Brock (left) described Media Matters’ campaign against Fox as ‘guerrilla warfare.’ | Courtesy of Media Matters, AP Photo, POLITICO Screengrab
The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.
The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.
“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.
The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”
In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.
Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)
Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox’s parent company, News Corp., an effort which most likely will involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company’s interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.
The group will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests — whether that be here or looking at what’s going on in London right now,” Brock said, referring to News Corp.’s — apparently successful — move to take a majority stake in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
A spokeswoman for Fox News, Irena Briganti, declined to comment on Media Matters’ efforts, but the group draws regular barbs from Fox hosts Beck and Bill O’Reilly.
“Tonight is not an episode you casually watch and take out of context like Media Matters does,” Beck remarked last month.
A more extended attack came in February on the freewheeling late night show Red Eye, which conducted a mock interview with a purported Media Matters employee.
“It’s horrible. All we do is sit and watch Fox News and make up stuff about Fox News. It is the saddest place I have ever seen in my life. I think about it, and I want to throw up,” the mock employee said. “I get to work and I take off my clothes, and they strap me into a chair in front of a TV with [Fox News Channel] on. They keep my eyelids propped open like in “Clockwork Orange,” and I sit and type all day.
“If there was no Beck, George Soros would come down and demand we make it up,” the “interviewee” continued. “I would watch the “Flintstones” and transcribe Fred Flintstone’s words and attribute them to Beck. It was the only way to get Soros to stop hitting me.”
(A Soros associate said the financier, who gave Media Matters $1 million last year, did not earmark it for the Fox campaign. Soros suggested in a recent CNN interview that the Fox depictions of him as a sinister media manipulator would better be applied to Murdoch.)
In some views, the war between Media Matters and Fox is not, necessarily, bad for either side. Media Matters has transformed itself into a pillar of the progressive movement with its aggressive new brand of media campaigning. And the attacks cement Fox’s status on the right.
“Fox is happy about it — and it makes their position more vivid among their supporters,” said Paul Levinson, a media studies professor at Fordham University. “One way of keeping your core supporters happy is to be attacked by people your core supporters don’t like.”
But Media Matters says its digging has begun to pay off. The group has trickled out a series of emails from Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon, leaks from inside the network, which show him, for instance, circulating a memo on “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists.”
The leaks are part of a broader project to take advantage of internal dissent, Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt said.
“We made a list of every single person who works for Fox and tried to figure out who might be disgruntled and why, and we went out to try to meet them,” he said. “Clearly, somebody in that organization is giving us primary source documents.”
Media Matters, he said, is also conducting “opposition research” on a dozen or so “mid- and senior-level execs and producers,” a campaign style move that he and Brock said would simply involve recording their public appearances and digging into public records associated with them.
And Brock’s 2010 planning memo offers a glimpse at Media Matters’ shift from media critic to a new species of political animal.
“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press,” its memo says. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”
Time Warner is eyeing an investment in digital upstart Maker Studios, a key producer of original programming for YouTube.
Conglom is in discussions with the Culver City, Calif.-based Maker about purchasing a minority stake in the company, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the talks.
It’s possible, however, that Time Warner could get beaten to the punch as other media giants kick the tires at Maker. COO Courtney Holt, who joined the company a year ago from MySpace Music, has been working on raising a new round of capital, according to sources. The venture has already raised $4 million to date from venture capital firms including Greycroft Partners and GRP Partners.
A Time Warner spokesman declined comment; a rep for Maker could not be reached for comment.
The potential for a Time Warner-Maker tie-up underscores Big Media’s growing interest in companies that specialize in original programming for YouTube, which is far and away the primary destination for consumers of online video. Maker was second only to musicvideo hubs Vevo and Warner Music among YouTube partner channels during September, according to Comscore Video Metrix, with 23.5 million unique visitors.
Founded in 2009, Maker pockets a portion of the revenues derived from a network of amateur talent feeding over 2,000 YouTube channels in exchange for providing them various production and management services. Maker’s channels boast a growing worldwide audience, generating more than 1.7 billion views as of September.
The venture has been attracting TV-size audiences to its top YouTube series including “Epic Rap Battles of History,” though it hasn’t been without growing pains: Last month, Maker star Ray William Johnson, who has more subscriptions than any content creator on YouTube, signaled he was leaving the company amid a contract dispute, though he currently remains in production on his hit show “=3.”
