We’re rocking so hard here at Next New Networks that I can just let the Channel Frederator 2nd birthday go by with barely a nod during the day.

But, jeez, it’s a big deal. Along with VOD Cars, Channel Frederator was the start of NNN, and I’m really proud of everything we’ve accomplished. Millions of happy, loyal viewers and commenters, thousands of film submitters, and hundreds of cartoons. Thanks everyone.

And more than special thanks to our great team, words aren’t enough: Emil, David, Eric, Mike, Carrie, Dan, Lee, Jeaux, Scott, Ben, Bill, all our interns over the past two years, everyone at NNN, all our distribution and marketing partners, and everyone I’ve probably missed (sorry).

You’ve all really made us “Cartoon Central on the Internet.”

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.

So, as you might have heard, just shy of two years from launch, it’s Channel Frederator’s 100th episode. And I wanted to say “Thanks” to our loyal fans.

From day one, our viewers are the ones we’ve built “Cartoon Central on the Internet” around; they’ve called the phone lines, left comments, and voted for their favorites. They’re the reason we’re here and we all appreciate it more than we can say.

Among the home team I’d like to tip a hat to the hard working colleagues I have who get the work done whether I’m here, not here, or physically here but not mentally. Eric, Carrie, Mike, Lee, Dan, Jeaux, Scott, oh man, you make it all work fantastically. We’re all lucky you’re so talented. (Melissa, you’re not here anymore, but you too, thanks.)

Everyone at Next New Networks work their butts off to super distribute and promote your cartoons to over 4.9mm video views last month alone! And that includes our NNN investors, your faith in our vision makes the difference.

David, thanks for pushing us into the world’s original cartoon podcast. You changed our lives.

And Emil, there’s nothing too big to say to you. You’re my first, and deepest, interactive mentor. And friend. Thanks bud.

Corinne and Rob from ThreadBanger made their network TV debut today on the second episode of this season’s Rachael Ray show, as part of the show’s new YouTube Stars Competition.

We’re in incredibly good company with our friends William Sledd, Madeline Merced, and Adrienne Nelson. Viewers can vote on who they’d like to return and be featured in a future Rachael Ray episode. As of right now, we’ve got a nice lead, but remember that despite all of Rob and Corinne’s charms, the others have a lot of YouTube friends, too… we’ll only win if our friends turn out in force.

Let’s get out all the ThreadBanger and Next New fans and swamp those polls! Watch their segment and vote here now, and please vote often! Competition ends in one week, September 18.

So, it’s been 75 hours since “Internet People” went live, and as of now there’s over 1,800,000 views and 10,000 comments across our super-distribution network*, with no sign of any slowdown. We’ve been featured, discussed, favorited, subscribed and dissed, all across the internets. YouTube’s already got a bunch of response videos, and ClutterMe’s collected most of the original videos of said internet people.

Creator Dan Meth’s gone underground hiding from all the accolades coming his way, and everyone at Next New Networks is ecstatic about how well the launch of Channel Frederator’s first original series has gone.

Thanks, everyone in the universe.

* Including Channel Frederator, YouTube, MySpace, Break, Ziddio, Veoh, Dailymotion, and Yahoo! Video, among others.

This week we launched ViroPop, our new network devoted to “Environmentalism Made Fun.” From the about page:

ViroPop is the first network on the Internet to treat the new environmental pop culture with a sense of irreverent fun. Long dreary powerpoint presentations…be gone! This is the happy Green Revolution.

Right on. We have a lot of plans for ViroPop, starting with our first show, the excellent, saucy ZapRoot, hosted by Jessica Williamson, who should make a splash in the videoblogging scene, and produced by Damien Somerset (WorldChanging, Ask a Ninja, among many other credits) and independent filmmaker Sarah Szalavitz, both of whom, besides having created and brought us the show, have been collaborating with us on a number of other fronts as we ready ViroPop and more networks on the way. They’re incredibly smart and talented and respected in the community, and the show has debuted to strong reviews and great views, a sign of many good things to come.

I’m personally excited we’re doing this as I started my own path into green pop culture working as the lowly, underfoot college kid in a collective of artists and activists, Betapunks/Ecomedia, back in ‘92 (who made cool films, and threw cooler parties), and last year worked to convince organizations like the NRDC to get involved with Amanda Across America, which was a completely new way of making media about environmental issues. And that’s just me — lots of the people here at NNN have been involved in green projects, and there’s a ton of excitement and passion here, and almost too many ideas of where this network can go. Hope you’ll subscribe and stay tuned for what ViroPop has in store.

If you’re a regular viewer, you may have noticed a new sponsor across many of our networks this week: Lionsgate’s new movie WAR, which hits theaters this Friday. We’re pretty excited about this campaign, not just because it’s nice to have major sponsors interested in our programming, but it’s also offered us a chance to demonstrate a number of the advertising models we think can be effective for our networks, besides standard banner advertising placements.

For instance, on Fast Lane Daily, we’ve put a 15-second spot in what we’re calling first position. It’s not quite a mid-roll, as it’s early in the show, and it’s not a pre-roll, as viewers first get an intro to the episode from the hosts, and we don’t force them to watch the ad. On Bleacher Bloggers, we’ve run a brief sponsor bumper at the top of the show, then a 15 second spot at the end. And on a couple of our networks, we went a step further.

We felt there was an opportunity, based on the audiences we have, to do something deeper. So we put out a challenge to our network managers and show producers: could we show the value of an advertiser becoming part of the programming, allowing us to set our sights higher on a few episodes. What we all agreed on: the sponsored episode needed to be authentic, credible, totally transparent, and give something to the community that watches the show.

(more…)

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.)

[We’ve started writing a programming roundup that is getting circulated via email to our show creators and distribution partners. But it works well for the blog, too, so here goes… ]

Erik from Indy Mogul has racked up over 600 comments on the latest episode of BFX between the Indy Mogul website and YouTube, apparently by simply pointing down and asking people to add a comment.

Casey and Rudy made the very top spot of YouTube Monday with their Frank Miller episode of A Comicbook Orange. Didn’t catch it? Here it is, below:

This week’s JETSET features a new DIY segment with one of our favorite young correspondents, Annie Tsai. We’re hoping to expand the JETSET team and this is one of the first steps…

TPMtv posted its first viewer-created report this week, by Greg Hauenstein, who attended the Ames straw poll in Iowa. This is a completely new way to cover campaigns — and Greg did an amazing job.

In other news, ThreadBanger just passed 700 registered members in their forum, which we highlighted in last Friday’s Thread Heads, Channel Frederator launched RAW, a new social network for animation fans, and Fast Lane Daily launched the FEED, allowing viewers to submit and vote on stories for the show. It’s extremely cool seeing these communities sprout up around the networks…

More next week, and we hope in the meantime you’ll tune in. Want an easy way to get links to shows and features across Next New as they’re launched? The Next New Networks Twitter feed is what I use — it automatically feeds in links from our shows, the blog, and more.

http://twitter.com/nextnewnetworks

The Fast Lane Daily crew shot today’s edition at the beautiful showrooms of Manhattan Motorcars. Our own Gene Sanchez hosted the show.

No Lambo rides however, as we had some heavy rain here in NYC.

Thanks to our friends at Manhattan Motorcars for being such great hosts.