October 1: Hey everyone — today we’ve got some great news to lead with: as shown by the chart below, Next New Networks viewership has grown 500% so far in 2010 from an average of 30 million views per month to over 150 million views in August — and we’ve already surpassed that total for September as well (we’ll have the full September roundup in a couple weeks).

What’s powering this? Massive hits like The Key of Awesome and Auto-Tune the News, two of Mashable’s top 3 most-viewed series on the web for August 2010, combined with the continued growth of our Next New Creators program with hit YouTube series like Hot for Words and Keep the Heat, steady growth among core networks like Indy Mogul and Fast Lane Daily, and the launch of hit new networks like VSauce.

In addition: 

• In any given month, over 40 million unique viewers now watch Next New Networks programming. 
• Overall subscribers to Next New Networks have doubled from 2 million to 4 million viewers in just six months.
• Next New episodes have now been viewed over 1.5 billion times since March 2006; at the current rate, we will do 1 billion views in 2010 alone.
• More than 90% of our inventory is advertising-enabled and generating revenue, including a 10% “viral lift” due to many of our videos being re-uploaded by fans (see Tim talk about this today at 4:30p ET at the Open Video Conference in New York).

Spotlight: The Gregory Brothers

Our biggest growth story of the summer is The Gregory Brothers, creators of Auto-Tune the News, and the first of now over 50 independent producers to join our Next New Creators program.

Last year the Gregory Brothers did millions of views, won multiple Streamy and Webby Awards, and Auto-Tune the News became a worldwide hit. But it was the one-two punch this summer of their “Double Rainbow Song” and “Bed Intruder Song,” featuring Antoine Dodson, that accelerated the Gregory Brothers to three consecutive months of massive growth:

• 370,000 new subscribers in the last 90 days — 250% growth — making them YouTube’s #1 Most Subscribed Channel for the month of September. 
• Three months of more than 300% viewership growth from June through August (over 36 million views in August)
• Cover versions and community mashups of the “Bed Intruder Song” have garnered an additional 75 million views
• “Bed Intruder Song” is a legitimate pop hit, debuting in the Billboard Hot 100, selling over 91,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan, and making enough money for Antoine Dodson to move his family to a nicer house, as reported by the NY Times. 

If you haven’t seen “Bed Intruder Song” yet, check it out and go down the rabbithole of 2010’s biggest pop culture phenomenon. 

Thanks, George!

Lastly, we want to extend our heartfelt congratulations and thanks to George Strompolos, who’s been our partnership manager at YouTube and shared yesterday that he’ll be moving on from his role there to start a new company. George is one of the biggest supporters of independent, original web video in the business, and through his work helping to found and build YouTube’s Partner Program has played a huge role creating opportunities not just for companies like Next New Networks, but a whole wave of independent creators who are making real income, as evidenced by recent stories in BusinessWeek and AdAge.

That’s it for today — as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts, and feel free to let us know what you’d like to know more about in the next newsletter. 

Thanks!