What makes the Maker model so attractive is its ability to corral significant viewership at a fraction of the production costs, though the ad revenues YouTube content attracts pales in comparison to what TV programming fetches. In addition, Maker could provide Time Warner with inhouse entree to its TV and film brands on YouTube, where content consumption patterns adhere to a set of rules quite different than traditional media. Maker could also be a place to incubate low-cost intellectual property before migrating it to other platforms.
It’s unclear what part of Time Warner would be providing the funding, but the likeliest source is Time Warner Investments, a portfolio filled with “mid-stage” new-media ventures including analytics firm Bluefin Labs, social-TV hub GetGlue and ad network Tremor Video. However, it’s possible that entities within the conglom that have done their own digital investing could be in the mix including Warner Bros. TV Group, Turner Broadcasting and HBO.
Maker may be finding it difficult to tap VC circles for a fresh infusion, which could make a conglom like Time Warner the next logical option. But that could also spell the beginning of the end of its independent status.
New funding could help fuel expansion plans, though the company has already grown exponentially in the past three years. Founded by Lisa Donovan, Danny Zappin and Ben Donovan, Maker started with just nine employees. The company now has about 300 employees and 20,000 new video uploads per month. With more than 20,000 square feet of studio space in Culver City, Maker employs a staff of editors, cinematographers and others in core functions to produce more than 300 videos a month.
Public relations giant PMK-BNC has launched digital agency Vowel, which will provide its clients with creative ways to reach online audiences, the company said.
Vowel will absorb PMK-BNC’s social marketing firm Spokes as part of the move.
“Brands, talent and entertainment properties are increasingly looking for integrated communications programs to build loyalty with audiences across multiple platforms. Vowel will deliver those solutions,” said PMK-BNC co-chairman, Michael Nyman.
Joseph Assad, chief operating officer of PMK-BNC’s New York office runs the new division, while Spokes co-founder Jeff Diamond joins Vowel as senior VP and Matt Kennerson serves as senior developer.
Vowel develops and distributes original content, produces social media strategies, manages platform development, creates custom online solutions, handles influencer marketing, and provides measurement and analytics.
“PMK-BNC already has a track record of producing acclaimed digital and influencer content for a range of clients. Vowel is an evolution of that offering,” Assad said. “Along with the technical know-how of Spokes, Vowel offers a comprehensive solution to what clients today are looking for: a holistic approach to digital and social in a way that can enhance and integrate into PR, experiential and marketing.”
So now we know. After getting roasted by some competing studio heads (if not on Wall Street) earlier this year when he said movies are “not a growth business,”DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg traveled south to Anaheim today to talk about online video, a business he does see growing into the next big entertainment business platform. Katzenberg sat down onstage with Hank Green, himself a prominent video blogger with brother John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars. The brothers are co-founders of Vidcon, the massive industry confab and fan festival filling the Anaheim Convention Center the next three days. Katzenberg used the friendly audience of video creators, distributors and others in the business to talk about why online video, particularly on YouTube, is such a promising creation and distribution platform for a new generation of talent outside traditional Hollywood.
“I think the opportunities ahead are so immense,” Katzenberg said. “This platform is in its infancy. Monetizing that is still a struggle. What we will see in a very short period of time, that will all start to migrate up to the top of the pyramid. I believe in five years, 95 percent of the value will come from the top 5 percent” of video creators.
And DWA already has invested substantially in the space, buying multi-channel network AweseomenessTV a year ago and launching the daily video digest YouTube Nation about four months ago. Last week, the company officially announced the programming slate for DreamworksTV, another YouTube channel under Awesomeness that will feature short animations involving notable DWA characters such as Shrek and Po the Panda, along with planned animated series featuring characters from its Classic Media library acquisition.
Katzenberg was particularly upbeat about YouTube Nation, which highlights notable videos and up-and-comers in a 5- to 6-minute daily roundup. “We have created a lighthouse that is in service of everything that is great and unique and singular about what I believe will be the most important platform in the world, which is YouTube,” Katzenberg said. The channel already has accreted 1.6 million subscribers and 25 million views, and ultimately, the company hopes to extend YouTube Nation into specialized shows focused on verticals such as sports and beauty. The idea for the program came from Katzenberg’s own fascination, and frustration, with the vast YouTube sea of content, he said.
“Being someone who’s just a fan of the platform, the content, the creators, I loved it, and at the same time, I was incredibly frustrated by my ability to consume it,” Katzenberg said. “It just overwhelmed me. It was an ocean of opportunity I kept feeling I was missing. It pissed me off that I would find out on, like the Today show, something I should be watching.”
