My Damn Channel is 3 years old today.
Punk was still a baby when this photo was taken. Nixon is looming in the background. He's pointing the finger!
The pic is taken during a time called "college radio" before consultants sucked freedom out of the souls of rock radio madmen and mystical women who turned us onto music completely capable of changing and defining our lives.
I first met Harry Shearer that year. I chased rock dreams through radio, television and film - and called Harry in late 2006, with the idea to start a then-unnamed business which became My Damn Channel. I called Don Was. I called David Wain.
We launched My Damn Channel exactly 3 years ago, on July 31, 2007.
We give artists we love, trust and respect all the tools they need to skip over stone walls of multi-national media empires and create video delivered directly to you.
We've never been stupid enough to think www.MyDamnChannel.com would be the most visited online destination in the world. But we built a home base big and bad enough for every creator to have their own channel and we built a massive distribution network to move video onto every digital platform where we can make a solid business deal to support the work. The good shit ain't free.
We built a business driven by advertising, licensing and the certainty that we can bring you talent and content in special events later this year - worthy of a buck or two from you to support the art. Crazy, right?
Artists like Illeana Douglas prove that companies like IKEA can connect in a whole new way with millions of people watching millions of videos every hour. Illeana birthed a baby called "Easy to Assemble," which Ad Age dubbed "the most-watched sponsored web show."
We survived the world's worst economy and found our way to success because YOU watch and share our videos. THANK YOU.
We have artists that trust us to respect their art. THANK YOU.
We have sponsors and business partners who believe that we can deliver the good shit and guarantee millions of eyes on it all. THANK YOU.
We have backers who put their faith and coin into a vision for a new show business as powerful today as television was in the 50's. YOU GET IT! THANK YOU!
We have a man named Warren Chao, our Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, who knew how to stop us from avoiding most of the mistakes baby companies make to screw it all up. Warren: I've never known a single human being as smart, dedicated and effective inside a company as you. THANK YOU.
Biggest thanks to our families for not killing us when the hill seemed to high to climb!
RESPECT and THANKS to every one of you who have spent a day inside our small, evolving staff of rebels and business partners.
(Keep an eye out for your party invite!)
We start year four today. Documented in "the world's longest press release" here - with all our new channels for your immediate inspection.
One more major announcement is coming out in days to prove that you'll still have My Damn Channel to kick around for years to come.
F Nixon.
Merry Christmas to all. A few more days of relative calm before we return to battle.
Our band of merry rebels won't take anything away from the mega success of the self-help phenom: "The Secret." But an obvious lesson learned in old media fuels our web war machine for '08: Corporate secrets are poisonous.
When I started in rock radio, the first wave of FM freedom fighters were under attack by a small handful of wolves dressed in corporate clothing. A few ex-disc jockeys and program directors cut their long hair, dressed up in fancy new suits, and jumped up on a new pedestal as self-appointed "consultants." These bad boys devised plans to rake in megabucks by convincing radio owners and general managers they possessed secret formulas for ratings success. Veteran radio warriors earned scars and stripes as we watched these wise guys disappear behind the closed doors of power and suck the spirit out of an industry built on innovation and creativity. Originality was replaced by cookie-cutter formats with identical playlists making stations separated by thousands of miles sound exactly the same.
A number of these same consultants invaded other bastions of cool and followed some of radio's best & brightest to new fronts fighting for mindshare of the pop culture planet. It was surprising and sad to see these wise guys show up in the hallways of MTV. More secret meetings, more secret memos, more secret sauce to romance executives into dishing out fat retainer fees to the con-sultans.
We have a few important rules in our rebel army. "Dirty Hands" means anyone who works with us has to produce actual work. We can't afford the luxury of paying people to navel gaze and dispense wisdom. The new world moves too fast and our gang is too skeptical to be sucked in by snake oil.
We've got another pretty old-fashioned rule for My Damn Channel.
"No secrets." Everyone in our community has direct unfiltered access to our people and our site. Everyone who works with us - our artists - staff - interns - co-conspirators - and backers - get the buck naked truth. It's easier. We're unafraid of what lies ahead and too psyched to be bogged down by bullshit.
