The latest from Next New Networks’ Jeaux Janovsky on the Channel Frederator Awards Blog:

I wanna go to the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards Site 2.0!!!

It’s Alive!!! Alive!!!
That’s right Fredheads. We’re rolling out the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards site fresh out the oven and onto the secret laboratory floor.

SPLAT!

It’s crawling around on it’s little stumps nicely for now, but soon our creature will be lumbering around terrorizing villagers in no time!

This is the site where you can keep tabs and be up to date on all our plans, nominees, categories, behind the scenes info right up until launch date!

Be one of the first to check out essays and art from our esteemed colleagues in Animation as they are delivered to us.

This is your chance to be the ultimate insider to the 2008 Channel Frederator Awards.

Yup. We’re proud parents.

Probably because I’m a “traditional” media guy –read: television– working in “new” media –read: blogging and internet video– I get a lot of people asking me “Do I need to do this?” and “How do I do this?” Usually, I say that my partner Emil Rensing gave me three rules to start blogging five years ago (”1. Blog often. 2. Blog short. 3. Post a picture.”) and leave it at that. This article in yesterday’s New York Times is much more helpful.

……
So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?
By PAUL BOUTIN
March 20, 2008
New York Times

MARK CUBAN, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a full plate. Besides his basketball team, the busy billionaire also owns part of a media company, and serves as chairman of the TV channel HDNet. He recently competed for five weeks on “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC. How on earth does he find time to blog?

Yet his site, blogmaverick.com, is one of the top 1,000 Weblogs, according to the search engine Technorati. Thousands read Mr. Cuban’s posts every single day. If he can do it, why can’t you?

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I’ve had a great time putting together one of our newer networks, Bride-O-Rama, and I particularly like the blog posts from True Bride Confessions. I was knocked out as soon as I heard about TBC and even more so when I saw it was part of an empire of True —- Confessions (True Mom Confessions, True Dad Confessions, True Office Confessions, and True Green Confessions.)

So while I was in Hollywood last week I thought it might be time to meet up with the force behind the truth, former Huffington Post-er and producer, Romi Lassally. She and her associate Adam Ware trucked out to my office in Burbank and we sat at the Nick Animation studios for an hour or so and got to know each other a bit.

Thanks for coming out guys. And thanks for the confessions Romi. We love them.

My favorite thing about Next New Networks is when a network by its nature, isn’t for me, becomes for me because it’s just fun and funny. Such is the case with one of our newest networks, Bride-o-Rama. Now, I’m not exactly the target audience—I’ll never be a bride (not my job, blame my gender), and besides I’m married and don’t remember anything fondly about preparing for my wedding, just remember a great wedding.

So why have I become a fan of Bride-o-Rama? Yes, the tips are good ( I liked the bride who carried white chalk to cover drink stains on her and her bridemaids’ dresses for wedding photos.) but they’re not exactly personally relevant. But the truth is, I look forward to the blogs, particularly those by Kelley Lynn, who has come up with a blog of lists of ” 11 reasons or 11 worst”. The two blogs that I loved were 11 worst songs—she nailed all the biggies though I would add “Maniac” from Flashdance which I remember being the soundtrack to the groom removing the Bride’s garter at a friends’ wedding. The other—”Top 11 Reasons Its NOT a Good Idea to Put The Groom in Charge of the Wedding “–is LOL brilliant with my favorite reason being “#3 Why spend thousands of dollars on a stuffy, elegant reception site when we can just have wings at Hooters?” And Kelley forgot to add, they have lots of TV’s so you won’t have to miss the big game… (P.S. check out the equally good True Bride Confessions—another oblivious groom posting.)

Last week was a long one for me. I love how things are going here at Next New Networks (yikes, is that really what our company is called? People let us get away with that one?) but there are some things we’re doing that are insanely ambitious and it makes for some long days and nights. I’m haunted by the unread or unreplied emails, the simple tasks I didn’t get done, the ideas put on the list months ago we haven’t had time to do. I can get a little tired, a little worn out.

But then I came home late last Friday night, and noticed that the N-Bot Twitter page had linked earlier that day to a new episode of Thread Heads: “Viewer Appreciation Week.” That sounds promising, I thought, and I clicked through to check out the new episode.

