CAN LESS BE MORE?

When I last worked in corporate American radio, the employees, competitors, and constituents of Clear Channel used to enjoy calling them "the evil empire." Too many radio listeners feel the same way about most commercial music stations in this country. One fine day, in a plush board room somewhere inside "the evil empire," their generals decided to launch a new strategy designed to win back the hearts and minds of the disenchanted masses. Since most humans hate commercial interruption on music stations, their visionary new plan added MORE interruptions with less individual commercials inside each break. The most expensive suits in old media are cut with the most cynical cloth. They'll tell you the plan produced positive results. But common sense tells you the best way to fix the problem is to re-think the business and play LESS commercials. Before launching My Damn Channel, I reached out to a few chosen brains to gauge reactions to our evil little plans to disrupt old media by creating original, episodic videos by the best artists from television, radio, and film. One of the first V.I.B.'s (very imp brains) I approached was Seth Godin. Godin is a new media marketing guru. His books are required reading in our world. His titles pop. Small is the New Big, All Marketers are Liars... I'd read the books, seen Seth Godin speak, and broke bread with him once - enough contact to that know he'd throw the right kind of body blows to see if our plan was ready to last in the web ring. He questioned whether or not we'd be able to get our talent to deliver enough professional video on a consistent basis to build a business. This is where I first started to think about re-applying the "less is more" strategy. When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion, the new media gold rush began. Most new sites that launched in the wake of this sea change have tried to win by imitating the mothership and putting up destinations with a similar look and feel with a ton of the same content. Megatons. We're fans and business partners with YouTube. But we don't think our audience is looking for another site with hundreds of "channels" and thousands of videos. Our "less is more" thinking is built to prove Brave Sir Godin wrong. In our first 4 months of life, we've brought a small number of big talents into a tent where they deliver new webisodes every single week. Here's the current line-up: Every Monday: DAVID WAIN Every Tuesday: HARRY SHEARER Every Wednesday: ANDY MILONAKIS Every Thursday: DON WAS Every Friday: BIG FAT BRAIN Our thinking is that if the best talent delivers the best videos - consistently - then less can be more. Or, not. Body blows welcome: info@MyDammChannel.com

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