Dude, This Is Your Gossip Site?

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

Ashton Kutcher is now officially in the celebrity gossip business, having launched a new celebrity-focused site called Blah Girls.

Kutcher describes Blah Girls as an "interactive, animated Web series based on celebrity culture." It is being produced by Katalyst Media, a production company co-owned by Kutcher and Jason Goldberg. The site consists of two- to three-minute animated episodes twice a week, along with a blog that Kutcher says will be updated multiple times a day.

Since Blah Girls is web-based, comparisons to gossip sites likeTMZ.com and dlisted.com are tempting, but judging by the first episode the show itself is really more like South Park (the animation style is similar). Rather than cover individual celebrity news items, Blah Girls pokes fun at larger Hollywood trends.

If only it was as funny as South Park. The first episode is called "Adoption" and takes as its target the trend of internationally adopted babies in Hollywood these days - a curious selection given that it's hardly a new observation, and isn't pegged to any specific news. At least for us, the jokes fall flat, and the whole thing is a little bit like a Saturday morning cartoon littered with lewd humor.

As for the accompanying blog, so far it consists of celebrity photos with the Blah Girls animated characters photoshopped in - a direct take-off from Perez Hilton, minus his trademark caustic humor. The Blah Girls blogs doesn't seem to be aimed at breaking news and does not offer any substantial commentary, so given the tremendous volume of celebrity-based blogs out there, this is unlikely to be a major traffic generator.

Interactivity is de rigeur for Web sites these days, and the Blah Girls' solution to the challenge is a curious one. The site allows for "communication" with the show's characters, three animated girls that Katalyst identifies as teenagers, although they look and sound more like younger children. The characters can respond to questions or comments of all kinds submitted by users. That's a function that is very compelling for a site like WebMD ("Help! What's causing this rash?"), but it's a little harder to imagine what sort of information users would try to get out of the Blah Girls (Help! What's Minnie Driver's new baby named?")

Katalyst media, which was founded in 2005, has produced movies and TV shows (such as Beauty and the Geek and Punk'd), but this is the first piece of web content out of its newly created new media division. Five other ideas are currently in various stages of development, according to Kutcher.

As for Blah Girls, Katalyst has larger ambitions than a mere Web site. Goldberg says that they are "really building a brand" that he believes has mobile and international potential.

The concept of pairing up the Web, animation, and celebrity news seems like it could be an interesting and successful one. TV shows like VH1's Best Week Ever have seen tremendous success doing witty round-ups of celebrity news, so there's no reason the idea couldn't succeed on the Web.

Still, it sinks or swims on how good the humor is - so Kutcher better be prepared to put on his funny cap and get down to work.

Liz Gunnison