Tonight, an all-new season of Top Gear premieres on BBC America at 9p/8c, and if you tune in, you might just see some familiar faces from Next New Networks. 

BBC America’s running a groundbreaking online campaign, My First Car, to promote the new season of Top Gear across Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube, asking viewers to share the stories of their first cars for the chance to be featured on-air, or even win a trip to London to see a Top Gear live event.

In a first of its kind partnership, BBC America sponsored dozens of Next New Networks creators to create My First Car-themed videos, which you can see in BBC America’s YouTube playlist, and encourage their own viewers to do the same. 

So far, thousands of viewers have shared their stories online, as highlighted on Top Gear’s Tumblr blog, and starting tonight they’ll be featured on-air alongside some of BBC America’s favorite videos from Next New Networks creators. Here are a couple to get you started:

So tune in tonight, share your own #myfirstcar stories, and spread the word! And our thanks to our co-founder Herb Scannell and his team at BBC America for working wiht us on this incredibly fun campaign. 

We have a lot of content on Next New devoted to frugality. From crafting your own halloween costumes, to building Hollywood-style props for next-to-nothing, it only made sense to continue that fine tradition in the kitchen.

Enter the “Working Class Foodies,” Rebecca and Kit.

“WCF” was one of our launch shows in 2009, for our food network Hungry Nation (“Real People. Real Food.”). Its combination of gorgeous shooting, and love for sizzling up affordable but edible dishes made for great programming and even better cross promotion.

Says Rebecca, “Once we decided to make it a show, we tried to cast it … we tried to make it more … I guess gimmicky, more Food Network-y, and then we just thought … why? … that’s the kind of show we’re sick of watching. Why make a show that we don’t even want to watch? So we decided to make a show that we would want to watch.”

With around 65 episodes under their much-experienced belts, the Foodies lead the way for local, sustainable, and organic food within our Hungry Nation and beyond. Make sure to check out this week’s Creators Spotlight.

More Creator Spotlights:
Kevin Nalty - “Nalts”
Alan Kaufman - “Ultra Fur”
Grace Randolph - “Beyond the Trailer”

Got a minute to help us take home some Tastys? 

justin writes: The gourmet gurus over at our food network, Hungry Nation, have pulled a bit of a coup over at the Tastys (an award for all things food and fashion). Just check out this mammoth list of nominations …

FOOD 
Best Food Program: Web - Average Betty 
Best Food Program: Web - Working Class Foodies 
Best Food Travel Series: Web - Working Class Foodies 
Best Food or Drink Video Podcast - Average Betty 
Best Food or Drink Video Podcast - Working Class Foodies 
Best Home Chef in a Series - Average Betty 
Best Home Chef in a Series - Working Class Foodies 
Best Home Chef in a Series - Food Wishes 
Best Comedy Series - Average Betty

Oh! and ThreadBanger hits the award list as well, in the FASHIONcategory for “Best Fashion or Design Video Podcast.”

But, nominations do not an award make. We need your help to put a smile on their faces, so head on over to the Tastys site, and we’d be honored to get a vote or two for your favs.

(Source: nextnewnetworks.com)

Grace at the Marvel Live skybox: Indy Mogul’s Grace Randolph (“Beyond the Trailer”) holds Thor’s hammer (that’s Mjolnir, for all you non-nerds) as she hosts Marvel’s Live Comic Con coverage.

The Barely Digital team (and fan) | NY Comic Con, Sept 10 

Tech Know’s Andrea Feczko, Rusty Ward, Mike Stevens and fan Rebecca Kelly.

Michael Stevens and Lauren Francesca, today at NY Comic Con. Lauren says tons of kids are recognizing her from The Key of Awesome.

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!