The ManiaTV! Network Inc.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: TECH STARTUP OF THE MONTH

INITIAL LIGHTBULB

A Fort Collins native, Drew Massey founded P.O.V. magazine in New York in 1995. The seed for ManiaTV! took root in his head in November 1998 after a meeting with Excite.com founder Joe Kraus. Thinking of the explosion of the Internet and the longer-term phenomenon of television, "How are these two going to marry?" Massey asked himself. "I put together the game plan for (ManiaTV!) then, and it's been the same game plan ever since."

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But Massey didn't officially incorporate the company until 2002, after selling P.O.V. to GQ magazine in 2000 and returning to Colorado. "When I got home, I waited two years for the broadband market to hit critical mass and then started working full-time on ManiaTV!," he explained. Two years later, on Labor Day 2004, ManiaTV! began broadcasting over the Internet. Massey has served as CEO since day one.

IN A NUTSHELL

ManiaTV! streams live, Internet-based video 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a calendar that includes 30 different shows, most of them daily one- and two-hour blocks of music videos hosted by "CJs"--a.k.a. "cyberjockeys."

"It's a 60-year-old business model where we sell sponsorships and commercials," said Massey.

"We're just using a new distribution method. Bill Paley gave us the original over-the-air distribution for television, then Ted Turner gave us cable distribution, now we're leading the next distribution revolution, which is Internet television." The current rate for a monthlong sponsorship of a single show is $20,000 to $30,000, he added.

"About 60 percent of our shows are music shows," said ManiaTV! Director of Public Relations Christy Kruzick. "We also have news shows and morning shows, and an extreme sports show."

Many of ManiaTV!'s programs take advantage of the interactive nature of the medium, taking requests and offering chat rooms for audience members to communicate among themselves as they watch music videos. CJ Dustin--ManiaTV!'s CJs go by one name--likened it to "watching TV on a couch with 150...