Profile: No Good TV Pushes Digital Democracy

Written by Frank Smith

Thursday, August 23. 2007 at 02:00 AM EDT Post a comment

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I chatted with Kourosh Taj, the charismatic co-president and head of programming at No Good TV, on the eve of NGTV's announcement that it would make the move to late-night TV.

Located in Beverly Hills, Calif., NGTV was launched in 2000 and added Kourosh Taj -- a 14 year veteran of the music and entertainment industry -- to lead virtually every facet of the company from programming to content licensing. NGTV uses technology from Brightcove and Akamai to host its videos. It has received investments and continuing guidance from former chairman and CEO of A&M Records Al Cafaro, Co-President Jay Vir, and Gene Simmons, its chairman of the board.

After a mutual friend showed Simmons a demo tape of NGTV's content, Taj got a call to set up a meeting. "What's great about him is he got what we were doing, saw its implications, and came in as an investor. We pride ourselves that Gene invested in something he didn't create, which is not something he's done. He's there to help us build the brand and he's been very brilliant about it."

NGTV bills itself as "the world's largest producer of uncensored celebrity news and entertainment programming" and offers professionally-produced, uncensored content targeted to the 18-34 male audience. Host Carrie Keagan conducts racy celebrity interviews while host Shark Firestone is what happens when Ron Burgandy and Mad Magazine are tossed into a food processor together. There's also a puppet named Bud Dealer and animated mascots named Cock Tolstoy and Beaver Brown, respectively.

That said, it's not about being uncensored for the sake of being uncensored. The site doesn't cater to "angry or violent" videos, says Taj. What it offers the viewer is a "relationship with a celebrity like you were having a beer with them." That ethos is why content deals with Superbad make perfect sense for the site.

NGTV has marketed itself virally by uploading its videos to YouTube. Asked what he thought of the "grab and load" notion of video content appearing throughout the online video sphere, Taj says: "I find it incredibly flattering. NGTV is for the people and I love the fact that someone's seen something and wants it on their site... I'm a believer in getting the word out." His only caveat is that if someone else is making a profit from NGTV's content then that would be a problem.

Likewise, Taj supports the ad-funded model and sees the future of advertising and online video as the integration of the product into the content. He cited NGTV's deal with Microsoft Xbox: "Part of their discussions were, 'How do we integrate you into the game, but in a subtle and clever way,' and I think that's what's going to happen more."

Obviously this isn't going to work for all online video sites, but for those that create original content it's an idea that harkens back to the early days of TV when advertising took a more direct role in shaping the stories. Today we see that more and more in the guise of product presence slipping into the backgrounds of shows. 

Even so, video sites like Vimeo adapt this idea in their ads where the Vimeo team creates specific, DIY ads for products that they like. With Google's YouTube embarking on the ad overlay route (placing small ads at the bottom of selected videos) this model might find more popularity and traction. 

NGTV is about to make the move to late-night TV with a series in development with Robert Morton (Late Show With David Letterman), Dave Becky, and Michael Rotenberg from 3 Arts Entertainment and Endeavor. Heading to the little screen doesn't mean the site is straying from its online video roots. Taj sees NGTV as a hybrid of video content. Platforms are converging, he says, and to create a network that is multiplatform you need to bridge the gap between the web and TV. Ultimately, though, it's about the content and creating a place where it can be free to evolve. Of NGTV's role in this, Taj says, "It's a place for artistic freedom and it represents something positive in the world."