Win With My Damn Channel

We'd like to issue this public service announcement to encourage you to check out the Versailles Sweepstakes happening over on our Facebook page, and to emphasize the fact that people really do win with My Damn Channel.

Don't believe us?

Ask Sharon Cruz-Nichols (and hubby), winners of our Book of Mormon sweepstakes, who are flying to New York THIS VERY WEEK to watch Gigi star Josh Gad in Broadway's most talked-about new musical, The Book of Mormon. Here's a picture of the lucky couple...



Holy shirt! Speaking of, here's YouTuber ImpactAssault looking classically debonair in basic My Damn Channel black...



And if you wanna to take a video or snap a pic of yourself doing something cool in My Damn Channel gear, send it in. We'll post it on the blog and give you a shout out. Don't have a shirt? Well, you could just win one.

How?

Glad you asked! Starting THIS WEEK we'll be giving away a free My Damn Channel t-shirt to the person who gets the most friends to enter the Versailles Sweepstakes (see how I tied that all together?) We'll give away t-shirts each week for the next three weeks. Thanks for entering, and see you in L.A.!

You Have a (Ball) Point...

Hot on the heels of last week's National Donut Day, today marks yet another charmingly inane "holiday" celebrating yet another piece of contemporary bric-a-brac.  I'm talking, or course, about National Ball Point Pen Day!  So fire up your out-of-office reply function, put on your party shirt, and cut out of work early.  You don't want to be late for the parade, and besides, those Bic-themed cocktails down at the National Ball Point Pen Day barbeque aren't gonna drink themselves. Just be safe out there.  You know how drivers are on BPP Day.

And in the spirit of the season, we're giving away some free My Damn Channel promotional pens over on our Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.  Nothing to scoff at, especially since it's been well-established that pen > sword = mightier.  Click the links for a chance to win.  What's that you say?  How DARE you insinuate that this is all just a cheap ploy to unload the huge surplus of pens we ordered to give away at our 4th birthday party on Monday.  Who cares that there are boxes full of My Damn Channel pens piled floor-to-ceiling in our offices, creating a fire hazard that will likely kill us all.  That's no reason to read anything duplicitous into this whole free pen giveaway thing.  You guys are acting crazy.

So happy holidays.  Don't forget to send your mom a card.

The Abdominal Snowman

Versailles, Tweeted

Hey look, people are saying nice things about our new series Versailles! In 140 characters or less! People like Fred Willard, Gayle King, Oscar Blandi, and Chris Kattan!

Vegas, Baby, Vegas!

Last weekend My Damn Channel founder/CEO Rob Barnett hosted all-star panel for the closing keynote at the Blogworld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

Some of Rob's old friends like Penn Jillette and Adam Carolla and some of Rob's new friends like Mark Malkoff, Cali Lewis and Jeff Hayzlett joined Rob onstage to chat about the ever-changing world of New Media (we named them for you from left to right):



Here's the whole gang together, including the event's MC, Shira Lazar (third from left):



And a lot of you are sad you missed it.  A lot of you probably didn't even know you should've been in Vegas last weekend!  Don't fear!  You can watch the video here!  Fast forward to the 17:55 mark to see what might be the best thing to happen in Vegas since legalized gambling and stripper poles:

NYU PANEL MONDAY NIGHT

THE BUSINESS of ONLINE VIDEO
Monday - April 27 - 6p

Our pal Jamison Tilsner from Tilzy.tv invited My Damn Channel to wax philosophic on a panel discussion about the voodoo that we do.

Come press the flesh, throw fastballs, curveballs, or tomatoes. Fellow warriors up for the challenge include:

Paul Kontonis of For Your Imagination
Aimee Carlson of DailyMotion
Eric Mortensen of Blip.tv

Address & more.....here.

NEW NEW & NEW

We started My Damn Channel in the wake of an earlier round of big corporate layoffs as traditional media tried to wrap its arms around the intense insurgency of online video.

Many major media companies took a shot at chasing YouTube's brass ring, but they couldn't ride their horses fast enough to get into the lead ahead of all the upstart brands racing onto the field.

We ran fast in our first year. Some of our best competitors like Super Deluxe didn't make it. We loved their work.  We stayed determined to keep costs low, but still bring the best talent - treat them well - and let them deliver quality, original web video which is getting seen by an audience growing faster by the second.

In the past 24 hours, we've had the #1 video on all of YouTube - thanks to Big Fat Brain, creators of "You Suck at Photoshop" and their NEW web series, "Agency of Record."

