I caught up with Adam Curry, former MTV celebrity, president and co-founder of Mevio (formerly PodShow), a new media entertainment network, which raised a total of $38 million and is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia
Capital, Sherpalo Ventures, DAG Ventures and Crosslink Capital.
Adam and I were both at the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica this week for a panel on how entertainment coverage is changing.
On the panel, we and the other panelists, such as Sybil Goldman, general manager at Yahoo Entertainment, David McMahon,
director of digital at NBC Universal, Tyler Goldman, CEO of Buzznet, and Todd Gold, managing editor of Comcast Interactive Media’s Fancast, talked at length about how the ubiquity of content made it difficult for any media outlet to have an exclusive on a news story. More importantly, it was said on the panel that the acceleration of the news cycle has compelled media outlets to expand the range of content to publish, whether it was more photos or content that heretofore would never have had inked spilled for it.
Curry, who was pushing the content envelope during his MTV VJ days, said these days, “there’s no limit” in what is fair game to cover.
What Curry’s views are on programming and what is content is significant — particularly to his investors who recently invested $15 million — given that Mevio is all about producing new, high-quality and original content across three networks. One network, called LuxeTV, is all about women; BangTV is all about men. The other network, called TeXtraTV, is all about technology.
“We believe there is room for a network of entertainment that is for brands only,” said Adam. All the content is episodic and are hosted by personalities. “This is a traditional strategy,” he said. “But what’s new in the video space is that we market our programming. We don’t just throw it out there and hope it sticks and goes viral.”
Curry also talks about the advertising downturn. He said that the advertising placements or demand seems to have “leveled at the moment.” But overall, the network isn’t seeing a pullback, mainly because people typically turn to entertainment during tough times. (See related story – “Celeb news going strong”). Mevio also makes money through transactions, he said.
As for the future of entertainment media? Adam predicted: “There’s going to be a shakeout.”
