Intern Appreciation Day!

MY DAMN CHANNEL IS "TWO"

Two years ago, on 7/31/07, we declared independence from everything old. We launched our new show business battleship on a mission to deliver the best original video series to your fingertips n’ eyeballs. We set sail for a new world free from the ridiculous, red-tape creating ways of radio, TV, & film.

In two years, we’ve built a new studio to produce the entertainment – a network to showcase the goods – and a syndication business to help it all fly far and fast.

We knew if we avoided idiotic start-up mistakes, we’d have a shot at building a creative and financial win. The past two years have been about building our brand, signing talent, co-creating hit series, finding a mass audience, and finally making real revenues from multiple streams.

Our advertisers keep fueling this fun because they know that we’re one of the new companies who can deliver three essential must-haves for new media messaging to make sense for brands:

1)    highest-quality, star-driven entertainment

2)    customized distribution to any digital platform

3)    guaranteed traffic

As we start our next trip 'round the sun thanks go to our ARTISTS. The musicians, comedians, filmmakers, actors and revolutionaries who believed in us when we were schmucks with a PowerPoint now have a safe haven to produce and distribute video directly to fans. Most of our first famous friends are all still here. And thanks go to the newest members of the My Damn Channel line-up for signing on to put us to work on their behalf. We’re getting ready to announce a handful of mind-blowing deals with more stars from da movies and da teleevision.

Special thanks to every one of you who watch and share My Damn Channel videos. The minute we start screwing up, you stop watching, and it’s game over. Thanks for teaching us how to serve at your pleasure.

If you’ve worked inside our small, determined crew, please accept a personal thank you for putting in the brains, sweat and passion to prove this all works. Warren and I are forever mindful of what you’ve brought to this picnic.
 

Warren Chao is the Co-Founder & COO of My Damn Channel turning ideas into action. I’ve never seen anyone combine so many skills to make up the super-human-management sensation that Warren embodies. The man is awesomely inspiring and the essential ingredient inside this thing.

We share our My Damn Channel birthday with Mark Cuban, J.K. Rowling, and a visionary named Marc Averitt. Marc is our Board Director, and the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Okapi Venture Capital. We pay tribute to the man who first believed in our vision. And we mark our two-year milestone honoring every investor who helped put technology to work for our content creators, our audiences, distribution partners, and advertisers.

We’re about to make an announcement about new investment, new revenue deals, new series from our current stars and a few jaw-droppers if tonight’s midnight emails are to be believed.

Our next new pilot may be live within hours of this post…

Thanks for being here.

Rob Barnett

Rob@MyDamnChannel.com 

My Damn Channel in FORBES

OutFront
Taking Control
Dorothy Pomerantz 06.02.08, 12:00 AM ET

Rob Barnett's My Damn Channel gives TV creators something they've always wanted: ownership.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0602/052b.html

THE FILTER

Peter Gabriel's filter

The rock star hopes to shock Amazon with a new web-based recommendation service.

(Fortune) -- There's a reason Peter Gabriel is a household name. One of the founders of the super-group Genesis, the British rock star went on to have great success as a solo artist known for his outlandish costumes, his cutting edge music videos, and of course, his '80s hits like "Sledgehammer" and "Shock The Monkey," which were both artistic and commercial milestones.

What's less known is that the 58-year-old Gabriel has done rather well since then as a digital media entrepreneur. In 2000, he co-founded OD2, which quickly became the leading European digital music provider with clients like Nokia and MSN. OD2's owners reportedly later sold the company for an estimated $20 million.

Okay, so Sammy Hagar reportedly sold a majority stake in his tequila business for four times that amount last year. But now Gabriel has a new business that's potentially much bigger. On Tuesday, he and a new group of partners launch the private-beta version of a web-based service called The Filter that will sort through the vast inventory of content on the Internet and recommend songs, movies, television show and web videos to its users. In May, The Filter website will be open to the public.

Ultimately, Gabriel and his partners in his Bath, England-based company have a grander vision for the Filter than telling you that if you like Sammy Hager, you might also like Van Halen's earlier stuff with David Lee Roth. They hope you'll one day be able to log in and find the perfect place to dine on your upcoming trip to, say, Barcelona -- and a suggestion for the right clothes to wear on your night out. Now that sounds like something an art rocker like Peter Gabriel would go for --- as opposed to a night of tequila swilling at Hagar's nightclub in Mexico.