He also touted the opportunities for AwesomenessTV (“Our biggest and most exciting bet”), which has a show on Nickelodeon among other ventures and whose YouTube channels Katzenberg said now have 50 million subscribers and 1 billion views a month.
“They are at the foundation of making careers,” Katzenberg said of the team running Awesomeness. “They’ve become this great host where great talent can find audiences. This is all about value creation. If you’re looking for a place now to go and connect with that audience, it’s hard to find a better place to make that launch.”
With 18,000 fans and online-video industry types attending Vidcon, the scene is strongly reminiscent of the San Diego Comic-Con without the cosplay at a time, say 10 years ago, when Hollywood was just beginning to embrace the franchise-marketing possibilities there. Vidcon this year includes sponsors such as Kia Motors, Friskies, NBC, UTA, Best Buy, Samsung, HLN, Taco Bell and other big media and consumer brands. Today is Industry Day, with a series of presentations by prominent video creators and even old-school veterans such as MTV and Nickelodeon pioneer Fred Seibert, now 62 and once again exploring a new medium with his Frederator Studios.
Clinton, flanked by communications adviser Matt McKenna (left) and top aide Doug Band. | John Shinkle Close
NEW YORK — No newspapers, no television, no Web: If someone boycotted them all, it might have been possible to avoid Bill Clinton this past week.
Everyone else knew that he was back at center stage — full of ideas, full of meetings, full of formal pronouncements and provocative asides.
CEOs like Google’s Eric Schmidt, movie stars like Jim Carrey, boldfaced international names like Tony Blair — and President Barack Obama himself — mingled with the former president at the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual conclave that each year swells to new proportions.
Some 40 heads of state here for a United Nations summit booked time for personal meetings with Clinton. A parade of interviewers — many feigning interest in the CGI in order to quiz him on politics — have asked Clinton to divine the mysteries of the 2010 elections as though he were a bearded oracle atop a peak in the Himalayas.
Consumers of this week’s glut of Clinton coverage might be forgiven for wondering: What happened to the idea that the 42nd president was an embittered has-been, his presidency no longer relevant with a younger and bolder Democrat in the Oval Office, his reputation permanently bruised by a graceless and losing season on the campaign trail for his wife in 2008?
This week’s New York extravaganza was a reminder that the widely written Clinton obituaries of two years ago were not merely premature but divorced from history: Clinton’s life for decades has been marked by familiar cycles of victory, disaster and recovery.
“There will be good times and not-so-good times,” Clinton said Wednesday in a wide-ranging POLITICO interview. “I have loved the life I’ve had since I left the White House.”
This week put the latest comeback in sharp relief. The CGI summit came after a recent Gallup poll put Clinton’s approval rating at 61 percent, 9 points higher than Obama’s and 16 points higher than George W. Bush’s. Obama, who once dismissed Clinton as an incrementalist president in contrast to his own “transformational” ambitions, is now being urged by many midterm-dreading Democrats to study the 1990s — history lessons Clinton remains happy to deliver.
The CGI also offered a milestone to measure the broader arc of Clinton’s post-presidency, a period now nearly a decade long. Over 10 years, Clinton and Douglas J. Band, 37, the man who has become by far his most powerful aide and among his closest confidants, have succeeded in turning the 42nd president into a global brand — one that at times seems to operate as a kind of free-floating mini-state.
The brand resides partly in the realm of good deeds, as in Clinton’s earthquake relief work in Haiti or his foundation’s efforts against AIDS in Africa. It resides in the realm of money, specifically his success in making himself worth at least tens of millions of dollars through speeches and investments after leaving the presidency deep in debt from legal bills. The brand resides partly in the realm of celebrity, as when Clinton and Band watch the World Cup in South Africa with Mick Jagger and Katie Couric in their suite. And, it goes without saying, it resides in the realm of politics, as Clinton jets off to far corners of the country to raise money and stump for Democrats.
What may surprise people about the Clinton of 2010 is how little it resembles the Clinton of 2001. After leaving the presidency in January, former first lady Hillary Clinton was all set, newly elected to the U.S. Senate. But the former president himself was at loose ends, viewed by many in his inner circle as deeply demoralized, possibly even depressed.
The final hours of his presidency were scarred by the Marc Rich pardon scandal — an earlier occasion, like the 2008 campaign, when some commentators believed Clinton had permanently marred his legacy. With his wife in Washington and most of his White House aides scattered to new jobs, Clinton was brooding at home in Chappaqua, N.Y., often alone except for his personal valet, Oscar Flores. Having spent his life cosseted by aides, Clinton had trouble navigating some routine aspects of modern life. One aide went with him to the automated teller machine at the bank and saw that he had a million dollars in a standard checking account. Perhaps, sir, you should consider moving some of that, the aide suggested.
