What do you get when you combine two computers, two TV sets, and a school bus?
The next best thing in music television: ManiaTV!
Denver's CBS4 featured a great story on ManiaTV! and Drew Massey, CEO and founder of ManiaTV!
"It started at a dive cheeseburger shack in Stanford, Calif.," Massey said. "I was meeting with the founders of Excite.com and I had the epiphany -- for you know I'm a media guy, a media entrepreneur (with) a media background -- I said the Internet is the biggest thing to happen in my lifetime, I'm a media guy, television is the biggest thing over here, how are the two going to marry?"
"I trademarked ManiaTV! in November of 1998 and waited for broadband to hit critical mass, which was about 3 years ago, and started putting together the puzzle pieces for the company at that time," Massey said.
Since then, ManiaTV! has reinvented the way music is played and built a station that truly interacts with their audience. Cyberjockeys, or CJs, host the live channel from a studio in a Denver warehouse and listeners can talk to the CJs online via their web site or an IRC chat room.
The result: a channel that is rapidly on the rise and setting new standards for the way we watch and influence TV.
"It's been a healthy, viral increase (in viewership) the whole time, month after month," said Massey.
"It's never easy selling a new medium," Massey said. "We had some great advertisers who were on board in the early days. They think it's pretty fresh. People like Ford, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Levis, City Bank, so we had some great advertisers who were really excited about what we're doing."
The staff works hard at ManiaTV! but they still get to have their fun. ManiaTV! hosts Friday happy hours for employees and lets staff skip work to go to concerts. They also have a foosball table and huge beanbag in the office.
It's a very interesting write-up so read the
entire story.