Gabriel put up $8.5 million along with England's Eden Ventures to start The Filter because he fears that people are being overwhelmed by the web. "Everyone got really excited about the concept of infinite choice through the Internet," he says. "The reality is a little like getting a sore thumb with your remote on your television. Too much choice is not always a good thing."

He describes the solution to this machine-age dilemma in the sort of terms you might expect from a thinking man's rock star. "My friend [recording studio guru to Talking Heads, U2 and Coldplay] Brian Eno has been going on for some time about the increasingly important role of the curator over the creator," Gabriel explains. "In many ways, the disc jockey has become as important as the musician, which is one of the best illustrations of that. I would like a life jockey as well as a disc jockey."

The Filter's founders say their service could play that role nicely, claiming its recommendation engine is more sophisticated than anything else on the market. Unlike competing services, the Filter doesn't rely on the ratings that people assign to songs or movies online. It determines its users tastes by observing what they actually do with these items on the Internet.

The engine is particularly interested if someone buys a song, streams it or clicks on a related link. "We like to get real evidence of people's tastes," says Martin Hopkins, co-founder of The Filter and creator of its recommendation technology.

Hopkins also notes that The Filter's engine doesn't push people choices based on what they bought years ago. It slowly forgets what it learned because peoples' tastes change. Don't you wish Amazon's (AMZN, Fortune 500) service did the same?

Gabriel and his partners hope to generate revenue at The Filter by selling advertising. They also hope to license their technology to other digital media companies. The company already provides recommendations to the users of its former OD2 customers like MSN (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Nokia (NOK). That's why the service launches with a database of over 50 million transactions from which to make suggestions.

It's a long leap from recommending music to choosing their restaurants in foreign cities. Still, the idea is intriguing. Gabriel isn't just taking about this either. He's putting up a lot of money to make it happen. "This is definitely something that's worth watching," says Gartner analyst Mike McGuire who, like Fortune, was briefed by The Filter before the private beta launch.

As you might expect, Gabriel is in the studio working on new music, too. He owes one more album to EMI. After that, he plans to release his music on his own a la Radiohead. The graying rocker is thrilled that the Internet is giving artists a new means of distributing their music -- especially the ones who couldn't get a record deal even in the industry's better days. "I like it that the inmates are running the asylum,' says Gabriel.

This, of course means more choices for those overwhelmed consumers that Gabriel is so concerned about. All the more reason for his new company, right? No wonder he's so pleased.

First Published: April 15, 2008: 4:21 AM EDT\

THURSDAYS (NOT THURSDAYS)

(Averitt/Barnett/Was)

You can tell by the title I'm just not getting enough 07/08 sleep. Pathetic. But heading to 'church' tonight for kickoff of the next leg of the Springsteen tour. That & today's 2 new videos will keep me vertical. Every Thursday Don Was presents NEW music recorded & produced for you free of charge. Grab the MP3's & steal the music videos with thanks to a generous grant from our friends at LINCOLN. Today's new music premiere is just what the doctor ordered - reggae rock from the band COMMON SENSE. Their first My Damn Channel video is called "STRANGE ONE."



The band is based in a very important town for our new media mission - LAGUNA BEACH, CA. It's homebase for Okapi Ventures where Marc Averitt is a lead backer & board member at My Damn Channel. Surf's most definitely UP.

If comedy's your Thursday calling - head to one of newest channels: CARNIVAL of STUFF. Steve Kerper & the mighty men at Asterisk present our first animated series: "INVASION" - episode 3 - SQUIRRELS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN:

SPEED DATING

Packed in four more speed dates yesterday meeting financial and strategic partners to grow the My Damn Channel monsta. All of them - matchmade by Warren Chao, our Chief Operating Officer - the smart one we call "H-POD" (Honest Promise / Over-Deliver). He's a lawyer - a former venture capitalist - a biz dev exec. He's the man who finds and manages the money that makes our media machine run. In his spare time, he put together all our tech, ad sales, legal, and administrative. He runs our LA office. I'm ceoing headquarters in NY - getting to do all the fun stuff -with our talent - & building the world many venture capitalists fear: CONTENT. A few brave backers are finally warming to the fact that it's becoming as much about WHAT you watch - as HOW you watch it. Full respect is due every sili-co-con in the valley who built the pipes and pathways that bring all the tech starring back at you through this screen...but we've figured out a way to produce high-quality videos at low-cost. Advertisers are coming on board to pay the freight. Our artists get rare, transparent deals that start with total creative freedom, segue to fully-funded video channels, and end with a rocking share of the revenue. Back to the dating game.