What’s more, Clinton seemed to have little conception of how to spend his post-presidency beyond reflecting on the achievements of his tenure and nursing his grievances over the defeats. One close aide said at the time he worried that Clinton would squander his legacy “like Willie Mays,” who finished his career greeting customers at a casino.
It was during this period that Band was enlisted to help Clinton. The University of Florida graduate was a familiar figure in the Clinton fold but not then an exalted one. He was the last of four personal aides — known by the coarse title “butt boys” in White House parlance — to work with Clinton at the White House. The job was to be by the president’s side almost constantly from morning to night, at home and on the road, keeping track of his speeches, making sure he didn’t lose his glasses, coughing and shooting peevish glares when Oval Office visitors overstayed their welcome. It might have been a menial job at times, but it also offered uncommon access to the behind-the-scenes life of the president.
The Clintons prevailed on Band to give up a job offer from Goldman Sachs to stay with the former president.
Recalling that period now, Band said in a POLITICO interview that he is shocked to think of how threadbare Clinton’s operation was: “He has this whole new life, but the apparatus of the presidency is completely gone.”
Band said it took time for Clinton and the people around him to conceive a strategy for leveraging an ex-president’s assets — mainly fame and the ability to command an audience with virtually anyone on the planet — into a formal operation.
“He’s one of the most recognizable and important people alive,” Band said, adding that while this creates opportunity, “the burden and the challenge of it is significant. … You have to create the organization, you have to raise the money, and you have to build that enterprise from scratch.”
At the beginning, Band’s role was much the same as the body-man assignments he took on at the White House. Over the years, however, it became clear that he was no longer a mere “butt boy.” A series of rivals to be Clinton’s top staff aide gradually fell by the wayside. In practice, if not title, Band became something like the chief operating officer of Clinton’s life.
These days, Band is sometimes treated as a principal rather than a staff man. He sits on Coca-Cola’s international advisory board and is involved in efforts to recruit the World Cup and America’s Cup to the United States. He was invited to Vernon Jordan’s birthday party this summer as a guest, not as Clinton’s coat holder.
With new power, controversy inevitably followed. Particularly in New York, Band is a regular name in the papers, even though he rarely speaks on the record. His reputation among outside observers of the Clinton operation, and even some on the inside, sometimes seems like a composite. It is one part H.R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon’s single-minded enforcer. And it is one part George Stephanopoulos, another person who as a young man won entree to a world of celebrity by virtue of his relationship with Clinton.
Before his marriage in 2007, Band showed up in the tabloids for dating model Naomi Campbell. (His wedding to Lily Rafii in Paris was attended by Clinton and a host of tycoons and was topped off with fireworks. The couple now has a 9-month-old child.) He also won unwelcome publicity in 2007, when a Wall Street Journal article detailed a business deal gone sour with a jet-setting Italian scam artist who later went to prison.
Band said he realizes that the reason many people seek him out or that doors open to him is because of his role with Clinton, and that someone in his role must tread modestly. His reputation as the enforcer in the Clinton circle comes because someone must fend off a ceaseless barrage of invitations, entreaties and requests for favors that descend on a former president — a task Clinton, with his accommodating temperament, would never take on for himself.
But Band seems to warm to the task. While Clinton now gets along well with Obama, there is occasional chest-bumping between Band and West Wing aides like chief of staff Rahm Emanuel over whether enough deference is being shown to the former president and his allies. In 2008, John Edwards called, seeking a statement of support from Clinton when his affair with Rielle Hunter exploded publicly. A loyalist with a long memory, Band sent back word, asking whether Edwards recalled his own denunciation of Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky controversy.
Band’s loyalists within the Clinton team said his reputation as an operator has obscured his achievements as a strategist. Clinton’s efforts bear Band’s imprint more than that of any other person, except the former president himself.
It is now a far-flung enterprise. At Clinton’s Harlem office, there are 120 employees. From his home in Little Rock, former White House aide Bruce Lindsey weighs in on issues relating to Clinton’s foundation and his record at his presidential library. Policy aide Ira Magaziner, who works on AIDS issues, lives in Rhode Island, and communications adviser Matt McKenna works most of the time from home in Montana. On some policy and political matters, former White House advisers John Podesta or Tom Freedman weigh in from Washington.
