New Wave of Web Video
April 5th, 2006 | Published in Business, Technology
CNN
Offbeat shows turn Web into world wide TV network
The widely hyped merging of the PC and TV is finally taking shape in a way that only a few people imagined in the late 1990s Internet boom.
From independent producers like Mondo Media to big media companies like MTV, and even kids who post videos on community sites like YouTube.com, the World Wide Web is becoming a sort of worldwide TV network for audiences seeking offbeat entertainment not shown on mainstream television.
Mondo’s cartoon characters, “Happy Tree Friends,” survived the dot-com bust of 2000 and are now a thriving, worldwide phenomenon. And this week a little-known British rocker named Sandi Thom signed a record deal with Sony BMG after building an audience by Webcasting her own concerts from her basement.
“I still don’t think people have a handle on the fact that, for all intents and purposes, we have a TV network working for us, essentially free, that is worldwide,” said John Evershed, co-founder of Mondo Media, which owns “Happy Tree Friends.”
