Along with running three shows on Fox (Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show), Seth McFarlane is also getting into online content development. Even worse, he's doing it for a Fox competitor.

McFarlane will be developing fifty two-minute animated vignettes for Seth McFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy which will be distributed via Google's AdSense network (a competitor for Fox's Myspace).

The article goes into the corporate issues behind this strange move and asks a few good questions: why didn't Fox get a first-look offer at this idea? If they did, why did they pass on it? It seems inexpensive enough to produce and given the popularity of the creator, it seems a no-brainer.

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that Google was going to provide video on some of its AdSense web ads. Now, it seems it wants to take that philosophy to your TV. According to Donna Bogatin of ZDNet, CEO Eric Schmidt wants to target the $74 billion TV ad market because he feels people's time is being wasted seeing ads that aren't targeted to their interests.

So, what Google is thinking of doing is creating kind of a TV version of AdSense, where a browser would come up with links to sites depending on a person's channel-surfing patterns and the program they're currently watching. They have other ideas about this as well, which may or may not come to pass. But Bogatin notices that the company is looking for Software Engineers specializing in television technology, so the ideas are definitely more than just fleeting thoughts. I would imagine the way they could do this is via the interfaces on TiVos, sattellite boxes, and digital cable boxes, since the PC-based interactive TV is still a long way from being commonplace. Can anyone else think of how they might be able to accomnplish this? Let me know in the comments.

[via Slashdot]

Say you're reading a blog being written by your friend's girlfriend's anonymous friend who waxes poetic about her lack of dating life in the big city, and you start getting a hankering to see some Laguna Beach. Before, you'd have to go to another web site or -- heaven forbid -- fire up your TV.

But no more. Now comes word that Google will begin testing a video distribution service whereby customers who use their AdSense service (which includes the entire Weblogs, Inc. family) can receive ad-supported clips of shows from MTV Networks. In addition to Laguna, clips of SpongeBob SquarePants and the MTV Video Music Awards will be shown. Google will also have an MTV Networks channel on their video site, which will offer customers full episodes of MTV Networks shows for $1.99 each.