The Clinton Global Initiative, according to Clinton, first grew from a suggestion by Band: The former president should try to replicate the annual gatherings of the elite in Davos, Switzerland. Clinton said he wanted the focus to be on global philanthropy, moving beyond panels and speeches and requiring that all participants make specific pledges of money and effort aimed at innovative solutions to world problems. This week marked the sixth CGI summit. In an interview, Clinton said one of the biggest successes of recent years has been enlisting more CEOs to help promote market-based solutions for health care and other humanitarian challenges.
Band said one project has been neglected over the past decade: an organized effort by veterans of Clinton’s White House and other allies to promote and defend his eight years in office.
In the interview, Clinton made clear that he thinks Republicans do a better job than Democrats of developing a sheen of mythology around their presidents.
“President [Ronald] Reagan has got a much higher standing than he did when he left the White House because the Republicans are smart, and they work relentlessly on legacy,” Clinton said. “They understand how important it is to have their narrative out there. When he left the White House, people were worried about Iran-Contra and didn’t feel too hot about things.”
The Reagan comparison also touches on one of the sore points of another relationship: the one between Clinton and Obama. During the 2008 campaign, Obama made waves when he implicitly pooh-poohed Clinton’s accomplishments during an interview with a Reno newspaper.
“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not,” Obama said at the time. “He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.”
Clinton, in his interview, chalked that quote up to politics and offered repeated praise for Obama’s intelligence and policy judgments, though he did critique the president’s political strategy. Aides said Clinton nursed deep resentments over the 2008 campaign for at least a year afterward, but he has gradually let them go.
“You’ve got to draw distinctions, and that’s the deal,” Clinton said. “Politics is a contact sport. And to complain about contact is like a pro-football quarterback complaining if he gets sacked on the weekend.”
He made clear that he regards his own achievements as “transformational,” even if Obama professed not to. He said the fact that Obama passed health care while Clinton did not was simply a matter of “arithmetic” — Obama had more Democrats in the Senate.
He also noted that Obama remains undefined. In diagnosing what’s ailing the presidency, Clinton volunteered that a negative public caricature was able to take hold partly because Obama didn’t have a long background in public life.
“Partly, he was vulnerable to that because he came up so fast,” Clinton said of a president 15 years his junior. “He even wrote in his autobiography that at the time it was a positive thing: People could see a blank slate and write their hopes and dreams in it. And that’s what his branders, as they call themselves, thought about that.”
The comment was intended as a sympathetic analysis of Obama’s political challenges, yet it carried an echo of Clinton’s warning three years ago that Obama’s re´sume´ was too thin to be president.
Clinton did not say directly what many moderate Democrats believe — that the Obama team, in its disdain for what it considered Clinton’s small-bore brand of politics, did not appreciate his instinct for how to advance a progressive agenda in a country that remains skeptical of government. Now that Democrats are facing peril in the midterms, Obama may think anew about Clinton.
Here at the CGI, there was no absence of people who think the 42nd president’s example remains relevant. Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm said “people are nostalgic for the Clinton style of governance.”
“His experience after 1994 was ‘communicate, communicate, communicate.’ I think that’s something President Obama and the Democrats will try to do too,” she said. “He brings the perspective of somebody who has been able to govern through crisis and opposition in the legislature.”
“He has leveraged his celebrity and his knowledge in a way no one has,” said civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. “What Barack maybe needs to look at are the people close to him. He needs better communicators.”
Doug Walker preparing for “Nostalgia Critic,” a popular show for Channel Awesome.
CHICAGO — For many Internet users, YouTube is synonymous with online video. But Mike Michaud and several friends who live in suburban Chicago are trying to change that.
Mr. Michaud co-owns Channel Awesome, an aspiring Viacom of the online video world, which promotes online shows about video games, comic books and assorted realms of popular culture. He was a casualty of the recession, having been laid off by Circuit City, the electronics retail chain that later was closed, and now he is a beneficiary of the advertising rebound, having doubled his revenue last year, enough to employ seven people full time.
“People may still scoff at online video, but this is a real business now,” he said over breakfast recently. Channel Awesome’s primary partner is not YouTube, but Blip.tv, which distributes made-for-the-Web series and surrounds them with ads. The companies that create these series are small, are popping up in unexpected places — like Mr. Michaud’s home — and are creating unlikely stars in lucrative niches.
Blip.tv founders Mike Hudack, left, Dina Kaplan and Justin Day.
