Since all I do anymore is blog our media mentions (I have some other things I’m planning to write about, I swear), I just wanted to congratulate the Channel Frederator team on catching the eye of two of the pillars of New York media this week.

This Monday, our original series The Meth Minute 39 was featured in New York Magazine, which I read every week and never knew that made me, in Dan’s words, a “chic Manhattan sophisticate.” I just thought it was a fun magazine to start reading when you move to NYC like I did last year. The feature was part of NYMag’s “NewTube” issue, highlighting the best of online video, in an article called “The Cartoon is Back.”

And today, the gray lady herself (that’s the New York Times for those of you outside hipsterville –Fred) (shoot, did fred just call me a hipster? this is a pretty old term –Tim) name-checked MM39, Viropop, and Next New Networks (and our friends at The Burg), in Stuart Elliott’s article, “Web Videos Stealing TV Viewers, and Marketers,” which opens with the question,

“Why are fewer viewers watching the new fall television series? Perhaps because they are too busy watching video online.”

We love getting the credit, but of course there are a lot of things making people watch less network television. The fall series aren’t that good, honestly — many of the best ones now come in midseason or the summer — and there are a lot of other options for people, like every past season of TV ever available on DVD at Netflix and Amazon, and games like Guitar Hero and Halo, which are the new blockbusters of our age. Maybe it’s idea of a big fall TV season that’s becoming a thing of the past (our views are way up, for the record) but people are more into consuming and interacting with TV than ever.

With so much going on, it’s hard to take a minute to stop and blog the moments along the way. However, we’ve got to congratulate Josh Marshall, TPM, and our team here at Veracifier, who are having their best week ever.

It all started when an eagle eyed member of the TPMtv team posted some video of John McCain not exactly chastising a questioner who called our possible next President an unflattering world. That video’s here, if you didn’t happen to catch it.

By that afternoon, the video was the top story on the front page of AOL and our channel had racked up about a million extra views — in one day — on both YouTube and our site. To date, there are now over 1600 comments on YouTube, over 15,000 comments on AOL, and the story keeps rolling.

Oh, and especially fun for all of us — all the attention made Veracifier the #1 most viewed channel on YouTube for the day:

What’s especially interesting is that this was video footage the entire media corps had access to; our lean operation with TPM pays a modest fee to get clean access to video footage such as this from some of the same providers who provide to C-SPAN. As we noticed once before with the Rose Garden Long Shot incident, often the key to good TV online is just about finding the right stuff at the right time, and making it more available than anyone else. Great job, Josh, Ben, Marc, and everyone else on Veracifier. (And thanks to David Levin at Brainstorm for the heads-up.)

Early last summer, Steve and Zadi from Jetset showed us all at Next New Networks just how easy it was to use Ning to set up a specialized social network. My partner Tim Shey was the only one of us to take the bait and one night in August he delivered on a vision we’d been talking about at Channel Frederator and popped up Channel Frederator RAW, another one of our ‘firsts,’ this time the world’s first social network just for animation.

We quietly started mentioning RAW on our blogs, and eventually asked for a few members, to see whether the thing had any legs. At first I thought I’d send out a wider invitation after 100 members, but things being as busy as they were I never got around to it. Over this past weekend I’d friended my 200th RAW friend and realized it was now or never. So, the previews are over, we’re on Broadway.

At 3pm ET today I sent out a note to a select list of filmmakers, artists, and fans, people in our community we’d been in contact with for years. As of five minutes ago we’d increased the size of our network by almost 50% and the action on the site has perked up 10-fold. More art, more video, and most gratifying of all, more conversation is going on between animation people across five continents.

Thanks Steve, thanks Zadi, thanks Tim. Most of all, thanks to our new members (some cool icons they have above, yes?). I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves.

I mentioned a little while back that the Wall Street Journal covered Indy Mogul. Seems only fair that the guys would return the favor.

I assume you’ll see the results next Monday on the Indy Mogul website, which right now is running an awesome new Backyard FX featuring Bre Pettis from Make Magazine’s Weekend Projects podcast.

The ever-brilliant Micki Krimmel has written an extensive post on WorldChanging about the current online video landscape, and turned in possibly the only thoughtful and appropriate response I’ve seen so far to the news recently reported that our friend Amanda Congdon and ABC won’t be continuing their relationship for another year.

Micki’s best point is that the online video landscape has evolved and grown so much in the past year, it’s almost useless now to draw conclusions about the viability of the industry based on any one person’s career choices — though I’d add it was pretty useless more than a year ago, when people were using Amanda’s departure from Rocketboom for their own axes to grind about videoblogging and its emerging personalities — many of them were painfully wrong when they made predictions then about her or the medium’s prospects, and I think there’s a good chance many of them are wrong now.

Amanda’s taken a lot of shots by virtue of being one of the first breakout videobloggers to get a lot of mainstream media attention, which these days happens a lot more often than it did a year ago. I know that I’m obviously biased as a known conspirator of Amanda’s, but no one’s written much yet about what a challenging gig she took on at ABC, and how amazing it is that she worked for a year with them at all. I’ve watched and sometimes commiserated with her in open admiration as she forged her way with ABC — a company I’ve done some work with, and know how long it can take to change, for many good and understandable reasons — and as she helped push through a lot of positive change in that organization.

