Is the Internet finally ready for a live streaming video network? Jason Calacanis thinks so. Calacanis and two of his LA pals—Matt Coffin (founder of LowerMyBills, and who just launched the DailyD) and Sky Dayton (founder of Earthlink, Boingo, Helio)—just put $300,000 into Calacanis latest per project, This Week In. The original founder of Weblogs Inc before he sold it to AOL (and current CEO of Mahalo), Calacanis says he wants to do to live video on the web what he did with blogs.
“Exact same model as Weblogs Inc,” he says: “Try a bunch of different shows, recruit tons of talent and double down on big winners. It’s blogging all over again… the land grab is on!”
This Week In already has eight shows, a couple of them hosted by Calacanis himself. A year ago, Calacanis launched his own weekly live video talk show called This Week In Startups. There is also Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show, This Week In Twitter, This Week In iPad, This Week in Android, This Week In Venture Capital, . . . you get the idea. Of course, there is also another live video streaming network that uses the “This Week In” naming convention, Leo Laporte’s This Week In Tech (aka, TWiT.TV). But Calacanis is not one to shy away from controversy, and most of his viewers probably don’t care anyway.
Calacanis tapped Mahalo CTO Mark Jeffrey to be CEO of This Week In. He says that all the shows combined are getting 450,000 downloads or streams per week, with three of them (This Week In iPad, This Week in Startups, and The Kevin Pollack Chat Show) topping 100,000 downloads/streams each. The shows are streamed live via Ustream.TV and then are available as video podcasts on iTunes. Commercials from sponsors are read out loud on each show.
ThisWeekIn plans to launch another 30 shows over the next two years. Why now? Broadband is pretty ubiquitous, for one thing. But Calacanis is especially excited about the possibilities the iPad will bring as a viewing device. “Watching streaming shows on your iPad and TV is the future,” he declares. Can he take the Weblogs model and repeat it in live online video? It certainly will be entertaining to watch him try.
Based in Santa Monica, CA and founded by Jason Calacanis, Kevin Pollak and Mark Jeffrey, This Week In, Inc. offers a network of shows covering a wide variety of topics from technology to entertainment. Produced out of its Santa Monica studio, This Week In shows feature guest experts, founders, movie stars, comedians, technologists and CEOs — all keeping you up to speed on what’s happening this week with a fast and funny style. To learn more, please visit...
“Jason McCabe Calacanis was CEO and co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., a network of widely read blogs including Engadget – ranked # 1 by Technorati, Joystiq, Autoblog, and Blogging Baby. Founded in January 2004, Weblogs, Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL in November of 2005. Calacanis maintained editorial supervision over Weblogs, Inc. as a senior vice president of AOL. In June 2006, Calacanis relaunched Netscape, the iconic browser owned by AOL and was named its general manager....
Mark Jeffrey is currently Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Glossi, Inc. which lets anyone create and share rich digital magazines. Mark is a serial Internet entrepreneur, podcast pioneer and novelist. Previous to Glossi, Mark was co-founder and CEO of This Week In, a web television network. His first novel, Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant, was published by Harper Collins in 2011 and received over 2.5 million downloads as a podcast audiobook. Before that, Mark was CTO...
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