The “NEW MEDIA” Online Experience
An interesting twist to the soon-to-be online “niche” world. With seed money already in place, this could turn out to be the new avenue for aspiring niche-heads. Only time will tell if the idea of a micro-network web will become the rage.
Internet Start-Up to Take a Hybrid Media Approach
By BRAD STONE
Published: March 8, 2007
Several cable television veterans are putting their band back together and taking their act to the Internet.
Next New Networks, a New York-based Internet start-up run and backed by former executives of MTV and Nickelodeon, will announce plans today to begin a series of video-oriented Web sites — what the company calls micro-networks — on niche topics like do-it-yourself fashion, comic books, car racing and cartoons.
The company’s founders include Herb Scannell, who as a top executive at Nickelodeon in the 1990s was responsible for introducing such enduring fare as SpongeBob SquarePants. Another founder, Fred Seibert, was the first creative director at MTV and was behind many of the channel’s early flourishes, like the “I Want My MTV� slogan.
The company will also announce that it has received $8 million in seed capital, in part from the Pilot Group, a media investment firm run by Robert W. Pittman, who created MTV and later overhauled Nickelodeon.