Before Abcnews.com/Amanda, there was no video content on the site simultaneously available via RSS feeds and iTunes podcasts, no flash players with pause buttons, user comments on videos, or regular interaction with the viewer community in every episode. Not to mention that there were no videobloggers working in mainstream media, and covering stories that viewers asked them to do, or soliciting their participation in making the show. The thought of a major news organization like ABC supporting anything like that format for a year, much less getting those changes made within a year, is mind-boggling, if you take a step back from it. Lots of things that have followed, like Wallstrip joining CBS, JETSET joining us at Next New, and the increasing amounts of latitude they’ve each had to make their shows succeed in their new homes, all followed a path pioneered by Amanda.

(Photo by Amanda)

If people want to critique what could have been done better, they should. I’ve always felt that the show was underserved by a poorly designed website and intrusive ad model that made it difficult to watch and interact with, though the podcast remedied some of that for me. For that, we can’t really fault Amanda, who maintains a beautifully simple and easy to use website for her personal videoblog. ABC needs to improve this if they want to build viewership on the web — and new initiatives like the great work being done by ABC Family show that they know it. But at the same time, Amanda and ABC should be applauded for an experiment that’s made both of them smarter — it made a lot of sense for both at the time, and they’re both well-positioned to do even better things next as a result.

Ian Mount of the Wall Street Journal wrote up Indy Mogul this weekend in their Weekend “Picks” section — here’s an excerpt:

Twice a week the site, called IndyMogul.com, hosts a new instructional video on basic filmmaking techniques and what it terms “BFX” — backyard special effects. In a typical recent video, host Erik Beck responds to a video request from a graduate film student looking for a way to create realistic on-film rain. After explaining that cinematic raindrops need to be larger than real ones if they are to appear on film, Mr. Beck demonstrates how to make a $50 “Hollywood rain machine” out of wood, a garden hose, twist ties and eyehooks. The final effect is remarkably realistic.

Congrats to Erik, Vanessa, Justin and the whole team.

Great way to cap off a week when Rob and Corinne from ThreadBanger were on Rachael Ray, Faran from Girls Gone Styled was profiled on ABC News’ i-Caught, Oksana Baiul hosted Fast Lane Daily, and Josh Marshall interviewed John Edwards, not to mention Internet People continuing to round the globe, showing up on places like Yahoo’s The 9 and VH1’s Best Week Ever. Whew!

Albie Hecht is one of my best friends –ah, one of our best friends; all of the Next New partners have worked together with Albie a lot over the years– his company World Wide Biggies –”a New York-based developer of digital entertainment for kids, families and young adults”– has just announced the opening of a digital production studio, an investment raise of $9million, and distribution deals. His partners include co-leaders NBC Universal and Platform Equity, and Hearst Corp., Greycroft Ventures and Prism VentureWorks. Wow.

Nobody’s going to beat Albie and his great team (including our other close friend, and I might add, my first creative hire in television, Scott Webb), nobody. They were early media converts to the transformative power of the interactive digital world’s effect on the traditional television business.

Albie’s one of the cultural stars of the last dozen years. As Herb’s President of Nickelodeon Entertainment produced an unending string of hits like the humngo series and movie SpongeBob SquarePants, the $100 million movies of A Series of Unfortunate Events and Rugrats, and lately Nick’s runaway success The Naked Brothers Band. And Scott was Nickelodeon’s innovative Worldwide Creative Director for several years; you’ll remember, among other things, his sheparding of the truly original series Pete & Pete, and his mid-90s foresight to be an early internet pioneer with the creation of Nickelodeon Online.

Did I mention that nobody’s going to beat Albie? Congratulations to the Biggies.

Most of the time I’m not a first mover. Early, sure (blogging, Channel Frederator, VOD Cars), rarely first. But with my music jones I’ve tried to be on top of most everything and often just wanted to kill myself. Over the years, I’ve been a musician, a record producer, a music television producer and most of all a stone music fan. Pop, rock, jazz, R&B, hip-hop, you name it, I’m there. So, the digital revolution has given me a wonder of hopes and frustrations.

I’ve used ‘em all –the original Napster, Winamp, MusicMatch, the HangGo, the Airport Express, heck I’ve even ran SonicNet Radio for a while– and eventually just chocked on the exasperation. The inventors have caught up with my needs –selection, convenience, and (relative) quality for a reasonable price– and though I’m a little behind the true hipsters, I’m finally at (almost) fan nirvana.

Sonos was the first level of enlightenment (more…)

Twelve hours ago: It’s 11:21pm, Friday, July 20, 39 minutes before the official release of the new Harry Potter. I’m in line at the Maine Coast Book Store in Damariscotta, Maine (”We’re not online yet — someday!). I’m with over 300 fans (including my two boys and my wife)–most of whom are well over 16– waiting for our reserved copies of Harry Potter + the Deathly Hallows. I’d never been in Maine until six hours ago and standing in this small town with all this excitement is a fantastic introduction to the state. I’ve never stood in line for the release of anything and it’s thrilling to see that a book can motivate all these folks as much as a movie star. I can’t believe I left my camera at the hotel.

Is there anything I really need to say here?