you just get lucky.  Never underestimate when the stars align. (It doesn’t happen that often.)
2. You need to trust yourself and follow your gut (It’s probably kept you from doing something really stupid already).
3. Heart is what makes us passionate and makes good work much better.
4. Always keep it real. (As members of the YouTube and Facebook generation, you can’t really help yourselves anyway).

I am where I am because I have been incredibly lucky. I have always trusted my gut when making decisions – especially for Nickelodeon. I truly believe that heart is at the center of all great ideas.

Heart is people with passion who want to tell their stories. And authenticity is what keeps it real every day. And that is what keeps our audience coming back. Even little kids know it when they see it.

After I left Burlington my sister’s best friend called and offered me a job. They were hiring at this new company and needed someone who could type. The company was called Nickelodeon – and I qualified for the job – sort of.

But like a lot of entry level jobs, my first day was awful. My job was to manually input commercial codes into a computer.  What does that even mean?

On my first day the person showing me what to told me to watch over her shoulder. I had to sit on a window sill and watch her type codes for hours. I don’t know when it happened, but I definitely fell asleep. To this day I am not sure she ever noticed. If she did it just makes her a lovely human being.

From that day forward let’s just say I really tried hard to put my heart in it. It wasn’t until a little time had passed that I realized that I had found a place to work that was populated with excellent people, making a great product. A product that was authentic and innovative and creative.

As it turns out, learning to serve kids at Nickelodeon really turned the lights on for me. Luck got me there, my gut told me to stay and I have been able to pour my heart into making it better for 26 years. (That is about 5 years longer than you’ve been  alive).

You are without doubt entering a tough job market and you will have a hard time finding that perfect job or career right away. Sometimes it takes a while. Given what we know about the job market and what your generation is up against… if I could give you all jobs in Bikini Bottom I would!

But, you are a generation well positioned for what’s ahead. Authenticity is your trademark!

You are a generation with a lot of heart, along with many, many other great attributes.

I know this because in my job today we spend a lot of time studying our audience and for quite a while that audience was you.

Actually, I have been studying you since before you were born. You are called the Millenials. And here’s a few things we’ve learned about you.

You are a happy generation. You are tech-savvy, self-respecting and hard working. You value happiness more than wealth. And you are devoted to your families.

You are team oriented and won’t settle.

You tend to be a little more conventional than the generation before you, and believe your goals are within reach.

You are high achieving.

And you are under a lot of pressure.  You’ve had more homework and more testing than any other generation.

You will always be known as the kids of 9-11.

But despite that, the most important thing that has happened in shaping your lives so far is the advent of the internet.  You are connected to the world and to each other in ways we work hard to understand.

And we study what is going on around you.

When you were very young kids we first identified the incredible influence you were having on your parents and their decisions and choices. The whole country, it seemed was looking at the world through the lens of our kids.

That’s when Rugrats came to Nickelodeon, and for the first time you saw an animated show that told family stories literally from a kids’ point of view — from the carpet up.

It was as authentic as the couple who created it, and it introduced us to some great characters. It was when we first met the original Queen of Mean — Angelica Pickles. And I remember like it was yesterday that day when baby Dil was born.

When you were 10 years old the divorce rate had rapidly increased, and more and more kids were being raised in non-traditional families.

So when we saw the pilot for Hey Arnold, that centered around an urban kid living in a boarding house (with his grandparents) and a very diverse set of friends, we knew it would work. It was truly authentic storytelling at that time – and it had so much heart. And who could resist a kid with a head shaped like a football?

You grew up during the biggest growth of diversity in our country’s history. We always tried hard to serve and represent all kids, so we introduced you to people like Kenan and Kel and Amanda Bynes.

Then the 2000 census confirmed the incredible change happening in the country. So we introduced a young Latina named Dora. She is one of the most beloved characters for preschoolers on and off television, and she’s bilingual.

Kenan Thompson went on to become a regular on Saturday Night Live now and it has been a thrill to watch him grow up. And people like Nick Cannon are among the first wave of Millenials at Nick that are now making great work for the last wave of Millenials.

You are a socially conscious and responsible generation. You told us as kids that you cared about the environment, the war in Iraq and feeding the homeless.

We created an initiative for you called THE BIG HELP to allow you to access ways to have an impact on the world around you — even as kids.

And in every election year since 1988 we ask kids to pick the president and let them vote. Kids always predicted the winner, except in 2004. That’s when you voted for John Kerry.

The last attribute I want to talk about today is your best one — your confidence and optimism.

And that takes me to SpongeBob SquarePants. It launched when you were about 10. Bubble Buddy is probably clearly etched in your memory.

When we first saw the pilot for this show we honestly just scratched our heads.

It came to us in the late 90s. There was nothing like it – anywhere!  It came from a guy who was a major in Marine Biology, Steve Hillenberg, who had taken a job on an animated show for us called Rocko’s Modern Life.

He had clearly created a set of incredible characters. A sponge and his sidekick, Patrick Starfish; a tree squirrel from Texas; and an angry squid who aspired to be a musician. All with heart, and all well-defined.

You can imagine the discussion we had to decide to green light this show.  Were there enough stories to tell? Will people respond to the characters? Is it too stupid to put on TV?

It began as a simple buddy comedy, so intelligent in its stupidity and so unlike anything we had ever seen before.

After just three years it emerged as an icon of your generation. He represented pure optimism and kindness.

SpongeBob was oblivious to the bad things in the world just hoping he could be the best fry cook ever.   Every day for SpongeBob was and is the BEST DAY EVER.

And I hope today is YOUR best day ever.

It should be! Because even though your heads are not shaped like a football, you’ve grown up in a world full of diversity, and have fully embraced it.

You might not be able to talk to animals the way Eliza Thornberry did, but you care deeply about the environment.

And you may not achieve the accolades SpongeBob did as the best fry cook in Bikini Bottom, but you have drive and optimism to change the world for the better.

And when you look back in 20 years or so, regardless of which direction you have taken, I bet you will remember things about your UVM experience that will tell you a lot about the person you became.

You are leaving with a degree from this incredible institution. With a little luck, passion and intuition, your drive and optimism – and maybe a little patience – you will get wherever you want to go.

I wish you happiness and success. I really wanted to celebrate by sliming all of you, but the grown-ups said no.

But I do have a surprise for you. Because you are the first generation of the SpongeBob audience, I am thrilled to introduce you to two guys who have defined these characters for over 10 years. Please give a warm UVM welcome to Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke — the voices of Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Starfish who are here to sing you a little song.

Are you ready guys?

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