My friends, I got a little weepy. Check out the episode if you can — I’ve embedded it above. Rob and Corinne do a roundup of a lot of the fun things going on at ThreadBanger — response videos from YouTube and our site, comments, forum posts — and it’s magic, at least for me.

Why? (more…)

I’m going to let Tim give an official wrap-up of Pixelodeon because he’s much happier party-er than me, but I’ll just let you all know I’ve had a ball as of Day 1. Steve & Zadi of JETSET, Jay, Irina, and Ryanne have put on an amazing event –better organized than a first year has any right to be!– where videobloggers of all stripes are gathering in Hollywood and figuring out where to fit into the media firmament of the future.

From our NNN party Friday night, here’s two of our stars, Zadi Diaz from JETSET and Erik Beck from Indy Mogul. Up above, that’s Tim and Erik. And check out a few photo galleries that have already sprung up here, here, here, and here.

You’re anxiously refreshing the page to immediately absorb any incoming critiques, comments, or cuss words. You’re the creative addict chained to the chair waiting for your digital ripple to transform into a tsunami, and I’m out looking for you.

Last week, upon Fred’s urging, we started posting “Vimeo Vids of the Day” on the freshly-launched Indy Mogul. I’ve always felt that Vimeo represents a fresh new sort of creators community that other video sharing giants can’t fully attest to. It’s a friendly, small town atmosphere. The church, the post office, the local pub, and bright blue picket fences lining every dark brown house.

Posting to bigger pages can feel like plopping down on a crowded street corner in midtown Manhattan, holding your hard work up for the world to see, and praying a kind soul comes by and says something constructive.

With that in mind, I’ve been spending a portion of every morning looking for the best, the brightest, and the most innovative of the Vimiaddicts (I think I just coined that … if not, I’ll still take credit). One of the first I came across was Brett Dougherty, a video blogger and film student from Syracuse University. I didn’t even know that much at this point, I just knew he had cut together a very real, raw, and interesting clip. A short couple minutes later and it was on the site. I sent a cursory note informing him we had written the flick up.

He quickly shot back telling me couldn’t really ‘express just how awesome’ my message was.

The cycle quickly began. Brett sent me yet another message proclaiming his excitement, practically making me blush with just how enthused this talented young buck was to get spotlighted on the site. In short order he signed up for a user account, added his email address to the mailing list, began commenting on episodes, and even called and left a personal voicemail to me on our hotline.

If Brett had been excited about my blog post, I was ten-fold thrilled about his quick leap over from featured artist to fan of our network.

The world needs more Bretts and I’ll be seeking them out every day, walking down Main Street Vimeo, smiling and waving to everyone holding a camera and sharing.

Some of you know I have a life in a parallel universe as a cartoon producer. A while back one of our shows went out of production and, at first, the production blog didn’t seem to have a reason to exist. Then it occurred to the creator, Rob Renzetti, and me that we had a lot of worldwide fans in the My Life as a Teenage Robot community and maybe one of them would keep our dream alive. Sure enough the proprietor of one of our favorite fan blogs from Central America agreed to do the do and has been working with our biggest fan artists and posting all the time.

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Bill Moyers Journal did an incredible profile on Veracifer’s Josh Marshall and his Talking Points Memo blog’s unveiling of the Alberto Gonzalez affair and the firing of federal prosecutors. I think you’ll agree the segment captures the essence of what makes Josh’s vision powerful, and just right for this moment in time. The TPM reporters and the reader/reporters who make up their community are committed to routing out the news behind the news. They grab the thread and pull until the whole suit comes unraveled, or until it turns out to just be a random thread. The natural contrarian in me loves the idea that wherever the mainstream news media goes chasing, TPM goes elsewhere.

For those of you interested in the anatomy of the reporting on the scandal, scroll down the page and see what a great job BMJ does of tracing the email trail from the Administration, the TPM posts on the story, and more of their posts on the Jack Abramoff Lobbyists scandal of 2004 and 2005.

All of here at Next New Networks are very proud Veracifer is the network home of TPM TV. Josh and his whole team deserve all the attention Bill Moyers has given them. Bravo!

I think it’s safe to say paidContent’s Rafat Ali has a discerning taste in all things modern. And as with all tastemakers, The Freddie is a must have for any modern office.