extraview

Timothy Shey

How did Next New Networks get started?

In late 2005, Fred Seibert and Emil Rensing, two of my partners in the company, started a couple of video podcasts for their own reasons — Fred wanted to meet more emerging animators, and created Channel Frederator as a venue to showcase animators’ work, and Emil was frustrated with auto programming on TV and online, and started VOD Cars. Something a lot of people don’t realize is that David Karp, the creator of Tumblr, came up with the original format and package for Channel Frederator — he had been doing some web development work for Fred — and Fred responded immediately, since it looked like TV. Fred was the first employee and original creative director of MTV — he led the branding of the network, all the brilliant packaging and promotion of MTV, and later networks like Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Spike, and Nick-at-Nite, that made MTV Networks so unique and influential on the television business (Fred’s story is a great read, and available here). Most recently, Fred was producing some of the biggest cartoons on TV, and continuing to consult on the development of new networks, along with Emil, for his longtime friend Herb Scannell, the Vice Chairman of MTV Networks and President of Nickelodeon Networks. Emil has a pretty impressive track record, too — one of the first few hundred employees at AOL, he was part of the AOL Greenhouse that launched online brands like The Motley Fool, CBS Sportsline, iVillage, and Travelocity, and went on to work on projects like the rebranding of TNN to Spike (with Fred) for MTV Networks, and online strategy for companies like Victoria’s Secret and WWE.

Within a month after Emil and Fred started the podcasts, Apple announced the iPod video and added a number of video podcasts to the iTunes store, including Channel Frederator and VOD Cars. Each was an immediate hit, getting one million downloads a month and a really passionate response from their viewers, and Fred and Emil thought, if we had a company with a hundred of these, that would be a business advertisers would be really interested in.

That’s when the rest of us came in. Jed Simmons was a seasoned online and cable executive who’d worked quite a bit with both Emil and Jed over the years — when Fred was President of Hanna-Barbera (and overhauled the company, leading it to become the uber-cool Cartoon Network), Jed was his partner and COO, and Jed was the kind of partner we needed to help us shape a business model and raise the funding necessary to make the company. I had worked as an interactive producer and designer for about ten years, and had done interactive TV and mobile work for lots of TV networks, but at the time I was thinking about a business around videoblogging and launching original series made for online and mobile phone viewing. I was helping on projects like Afterworld and Rocketboom, and was really excited by the idea that there might actually be a new aesthetic for online video that was different than TV, one that most people in the media space weren’t onto yet, and a company needed to exist that could launch lots of these kinds of series and build and support them. Emil and I had been close friends since college, and when we realized we had similar ideas for a company, he brought me in. Finally, Herb had just left his position at MTV Networks, and was spending a lot of time with us thinking through the idea of the company, with his focus on audience, undiscovered talent, and low cost that had been such a success at Nickelodeon (under Herb’s tenure, they developed Spongebob Squarepants, Dora the Explorer, and Ren and Stimpy, among others). I’m sure he thought he was coming to the meetings as a founding Board member, but we were all working on him to be the CEO from the beginning, and it was a huge thing for the company that he agreed to do it.

Everything moved pretty quickly from there. The five of us worked out most of it over the summer of ‘06 — we defined the aesthetic we wanted to have, the system of developing and launching and networks we thought the company needed, worked out the business plan, and went out to raise our initial funding. Our lead investors, Spark, came on early in the process and really helped us shape our thinking, as did Fred’s longtime friend Bob Pittman. Funding the company was by no means easy — it took a lot of work, especially as most online video startups were about creating sharing tools, or content studios, and we were neither. We were talking about the value of programming — not lines of code, but television programming — and how brands, and packaging, were going to make a difference for audiences and advertising online. It’s amazing that now, a year later, people seem a lot more accepting of that concept and the idea of online TV networks, but at the time we got a lot of pushback on the idea, including some skeptical coverage when we announced the company in January ‘07 or so. These guys are old, they don’t know anything about the web, networks are irrelevant now, that sort of thing. I was like, “Hey! I’m pretty young, and I’m a web guy — so is Emil — and our partners are really smart about this space, too.” But we knew the only thing that would convince people was launching great programming and proving people would watch. I feel like we’ve earned some respect now, and it wasn’t easy, so it felt really good to announce at the end of last year that we’d done over 100 million views. We’ve still got a long way to go — like everyone else in online video, we have to introduce ways to monetize this medium that preserve what makes it special — but at least we can say that people love the networks we’re launching, and they’re definitely watching.