Channel Awesome’s best-known weekly show, “Nostalgia Critic,” which another Circuit City cast off, Doug Walker, produces from his home five minutes from Mr. Michaud’s, draws about three million views a month. Several of Blip’s top production partners are on track to earn at least a $1 million in ad revenue from Blip this year, said Dina Kaplan, a co-founder of Blip.
Like YouTube, Blip splits advertising revenues with Web series producers. But unlike YouTube, which also streams amateur videos, and Netflix, which streams feature films and television shows, Blip is solely focused on those producers. Rather than competing directly, it is trying to carve a niche next to YouTube in the expanding world of Web video.
“This ecosystem that we started working with in 2005 has finally come into its own,” Ms. Kaplan said, citing the success of companies like Mr. Michaud’s, Blip’s relationships with top advertisers like Procter & Gamble, and the growing popularity of streaming video on televisions.
Shows hosted by Blip’s servers now account for 330 million video views a month, the company says. Blip is in its third round of financing by venture capital firms that have invested $18 million. But what the system has been lacking, Blip executives and other industry specialists say, are ways to find made-for-the-Web series that are worth watching. The problem, in industry parlance, is discovery, and it is a huge hurdle for Web video makers and sponsors to clear.
“There just isn’t anywhere right now that focuses on original Web series and presents them in a clean, curated, well-lit environment,” Mike Hudack, another co-founder of Blip and the company’s chief executive, said last month as he showed his solution: a new home page for Blip that is updated daily with links to new episodes of shows.
The new home page divides shows into categories like sports and comedy, ranks shows by popularity and creates what Mr. Michaud calls “real show pages” for users to visit.
YouTube, too, is trying to solve the discovery problem by programming its home page and putting a new emphasis on channels of content. In March, the company, a unit of Google, bought a Web video production company called Next New Networks, and now the employees of Next New are training other budding YouTube producers.
Like so many other Web video companies, Blip is a partner of YouTube, so it avoids any insinuation that it is a competitor. But it would clearly prefer to rack up video views on its own sites, not YouTube’s.
The audiences for most Web series are still puny by television standards, and so are the budgets for the series. Mr. Michaud, 29, who wore to breakfast a yellow shirt with the star symbol from Super Mario Bros. 3 imprinted on the front, said online video itself “still has a lot of growing up to do.”
“My company has a lot of growing up to do,” he said, “but I believe that sometime in the next one to two years someone will create that one series that gets everyone talking.”
That one show, he said, could then start pulling people from traditional television “to the endless options of online video.”
Many of Blip’s top shows are part of a network, the same way that MTV is an umbrella for all sorts of shows. Along with Channel Awesome, Blip praises Rooster Teeth, a production company based in Austin, Tex., that makes the action drama “Red vs. Blue” and “Immersion,” which tests video game tropes in real life.
Mr. Hudack’s other favorites include “Dusty Wright’s Culture Catch,” a music and culture talk show and blog, and “Aidan 5,” a black-and-white sci-fi drama produced in Columbus, Ohio, and based on a film short.
“When it comes to Web video, Hollywood could learn lessons from Illinois and Texas,” Ms. Kaplan said.
As the channel and show names imply, success often results from tackling topics that appeal to young viewers. They are some of the same people who are “watching less television,” Ms. Kaplan said, “so if advertisers want to reach them, they have to start advertising on Web series.”
Last week, Blip signed its latest content deal, with a management company called the Collective, that will steer more videos — and thus more views and ad impressions — in Blip’s direction. The Collective represents online stars like Lucas Cruikshank, who plays a helium-voiced character called Fred in a hit YouTube series. In celebration of the deal, Blip’s new office space on Broadway in the NoLIta neighborhood of Manhattan was rearranged into a dance floor last Thursday night, where staff members at Blip, executives at the Collective and friends from YouTube all mingled. In the back, out of reach of 200-plus partygoers, an unopened bottle of Champagne sat at an employee’s desk.
To hit the million-dollar mark that Ms. Kaplan mentioned, Channel Awesome has to add new series and maintain the audiences for its current series. Mr. Michaud is now looking for warehouse space in suburban Chicago, and benefiting, he said, from the weak real estate market. He considered the vacant Circuit City building where he once worked, he said, but concluded that the space was too small.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 6, 2011, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Online Video Start-Ups Seek to Carve Out a Place Beside YouTube.
eOne has acquired the film, which is slated to hit theaters this fall
Katie Holmes‘ vigilante comedy “Miss Meadows” will hit theaters this fall via Entertainment One Films, which has acquired U.S. and Canada distribution rights, it was announced Thursday by eOne’s Berry Meyerowitz.
