What do you get when you cross The Blair Witch Project with CNN?

An infotainment migraine, some might say. But the twentysomething entrepreneurs behind BlackholeTV.com prefer to think of it as the future of Webcasting.

BlackholeTV.com, a new video-based online entertainment site aimed at the 19-29 market, launched in Toronto July 20.

The site, which offers an edgy take on youth culture and nightlife, has already managed to create considerable buzz, thanks in large part to an aggressive teaser campaign prior to the launch.

The campaign included wild postings, along with ads in newspapers, washrooms and cinemas in the Toronto market. The creative, produced by Hewson Bridge and Smith of Ottawa, featured the eyebrow-raising tagline "TV that swallows."

BlackholeTV.com offers five- to six-minute video segments devoted to various aspects of contemporary counterculture. The site is divided into six "channels," each with a different theme: Nightlife, Sports, Lifestyles, Street Stories, Music and Big Events.

Jay Litkey and Jonathan Martin, the Ottawa-based co-founders of BlackholeTV.com, say their goal is to provide a window on the kind of street-level culture that rarely finds its way onto conventional TV.

"Personally, I'm sick of normal old television and the way it's all spit and polish," says Litkey, who worked in the software development and multi-media enterprises division of Nortel before launching BlackholeTV.com. "This is a new way of looking at things."

Right now, the site's focus is on Toronto, but the goal is to feature clips shot at events all over the world - coverage of the Oktoberfest in Munich, for example, and of the Olympic Games in Sydney.

"We won't be covering the 100-metre dash," Litkey says. "We're covering what it's actually like to be there - the event around the event. What it's like in a beer tent or in the crowd. All the things that you don't normally see on network TV."

While the partners funded the launch almost entirely out of their own pockets, the plan is ultimately to take the company public. In the meantime, however, the site's continued existence will depend on their ability to generate advertising revenue.

While no advertisers have yet come on board, BlackholeTV.com will be pursuing the same general range of clients as other youth-oriented media, such as MuchMusic.

In the interim, Litkey says, the company has recruited a number of advertising resellers - brokers that sell banner ads at a discount - with the goal of keeping the site full of ads.

It remains to be seen whether BlackholeTV.com can attract enough advertising to sustain itself.

Carolyn Convey, group media manager with Toronto-based Cossette Media, says the site may have difficulty surviving long even if all its ad space is sold at top dollar.

A Webcaster like BlackholeTV.com can't afford to be reliant on just a single revenue stream, Convey argues.

"There usually has to be more than one," she says. "If it's just advertising, then I don't have a great deal of confidence that they'll be around in the long term."

Convey, who oversees Cossette's interactive strategies, says BlackholeTV.com might be able to generate additional income by selling some of its programming to other content providers, such as television broadcasters.

"There are many more specialty television stations coming into the market," she says. "So if the programming is strong enough, they may be able to sell [to them]."

Litkey, for his part, says this kind of revenue-generating strategy could be a possibility at some point. There are, however, no concrete plans yet.