Some point while growing up, there was an instant when you realized that what you were watching on your television or computer was really exceptional. Scenes that entertained you so wholly that you still make jokes and references about them. For a while there, you were probably put out that you’d never see that snippet or segment again but nowadays, memories of shows past are limited not by how you find the clip but how far back your memory stretches. It’s time that we at Next New Networks, paid a bit of tribute to the montages, jokes, shows, comedians, and movies that we can now watch, without scrounging, rewinding, borrowing or staying up until 2am to watch something on cable.

It seems only right we kick off our Noontime Nostalgia blog series days after one of the most beloved sketch comedy troupes of all time started a channel on YouTube. Monty Python now has many favorite clips and sketches up for your enjoyment and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Black Knight is still a favorite and at the top of their most watched clips.

This Noontime Nostalgia is brought to you by the Holy Grail and flesh wounds.

[April Buchert is a freelance writer who’s working with Next New Networks to help develop new marketing initiatives. — Felicia]

We don’t blog all our press (that’s what the Next News Feed is for), but in the last week we got some really great coverage, not just linked around the Web, but on TV, too, and in glossy print magazines that we could buy and share with our folks. Here’s a quick roundup of some of our favorite stories, before tomorrow’s election buries all other news forever.

Our own Steve Nelson (Bull), Ian Jenkins, Tom Small and Rusty Ward (Bear) in the latest Fortune.

This month’s Fortune Magazine featured a two page spread in the print edition, and an online photo gallery about Barely Political and Next New Networks, including the photo above, taken in our conference room.

Meanwhile, this month’s GQ featured Amber Lee Ettinger, aka Obama Girl, in their photo portfolio of the key figures of 2008’s election, alongside people like will.i.am, Rosario Dawson, Rachel Maddow, and Maria Shriver.

And if that’s not enough, both Politico and FOX News chose “Crush on Obama” as one of the top moments of the 2008 campaign.

Not to be outdone, Erik Beck and the gang at Indy Mogul showed up in Popular Mechanics last week, in a roundup of Halloween costume tips, as well as a profile on G4’s Attack of the Show, embedded below.

Great work and congratulations, everyone!

From Lindsey:

Just a reminder that tonight is Threadbanger’s Handcrafted Halloween Costume Party! (aka the best party of the year that you will NOT want to miss).

Where: Mercury Lounge, NYC (217 E. Houston St, between Ludlow and Essex)
When: 8pm-12am

We’re kicking off the night with DJ’s The Delyle Sisters, and then there will be a fashion show/costume contest, starring the party goers with the best costumes (we’ll be handing out numbers to people at the event who have the best most creative costumes). The grand prize winner will be receiving a ThreadBanger sewing machine. THEN, our very own Steve Nelson (and co) will be performing a few songs, including a Halloween song and then the band Midnight Fistfight goes on. (YAAAAAAAHHHH)

Also, if you don’t have a costume, there will be a Zombie Cloak room (sponsored by Zombie A Go-Go) with professional makeup artists to do your Zombie Makeup for FREE (so you don’t have an excuse to not come)! We’ll also have free organic treats including cupcakes, brownies and cookies. And last but not least, if you noticed the awesome goody bags in the office, we are giving them to the first 100 party goers, so get there early.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this every possible especially Rob and Corinne (obviously), Erin, Lee, Jeaux, Kendra, Nina and Jacob! Also, a huge thanks to everyone that sponsored the event: Tumblr, Disqus, American Sewing Expo, Instructables, HowCast, PONO, Coats and Clark, Simplicity, Craft, CraftStylish, Zombie A Go-Go, Nature’s Shea Butter, Kreinik Metallic Thread, Dritz, and M&J Trim.

For 24 hours today (starting midnight ET Oct 6), thanks to a promotional commitment from our sponsor, Starburst, our great animated series Nite Fite is being featured on the front page of YouTube in the upper-right spot usually reserved for advertiser videos, as you can see in the screenshot below.

Nite Fite is not a branded entertainment series, like many other videos that have appeared in that space. It’s a fully independently-owned show that has a standalone sponsor integration within each episode, not unlike Seth McFarlane’s Cavalcade of Comedy and its sponsorship by Burger King. The Cavalcade is being distributed by a Google AdSense buy, just as we’re getting a distribution boost from our front page buy (which we fully expect to be effective, as the show is good enough to have viewers then rate it, share it, and forward it along). I think it’s a tremendously innovative way for an advertiser to get their messaging out to the YouTube audience. By embedding a sponsorship in a YouTube partner channel (in this case Channel Frederator) that already has a ton of credibility and love in the YouTube community (with over 20,000 subscribers and 13mm views), Starburst is promoting a great independent show that deserves a wider audience, and getting their sponsorship viewed at the same time.

As of now, the latest episode, “TV is Crap,” has been up for around 1424 hours, been viewed 120,000300,000 times, and is holding steady at a four-star rating, with comments from viewers like, “this is the first ad on youtube that was actually good,” and, “Finally, a sponsored video that’s actually funny.” But my favorite one of all is this one from Trayxx:

I just clicked in to this 45 minutes ago out of curiousity, now after watching all the eps I’m hooked! Great job and keep it up!

One of the smartest people I know in the space, 7 Robot’s Sarah Szalavitz, a programming advisor of ours and, along with Damien Somerset, one of the owner-producers of our hit show Zaproot, has long been saying that companies like ours should spend less on producing and more on promoting content. Today’s trial, the results of which we’ll share here later in the week, could be a great model, not unlike the Seth McFarlane deal, for tying sponsorship and promotion together to get great programming in front of a wider audience.

Just when you thought the ‘08 election couldn’t get any weirder, today Barely Political has its biggest guest spot yet. Check out our new fall sitcom that dares to imagine what would happen if two real political mavericks — the girl who loves Obama, and the guy who hates lemons — had to share an office?

I think we’ve got to order a full 22 episodes of this one.

Who said videoblogging can’t make you a living? In 2006, good friend of Next New Networks and Indy Mogul guest star Bre Pettis was a high school art teacher and all around super guy I met at SXSW, one of a literal handful of us running around with video cameras that year. Two years later, he’s got a great new series pilot, History Hacker, debuting on the History Channel. As Bre says,

The folks at History gave the producer, director, and director of photography permission to take my DIY style of making videos with lots of jump cuts and direct talking to the camera and push it forward into a longer format. It doesn’t look like anything else on TV.

Watch it (or even better, DVR it) this September 26th at 8pm and midnight, and email the History Channel or post in the forums to help make Bre the first videoblogger to get a full TV series.

Go, Bre! This couldn’t happen for a more awesome guy.