This week, TIME Magazine honored us in their Top 10 Everything of 2008 - twice!  They put YSAP in the Top 10 TV Episodes of the year next to Lost, Mad Men, 30 Rock & Colbert. And they honored Sir Harry Shearer for one of his Katie Couric Open-Mic Moments that we call "Found Objects." 

Maria on our team just told me we passed 42 million total views yesterday.

This week, we added Suhaila Suhimi to lead the advertising team bringing more top brands in to sponsor all of our new programming.

Here's a list of what's NEW & what's coming for the year ahead with immeasurable thanks for every second you've stopped your world to take a look at www.MyDamnChannel.com:



Flight of the Conchords HBO premiere episode next week on My Damn Channel - 3 weeks before it airs on HBO !

STELLA - new channel just launched

GraceNMichelle - new channel just launched

Agency of Record - new episode tmrw/Fri

Heather Fink channel

new episodes of LAPDANCE with KURT LODER

new videos from atom.com

new episodes of BACK ON TOPPS - every Tuesday

new episodes of FACETIME

and a lil tease of more/new magic wonderments:

ED HELMS
KERRI KENNEY-SILVER
SAM SEDER
SARAH SILVERMAN
DAVID CROSS
ANDY DICK
ISLA FISHER
A.D. MILES
MARK MALKOFF
and....

S P I N A L   T A P   2 0 0 9
    

HEADLINING VEGAS

Thanks to the NAB and especially to Ashley Howell, Chris Marlowe, and Rochelle Winters for inviting us to present in Vegas yesterday. Thanks to Jon Healey from the LA Times for moderating - and to Harry Shearer & Andy Milonakis for making the trip.

We filled a room of about 350-400 humans and started by showing a few of our original videos. Fun seeing hundreds LOL at YSAP - up on a huge megascreen - and cool to see a crowd feel the bass of music produced by Don Was.

Harry Shearer made news - announcing "THE ALPHAS" - a project he's been developing for 10 years - and the most ambitious new work making its way to My Damn Channel.

"THE ALPHAS" is motion-capture animation of the highest quality (Beowulf) - done in the fastest turnaround ever achieved (less than 5 day production cycles). Here's more:

Imagine seeing the best-known people in politics and the media, every week, in hilariously private situations. Not actors in makeup, but what looks and sounds like the real President, candidates, anchors, and the rest. That’s the idea behind “The Alphas”, a revolutionary new concept in topical sketch comedy. Written and performed by Harry Shearer, who’s notched more than two decades as a creator of topical satire on his weekly public radio broadcast, “Le Show”, along with two memorable seasons on “Saturday Night Live”, “The Alphas” includes no makeup, no celebrity cameos. Instead, utlizing a trio of cutting-edge motion-capture technologies--harnessed for the first time to a “week-of-air” production schedule, “The Alphas” features startlingly realistic computer-animated versions of the movers, shakers and yakkers. They’re not lifelike--thanks to the technology and Shearer’s performances, they’re alive. And every week, they’re deftly and drolly revealed for all their pretensions, resentments, jealousies and anxieties--all the good stuff, online just days after production.

Here's the first news coverage from the LA Times and the Digital Content Producer Magazine with thanks for the 'ink' & correction to Michael Goldman.

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\

MILK AWAY

The blog is called "THE NIGHT FEED" - usually written in the middle of the night - at home - after feeding twin babies.

"MILK AWAY" is the name of today's tribute to anyone who's used a meeting with My Damn Channel to fake support for a suck.

When you build a small business with a big idea - beware of spending too much time talking with people about building the business. Max time every waking hour has to go to creating the work and serving the audience. Talk is anything but cheap when you're carefully spending every dollar you've got. Talk sometimes means too many plane tickets to visit plush boardrooms where hosts serve bottled water and then feign true interest as a tactic to do a little more 'research.' Entrepreneurs lift back the veil - spill the beans - tell their story - sell their wares.

The process is flawed but all this chess taught us a few lessons. In a world with an unending number of new media choices, there are no secrets. Someone spending too much time thinking and waiting is someone left in the back of the line when a fast-moving train leaves the station.

My Damn Channel is built on speed - founded as an alternative to corporate interference - tested and vetted every minute by hungry fans armed with the best, badass bullshit detectors.

We're in debt to the people who've put their time and treasure into this mission to reboot OLD MEDIA. We stand in service to our small staff, our stellar stable of artists, our fellow media missionaries helping spread the news, and our audience keeping us honest.

Next train is leaving the station.