The agreement marks the first film acquisition under Meyerowitz, who is integrating his Phase 4 Films into eOne.
James Badge Dale, Mary Kay Place and Jean Smart co-star in “Miss Meadows,” which was written and directed by Karen Leigh Hopkins. The “Crazy Heart” team of Eric Brenner and Rob Carliner produced the film.
In “Miss Meadows,” Holmes plays a sweet and proper elementary school teacher whose perfect manners and pretty floral dresses hide a dark secret: when she’s not teaching at the local elementary school or tending to her garden, she’s moonlighting as a gun-toting vigilante.
“‘Miss Meadows’ is a witty, smart and vibrant film, and Katie is an absolute sensation as the seemingly wholesome, innocent teacher with a seriously deadly alter-ego,” said Meyerowitz. “The film is as colorful and irreverent as it is dark and subversive, and audiences will fall in love with the fresh story that Karen Leigh Hopkins has brought to life.”
“Our goal has always been to bring Katie’s performance to as wide an audience as possible. The eOne team has as much enthusiasm for this film as we do. We couldn’t be more excited,” Brenner and Carliner said in a joint statement.
“I’m so proud of this character and this film. I’m excited for audiences to see it,” added Holmes.
The deal was negotiated for eOne Films by Larry Greenberg, senior VP of acquisitions, and for the filmmakers by ICM Partners, which represents Holmes along with Untitled Entertainment and Sloane, Offer, Weber and Dern.
eOne’s upcoming domestic releases include David Cronenberg‘s “Maps to the Stars” and the romantic comedy “Two Night Stand,” which stars Miles Teller and Analeigh Tipton.
“We look forward to bringing the best work to you from the best creators of our generation,” the company’s CEO told the audience at VidCon
Fullscreen will spend $10 million to produce new series for YouTube, the company’s CEO George Strompolos said Thursday.
Strompolos, a former Google executive who left to form Fullscreen in 2011, made the announcement during his keynote speech at VidCon, an annual convention for the online video industry . One of the largest multi-channel networks on YouTube, Fullscreen operates more than 15,000 channels, generating more than 2.5 billion views a month.
The company’s strength has long been in providing tools to the creators in its network, such as its marketing platform Gorilla. Providing money for production is an extension of its support into the creative arena, rather than the technological one.
Fullscreen works with some of YouTube’s biggest stars and content creators including Grace Helbig, Shane Dawson and the Fine Brothers, and advises networks like NBC, Fox and Cartoon Network in growing their networks, building audiences and generating revenue through advertising.
The Fine Brothers, the creators behind such popular channels Kids React, Teens React and MyMusic, announced in a separate panel that they would begin funding other creators’ work, which will appear on their channels.
Some of those videos will appear on YouTube, and some of them will be made for other platforms like Yahoo, Xbox or even television.
The new consumer-facing initiatives join the company’s growing list of products
Maker Studios announced on Thursday that it’s adding two new consumer-facing brands to its ever-growing umbrella of products: Creator network Maker Gen and merchandise store Maker Shop.
Maker Gen seeks to provide the building blocks for creators of any medium to benefit from its tools and services, offering guidance, resources and incentives like brand partnerships, talent collaboration and creator development. Maker’s RPM (Record, Promote, Monetize) creator network, already 50,000 creators strong, will be folded into Maker Gen, which will now allow content creators on platforms beyond YouTube to join in.
Maker Shop is a relaunch of Maker’s Rodeo Arcade, the e-commerce store now rebranded to more seamlessly align with the Maker brand. The online store will continue to offer clothing and accessories for 150+ content creators, original series, vertical brands and more.
The new brands join a list of Maker products including proprietary web platform Maker.tv, ad product Maker Offers, and programming initiative Maker Labs.
“The Maker brand is a strong consumer brand among audiences that value our creative community,” said Courtney Holt, General Manager, Maker Studios. “It makes so much sense to create offerings under the Maker brand, increasing discoverability among both creators and audiences.”
Chefs like Kogi’s Roy Choi are using trucks to bring high-end food to the masses at drive-through prices
3/29/2010 Time
Choi hauled in $2 million in sales the first year he parked a food truck in Los Angeles.
Every movement needs a creation myth, and the gourmet-food-truck movement has a really good one. In 1996, Roy Choi, a law-school dropout and a general disappointment to his Korean-immigrant parents, was watching the Food Network one afternoon, eating Cheetos while coming down from some serious drugs, when suddenly Emeril Lagasse started talking directly to him. “He came out of the TV,” Choi recalls, “and said, ‘Smell this. Touch this. Taste this. Do something.'”
