As Allen Stern noted on his blog, earlier this week The Media Kitchen held the Digital Media Venture Conference, introducing their clients to innovative VC-funded startups that are changing the media plans of tomorrow. The Media Kitchen’s Darren Herman approached us about helping them create an icebreaker video to kick off the spirit of the day, and we jumped at the chance to work with them on it, as Darren and The Media Kitchen have been big supporters and cheerleaders of our work.

After a bit of brainstorming with Darren and MK’s president, Barry Lowenthal, we came up with the video embedded above (here’s an HD version), featuring Gary, Indy Mogul’s incomparable puppet co-host (mostly because he’d be available for all the shoots) in a whirlwind tour of some of the better-known companies in Silicon Alley. All glory due to the amazing Justin Johnson, NNN’s superstar associate producer and first hire, who wrote, directed and produced the piece in a couple days’ time with no budget and a supplemental crew of one, which to me is just incredible.

Special thanks to Barry, Darren and Nicole DelVecchio from The Media Kitchen, David and Marco from Tumblr, Richard Blakeley from Gawker Media, Jake and Amir from CollegeHumor, Erik Beck, Derek D, Rob Czar and Corinne Leigh from Next New Networks, and Lindsay Campbell and Julie Alexandria from CBS Interactive for being such good sports, and to all the other people from NNN and Frederator who helped out as Rock Band partygoers or Gary stand-ins (especially Ben Ross). And special props to Kyle Fassenella, who DP’d and contributed all the amazing steadicam work; Rachel Garcia, for coming up with the idea to have Gary be the star; and Liam Collins, our super-nice VP of Finance and Business Affairs, for playing against type as the jerk who tells Erik to get back to work.

tumblr. - The Documentary from DaveAOK on Vimeo.

Our friend, director David Seger, finally tells the truth about our friends at Tumblr.

Tony Schwartz, 1923-2008: his ‘daisy ad’ changed political advertising.

Even though he became famous in an era of black & white and radio, Tony Schwartz taught core lessons of communication to everyone in the media. Whether they knew it was coming from him or not.

His most famous piece was this campaign spot for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, which, lore has it, ran only once (and never even mentioned the opponent’s name) but was responsible for defeating Barry Goldwater in a landslide.

My mentor, Dale Pon, not only insisted I buy and read Tony’s book “The Responsive Chord,” but that I should meet the man himself. It was an incredible experience, and I learned more in one sitting than in any other single experience I’d had. From then on, I made the book required reading among my promotion staff.

Check it out. The things you think you know because you’re smart are probably things that Tony was smart about before we were born.

It was two years ago, this June, that Next New Networks actually started in the apartment of Fred Seibert, who had been incubating the idea with Emil Rensing (they had Channel Frederator and VOD Cars up and running when we met). In Fred’s apartment that day, a partnership was born as Tim, Jed, Fred, Emil and I all agreed that a company super-serving communities or targeted niches with “networks” on the internet (we later called them “micro-networks”) was a worthwhile pursuit, and worth raising VC money to do so. It wasn’t much later that our lead VC, Spark Capital, led by Dennis Miller, got on board, and then others, and by the end of the fall we were up and running.

During the time we’ve been operating we’ve accomplished a lot. We championed a new distribution method, “super-distribution” (as Fred said when we first used the phrase, “Who doesn’t want to be super?”), and that meant that our networks’ shows would be seen not just on their own URLs but on as many as twenty other partner platforms from YouTube to Veoh to Tivo where people were going to watch new kinds of video, and breaking the hegemony of the TV networks. And now many others, including the big networks, are on the super-distribution bandwagon.

While we were championing new distribution models, we were evangelizing to ad agencies and clients that they too should get “super” and embrace the idea of having their ads go to where the audiences are and innovate with us in distribution and ad integration. Movie studios like Lionsgate and Paramount were the first in, as well as car endemics and then non-traditional advertisers like the sewing machine company Janome, who saw loyal communities like Threadbangers DIY fashionistas as smart investments and came on board as sponsors. We’ve got more to do but we’ve put a lot of time into moving advertisers from “huh?” when we first started talking super-distribution to “uh-huh!”

And we identified key talent, next generation filmmakers, who can do some combo of directing, producing, writing, hosting and marketing — or simply do it all. People like Erik Beck at Indy Mogul, Rob Czar and Corinne Leigh at Threadbanger, Ben Relles at Barely Political and Mike Spinelli at Fast Lane Daily. Passionate folks who love what they do, and it shows. It’s these kinds of people who helped us launch 16 networks, some of which thrived and continue, and others that didn’t and wilted away. But that’s ok — that’s entertainment — and we’re happy where we are today with close to a dozen strong and more to come.