Why is Next New Networks broken down into smaller networks, instead of one big network with a bunch (high-quality) of shows?

For the same reason there isn’t just one television network. In the beginning, there were only a couple broadcast networks, and everyone watched them, no matter what was on. Cable allowed a lot more networks to spring up that could focus on a subject or a targeted audience and build loyal, valuable audiences, and you needed to have ten networks to reach the kind of scale that one broadcast network had. Similarly, we think you might need 100 online networks to reach the same kind of breadth. But it also allows us to create programming that’s more personal and dedicated to the things people love than cable TV could do. We can have a network for people who love fast cars, another one for people who love classic cars, and another one for people who love to fix up cars. Those are three audiences that may have a little overlap, but in many ways are distinct and have really different needs. Instead of having one show that they Tivo at three in the morning, now they can have a whole network, just for them. And the kind of loyalty they have is incredibly valuable, especially when you do it at a big scale and can bring in advertisers both across the entire network of networks, and targeted in a really specific category. Breadth, and depth.

How long should video content be on the web?

I would say forever. It should be on the web forever.

Oh, you meant length. The answer is, whatever people want. When we’re first trying out a show or a series, they work better shorter. It’s easier for people to share them with their friends, easier to fit them into their day. Once people really get into a network of ours, though, we find that they want more of it, and longer videos. This isn’t anecdotal — we did a research study and most viewers said they wanted longer episodes.

If you think of the web as a medium for communication, not something that’s just on your computer, there’s no reason you can’t connect a big screen to the web and use the web to watch longer shows and movies in a satisfying way. Why are TV shows a half hour or hour long, anyway? It was easier to program in blocks. Movies were usually one hour and forty-five minutes long because of film reels. The same web distribution that allows us to make shows that are two, five, seven, or eleven minutes long should let people people make really cool 48-hour-long movies or fictional shows that are interacting with their audiences essentially in real time. All bets are off, and people are going to come along — most likely young people who don’t even remember the old TV — who really create a new entertainment medium.

What web shows, that are not part of Next New Networks, do you like?

Ze Frank’s been a huge influence, as has Rocketboom. They built audiences fast by having a conversation with their viewers in a way TV couldn’t do. For the same reasons I immediately liked Diggnation and Ask a Ninja. These were all the kinds of shows we wanted to have. I can get in a lot of trouble here, as I’m a fan of lots of shows and I hate to not mention them all — there are so many that people need to know about. But a personal favorite of mine’s been Galacticast, for sure — there’s just no one doing anything like it, it’s insane how much work Rudy and Casey put into every episode, and they made me enough of a fan that I pulled a stunt for them, getting their show in front of Kevin Smith. (http://www.galacticast.com/2007/02/27/video-kevin-smith-watched-galacticast/) As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s part of my job to watch web shows, so I love lots of them. Lately I’m really enjoying Jake and Amir and Maniacal Rage TV. They have essentially no budgets, but don’t need them to be great.

How can the people who watch mainstream media be brought into the new media loop?

It’s inevitable. Obama Girl gets shown all the time on CNN and FOX News, hilarious but true, and Top Chef and American Idol fans go rack up millions of page views every week after every episode. My parents send me YouTube videos. Distribution platforms and devices will get better, and soon enough it should be easier to get Indy Mogul than HBO. It’s the new pop culture, and we think our shows already represent the mainstream. Cars, Cartoons, Fashion, Politics… we make networks based on the things people love. And if you do that well, people will seek you out.

Holy Shit Tim!