Choi, now 40, was in no position to argue with an out-of-body Emeril experience, so he got off his couch in Los Angeles and enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He worked his way up to chef de cuisine at Los Angeles’ Beverly Hilton and got fired as chef at Rocksugar, the Cheesecake Factory’s attempt at Asian street food, before he found his calling in a kitchen on wheels.
Gourmet food trucks are democratizing the local- and slow-food trends that started with restaurateur Alice Waters in Berkeley, Calif., and were spread by the Food Network. Although the goal of these trucks is to be quick, convenient and cheap, they are decidedly anti–fast food. They’re about dispensing Alice Waters food in a McDonald’s manner.
Choi, who does his proselytizing from a fleet of culinary clunkers, became the leader of this movement not just by creating a whole new cuisine–a mashup of Korean and Mexican food that has given rise to short-rib tacos and kimchi quesadillas–but by dishing out punk attitude. Peer inside one of his Kogi taco trucks (the name is Korean for meat), and you’ll see him yelling in Spanglish, baseball hat askew, arms tatted up, hands flying like a rapper’s. This is performance art, and people often wait in hour-long lines for the privilege of snarfing it down with a spork.
“Why is this $2 taco affecting people on this level?” Choi asks, standing next to one of his four trucks. “You have these famous chefs and farmers’ markets with fresh vegetables, and you have fast food–and nothing in between,” he says. “If I introduced you to 100 people in my life, 90 of them will never have eaten real Parmesan cheese.”
It doesn’t really matter that gourmet food trucks were busting out in American cities a few years before Choi parked his first food truck, in November 2008. Or that short-rib tacos weren’t even his idea. (A former co-worker’s sister-in-law, Alice Shin, had read about a homemade version on a food blog and, as Kogi’s publicist, helped hype them through masterful Twitter and website work, which turned the truck’s mysterious whereabouts into a hipster happening.) Choi’s amazing food has become one of the movement’s signature successes. Kogi made $2 million in revenue in its first year, on checks averaging $13 per person. It has given rise to a number of copycat Korean-taco trucks and inspired the Baja Fresh chain to add short-rib tacos to its menu.
And Choi’s sensitive-burnout passion is the movement’s story. He gets choked up about replacing McDonald’s cuisine with freshly prepared, price-competitive, high-end food. “It’s convenient to eat horrible food, and it’s so difficult to eat great food. It’s O.K. to eat flaming-hot Cheetos and never read books or eat vegetables,” he says. “This is where we’ve come as a country, and I’m not cool with it.”
By the end of March, Choi is scheduled to open a restaurant in an old strip mall; he and his partners bought the space for $30,000. They’re not going to fix it up and instead will serve $7-to-$9 rice bowls–including lacquered pork belly, and steak topped with horseradish cream and poached eggs–in the 30-seat space, where Choi believes he can somehow serve 1,000 people a night. Kogi’s current operations serve about 3,000 a day.
It’s not just fast turnover, small portions and cheaper cuts of meat that allow Choi to charge such low prices. “A Caesar salad at a lot of places is $12, but a Caesar salad costs $1.80 to make,” he says, putting out a Marlboro. The insane markups come from a tired old formula, he continues: “Get a space in
a high-rent district and hire [ultra-opulent interior architect] Adam Tihany to design it. It costs $1.5 [million] to $2 million for you to open a restaurant. So what’s your attitude? ‘We have to gouge those m____________.'”
Choi’s low-cost philosophy–and his kimchi quesadilla–inspired Beth Kellerhals, a former chef at Chicago’s Hot Chocolate, to take him her beer-and-pretzel ice cream sandwich and persuade him to start selling her desserts. “Working in fine dining, I liked the precision and commitment to good ingredients, but it’s just food,” she says. “Don’t take it so seriously. Have fun while you’re eating.”
But Choi takes it all very seriously. He wants to bring farm-raised, artisanal food to the masses. In addition to the new restaurant in L.A., he’s looking to expand to another city with his trucks. One of his dreams involves a traveling foodapalooza where Eminem performs onstage while farmers sell their veggies at booths nearby.
He thinks there’s a chance it might all come together–maybe when he finally talks to Emeril, whose people just called him to set up a meeting. “I’ll meet one of the big boys and see if he’ll ride with me on this mission to broaden the food landscape,” Choi says. “It’s 2010. Let’s start feeding people. Let’s get out there.”