All of which leads me to reflect on our needs for the future. This spring we closed our second round of funding, bringing in great investors like Goldman Sachs and Velocity Interactive, to join Spark Capital and Saban Capital who participated in both rounds. With a newly bolstered board, I was named Chairman to go with my CEO title, and that’s given me an opportunity to think even bigger about our company. And to that end, I decided, with the board and my partners’ approval, to look to bring in a CEO to run the day to day of Next New Networks.

Thus far, we’ve been video-centric, built our network model, and got distribution and advertising up and running. Now, I want to see us go beyond video by building up our web capabilities in key categories, and move the company to make our sites and new offerings even more robust for communities to gather and interact. Hence, I plan on bringing in someone as CEO who has “been there, done that” in building a web business, and who will work with me as Executive Chairman.

More to come. I’ll keep you posted.

Have you ever watched Indy Mogul and thought to yourself, “Hey, this Erik guy is one sharp looking dude”? Well, you’re not the only one. Daisy Whitney from TV Week thinks so too. She’s compiled a list of The Hottest Male Web Hosts, and our very own Erik Beck is up against Eric Gunnar Rochow from Greenhouse. So if you’ve ever entertained those thoughts, now is the time to let those feelings rush forth. Vote Now! Polling ends Friday, May 2nd.

GO ERIK!

Wesley over on the Indy Mogul blog posted this video of Indy Mogul being covered on CNN Headline News’ News to Me over the weekend.

The blog commenters said it best:

GEORGE: Amazing guys I love this site and it is almost unreal to see it be on NATIONAL TV after only a year. 2000000 views a month is insane, and I’m sure it grows every month.

PUNKANDSKA66: You realize you guys haven’t even been around for a full year. Think about what indymogul will be like at this time next year.

Congrats, Erik and the Indy Mogul team!

Moblogic.tv is live today, and our friends at CBS Interactive — the producing team that brought you Wallstrip — really knock it out of the park with an unique, well-paced show and a brilliantly executed website with a big, beautiful (Blip) Flash player and a design that makes sharing and stealing the show easy. We’ll be watching and taking notes - I already see much I want to steal (we’ve been moving in similar directions — check, for instance, the redesigned Veracifier website). Congratulations to Lindsay, Adam and Jeff, who have been working hard on this show for quite a while.

If you’re in Austin for SXSW, be sure to check out Lindsay on my panel, Quit Your Day Job and Vlog, where we’ll hear how she got into vlogging, and what it’s been like for her to make the jump from indie Wallstrip host to producing a daily news show for CBS.

Here’s the first episode, below.

My friend and former colleague, media professor Jay Newell, sent me this picture and article from The New York Times (July 1982) to remind me how skinny I once was. It’s about youth in the then new media of cable television at the company we worked at (now called MTV Networks), and one line in particular struck me as relevant to today’s new media. MTV executive producer Julian Goldberg says,

”Look at those faces,” he said, pointing to a group in jeans and T-shirts. ”At the networks, some of them would be ‘gofers.’ Here they’re directors, producers, they’re in charge.”

It’s true again today, only now it’s also true in cable TV too. Or, as my friend Mississippi Fred McDowell once said, “Here we are again, doin’ that same ole thing.”

Look around Next New Networks, and everywhere else in the internets too.

You can read the whole article here, here, or below. (more…)

It’s no surprise to the followers of Next New Networks that internet television has gone mainstream; 150 million views is hardly “niche.” But it’s interesting to me how quickly the mainstream media has made the transition to covering our piece of the rock like it’s an everyday thing. Today there were two buried stories in business sections of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, mentioning internet TV as just another story to be covered. The Times trumpeted the value of the web (and YouTube in particular) for Superbowl advertisers, while the Journal bemoaned the slowness of advertisers to climb on board (hear, hear). Only a year ago the idea of launching a political campaign with an online spot was the hottest thing since sliced bread.

No big point here, but it’s fun to realize how fast the right ideas integrate themselves into our lives as if they were there all along.

I started reading Ken Auletta’s wonderful books at the suggestion of my lifetime friend Nick Moy and have never been disappointed, especially as he switched his beat over towards media, my consuming interest. It’s rare to find a thorough reporter who’s also a compelling writer. So I was more than flattered when Herb suggested Ken talk to me about a future book he’s planning. Afterwards I walked him over to meet David Karp, someone who knows a lot more than I do.