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.

I’d like to introduce our next new network, Brideorama. As we continue to develop programming for the online world we thought it’s about time to add more networks that appeal directly to women and their interests. Over the next few months we are planning on expanding into areas of fashion and beauty. Our multi talented producer, Kathy Minton, who has much experience with the wedding and fashion community has put together fantastic women focused entertainment starting with Brideorama: the first online video network to give you real bridal advice from the recently married.

Every Monday our wedisodes profile a new bride who share their personal experiences and give tips on how to make your wedding day unforgettable. Our motto is: Her Story, Your Inspiration.

While our main focus is on real brides, real advice, we also know the value of the wedding experts which is why every Thursday we are also bringing you exclusive tips from the titans of wedding planning! First up is Preston Bailey whose high clientele include Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump. Watch the latest episode of Brideorama at Brideorama.com.

We’re proud to announce the addition of Bleacher Bloggers to our growing roster of video networks. Bleacher Bloggers, hosted by Dave Aizer (who you might recognize from Nickelodeon’s Slimetime Live) and Brent Popolizio, is a twice-a-week show that’s all about what the sports blogs are saying.

Watch the latest episode right here and catch brand new episodes every Tuesday and Friday at BleacherBloggers.com, YouTube, iTunes or anywhere else you find your favorite online videos.

Readers of the blogs from my cartoon production company might have noticed several months ago when animator Dan Meth, working from our New York studio, quietly announced the start of production on a new show. The Meth Minute 39 is the first original Channel Frederator series (and by extension, Next New Networks’), featuring 39 one minute (or so) original cartoons revolving around the loose theme of contemporary popular music. It’s striking, original, and hilarious. It’s for adults not children. And not to be discounted, Dan’s written, designed, animated, and scored every film by himself (with some hard work by our interns and acting and audio support from his close creative friends).

Dan’s an genuinely talented filmmaker and we’re thrilled he’s chosen to throw in his lot with us. Check out his runaway hit from last fall, “Hebrew Crunk,” his award winning production of “The Secret Life of Robots,” and his first animation jam session from the Platform Animation Festival a few weeks ago. And some of his other work at his site and YouTube page.

You can read’s Dan’s blog to keep up on the series’ progress, but I’ll tell you all now we’re planning on launching it on September 5th or so. I can’t convey the excitement Dan’s completed cartoons (12 so far) have generated to everyone’s who’s seen them, but I can tell you right here they’re going to take the world by storm.

Is this a first? Three of our networks are featured in three YouTube categories today, simultaneously. That’s Fast Lane Daily in Autos, JETSET in Featured Channels, and ThreadBanger in How-To & DIY.

Thanks for the love, YouTube!

And hey, look! Galacticast is being featured right alongside — from our friends Casey and Rudy, who work with us on Pulp Secret. Congrats to them!

Wandering around iTunes yesterday gave me a pleasant jolt as I realized Veracifier was in phenomenal company on the News & Public Affairs charts. Ahead of ABC News and The New York Times, right behind The News Hour and CBS News.

And why not? The original reporting team Josh Marshall has put together on Veracifier’s TPMTV is second to none in the modern world.

“It” is Indy Mogul, one of our newest Next New Networks, which in the month of June accumulated over one million views from its “super-distributed” partners that range from Veoh, YouTube, and iTunes (among others) to visitors to the indymogul.com website. They watched Erik Beck create Zombies, fake gunshots, a variety of brains and other film trickery for the filmmaker with a bargain basement budget. Erik’s done it in record time for us at Next New Networks, joining his Next New cousins (same family, eh?) Channel Frederator and VOD Cars who have crossed the million mark many times over.

At Next New, we’re keeping tabs on the millionaire nets as an indication of a meaningful audience in (cable) TV and a marker for new teevee (we’re borrowing the term from Om Malik’s blog). Think of it as the “gold record” standard of our emerging TV/video world on the internet. Next we’re shooting for “platinum” status.

Thanks Erik, and all you Indy Moguls who are making your own films on You Tube, Veoh and other places, where the next generation of filmmakers are thriving.

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…)

It occurred to me at a lunch last week that Next New Networks had something going on for it that we’d been taking for granted. So spontaneously during a meeting I sent an email a few folks around the office:

“Subject: An unpromoted ‘network’

“I think we should non-launch a new network. ‘Non-launch’ in the sense of put up a page with our platform, put the video on, put it out on our distribution platforms that will take it, blog it, BUT don’t particularly work hard on it.

“Oh, the network? The NNN Promo Network.

“Once a day (a week? I don’t know) post three (four, two?) Of our coolest promos.

“Why? Why not? They’re cool, it’ll make NNN and each of our networks look cooler.

“Our promos are assets. Let’s use them in another interesting way.”

So, we’re starting. Spot Crunch will be rolling soon. In fact, we’re already posting on YouTube.

My media “career really took off as a promo guy and I’ve been enjoying thinking about them for many years. Our team, superbly led by Justin and Alan, is doing work that blows me away. So, instead of just using the as promos the way they were meant to be seen –in the middle of networks– why not show them as interesting entertainment in their own right? It’s the web! Try it differently.

Will anyone like Spot Crunch? Will you like Spot Crunch? I guess we’ll see.

We’ve been clipping out the how-to segments from Thread Heads and putting them on YouTube, and the audience seems to have responded pretty well — so Vanessa and the team from ThreadBanger thought we should try short how-to segments as a regular feature on the network. Starting today, all summer long, Rob and Corinne are bringing us “How-To Tuesdays,” totally new projects we won’t see on the Friday show.

That means we get our regularly scheduled Thread Heads fix on Fridays, and an extra how-to every Tuesday. Bonus! This week, Rob and Corinne show us how to make some new board shorts out of an old suit and tie. Please do try this at home.