Maybe Van Veen has been spending too much time with his purported bestie Ben Silverman, the former NBC executive who takes credit for the likes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Weakest Link. Because we can't imagine Van Veen's media sugar daddy Barry Diller envisioned this sort of thing when he funded Van Veen's studio, Notional, four months ago. It's such a retro format for a "multi platform" studio that's supposed to be inventing the future. Here's some of what's slated:

• "READY, SET, DANCE!: In partnership with a major production entity, "Ready, Set, Dance!" is a first-of-its-kind dance competition series that seamlessly combines the web and television."
• "YOU VS. AMERICA: Currently in development, 'You vs. America' is a ground-breaking game show that innovatively combines the immediacy of the internet with the excitement of a network primetime television game show."
• "CHASE THE MONEY: "Chase the Money" is an epic scale reality game show that combines the pratfalls of a classic prank show with the simplicity of a child's game of 'Tag'."
• "LOVE TAXI: The dating show that takes place entirely in a taxicab. "

Actually, now that we think about it, the dancing one was probably Barry "Twinkle Toes" Diller's idea in the first place.

(Pic: Van Veen, by Zach Klein)

Ad Age reports (via) that Silverman might take over CollegeHumor at the behest of Barry Diller, who bankrolls both CollegeHumor and Silverman's new online venture. Van Veen, meanwhile. is transitioning out of CollegeHumor and into his own Diller-funded media startup, Notional, which sounds a lot like Silverman's Electus (both have something to do with online video production).

We're told Silverman and Van Veen have been working very closely together and talking to each other every day. Perhaps a grander merger is in the works that would combine Electus, Notional and CollegeHumor into one venture. Silverman may have been ousted from old media, but he could still be lord of the new media flies. Especially within a venture that actually celebrates a refusal to mature, an inability to grow emotionally and a proclivity for partying to excess. Those are Ben Silverman's specialties, right there.

(Pics: via Getty, Webbyist)

There's one person apart from shareholder John Malone who stands to lose when IAC is broken up: Alex von Furstenberg, adopted son of the internet conglomerate's boss, Barry Diller. The shaved-headed socialite, Diane von Furstenberg's son by her first gay husband, will still inherit a large part of his adoring stepfather's fortune. But after IAC is divided into five, Alex von Furstenberg may have trouble securing the front-row seats at Lakers games that are such a mark of social status in Los Angeles, where von Furstenberg has lived since 2005. He's been relying on Diller's office to cadge tickets to the bastketball games from Ticketmaster, the online ticketing service which IAC is spinning off. The IAC boss will remain chairman of Ticketmaster after the split, but one peons still hopes Diller and his relatives will no longer be able to use the service as a personal favor bank.

I am an employee at Ticketmaster and there is one major reason that we are counting the days until we are spun off from Barry Diller's IAC. Alex von Furstenberg. Barry Diller's stepson demands front row seats to every Laker Game in LA. His request trumphs all other Laker ticket requests from our President, CEO, celebrities, or valuable clients. His sense of entitlement is far worse than people we like to give tix to like Jack Nicholson, and he hasn't even done anything to earn it! What makes it worse is when other Ticketmaster employees look at the court seats we give him (from their nosebleed seats), they are empty because he misses the game! He is the biggest spoilt brat on the West Coast.

"I think TV/features and Web shorts are two different animals," Van Veen told me. "Creating a 44-minute episode of Lost and a 2-minute short like Hand Vagina definitely require different skill sets."

In fact, Van Veen says the writers strike is hurting College Humor. Or at least its brand. Viacom's Paramount studio bought the rights to a CollegeHumor film a couple years back and signed on Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, writers from The Office. But, Van Veen said, "The project is on pause because of the strike."