Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
Internet Video Magazine
Interview with Tim Devine, founder of Webcastr.com, a new company whose slogan says it all - ‘the Best of Internet TV.’
Why would a well-known music business executive walk away from a successful career (and a seven-figure salary) to become the next Internet entrepreneur? Just ask Tim Devine, founder of Webcastr.com, a new company whose slogan says it all - ‘the Best of Internet TV.’
A year ago, Devine was sitting at the top of Sony’s Columbia Records West Coast operation as GM and SVP, Artists and Repertoire. A man whose shrewd skills as a talent scout, dealmaker and corporate player helped plump record company coffers to the tune of half a billion dollars across the last two decades, he’d been instrumental in the careers of such diverse artists as U2, Prince, Devo, Bonnie Raitt, the Beastie Boys, Blind Melon, The Offspring, Train, Switchfoot and dozens of other name acts. But now he found himself awash in an entertainment technology sea change that was swamping the traditional label model.
“There was a seismic shift happening,” Devine recalls. “It was painfully obvious – especially with the video revolution – that the frontier of opportunity in entertainment is in digitization and the web.” With every URL now the platform for a potential media empire, Devine opted out to build and rule his own.
Now sitting in the offices of The Devine Company at the center of Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, Devine is excited about the pioneering feel of his new enterprise. “It’s early days,” he says with a gleam in his eye. “We’re helping to create a whole new kind of media.” Turning to his computer, he navigates briskly through a portfolio of web commerce ventures he’s currently developing that range from real estate to automobiles to entertainment. Webcastr.com, the crown jewel the collection, is focused on is the burgeoning field of internet television. Devine is quick to explain what that is.
(more…)
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Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
Huffingtonpost.com
A set of short documentary film “webisodes” made for former Sen. John Edwards prior to his presidential candidacy continues to weave a curious web, this time involving the filmmaker.
The videos, which cost Edwards’ One America Committee $114,461, were produced in 2006 by an aspiring actress/producer named Rielle Hunter, who proposed the idea to the senator in a bar in New York City. The objective was to give viewers - and presumably voters - an authentic look at the North Carolinian. But shortly after Edwards declared his White House aspirations, the footage all but disappeared from public view. After the Huffington Post wrote about the webisodes, the videos resurfaced, both on YouTube and Webcastr.com, although the anonymous individual who reposted them (user name: “MissingVideos”) has not responded to emails.
Little was known about Hunter as well. Despite working in the movie business, she had virtually no Internet presence save for an article in Newsweek about her filming of Edwards and an uninformative IMDB entry for her work on the short film Billy Bob and Them (2000).
This anonymity, it turns out, wasn’t always the case. The Huffington Post has uncovered a deleted website that formerly belonged to Hunter. Titled “Being Is Free,” the site was last updated on April 22, 2007, roughly twenty days after Edwards’ One America Committee made its final payment to Hunter’s company, Midline Groove Productions.
There is virtually no mention of filmmaking or politics on the site. And there is little indication as to what Hunter did professionally - beyond an involvement in various spiritual quests - before she and her partner, Mimi Hockman, started Midline Groove Production in the spring of 2006. As Colin Weil, a consultant to the Edwards webisodes told the Huffington Post: “Neither of them had done tons and tons of stuff before hand… The whole [Edwards’ taping] was pretty organic.”
On the deleted pages, the 44-year-old Hunter (formerly known as Lisa Druck) discusses her former hard partying days, her search for enlightenment, and her issues with drugs and debt. There is a 2005 interview she did with one-time boyfriend Jay McInerney, in which the celebrated novelist reveals that Hunter was the basis for Alison Poole, the main character of his book, Story of My Life.
“It was narrated in the first person,” McInerney writes in the intro to the interview, “from the point of view of an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old who was, shall we say, inspired by Lisa [aka Rielle].”
The two go on to discuss Hunter’s life after the book’s publication. Here’s an excerpt (the full interview is available here):
Hunter: I thought I was going to LA to be an actress and to get away from New York because I was doing so many drugs. We always think we’re going somewhere for some particular reason, and it turns out that that isn’t the reason at all
McInerney: Is LA less druggy than New York?
Hunter: Oh yeah. Actually the reason it was less druggy was because someone referred me to a healer who did a clearing on my energy field. I was in a state of ecstasy for about a week and realized what I was looking for, in terms of medication, was inside of me; it was a higher bliss. With that clearing, all desire for drugs or alcohol vanished. I became sober overnight. And then I became a spiritual seeker, addicted to a higher consciousness, addicted to enlightenment.
So why was Hunter’s website - which had no material related to her work with Edwards or the Edwards’ campaign - taken down? Emails and calls to Midline Groove Productions went unanswered.
Moreover, why did Edwards choose someone with limited film experience to document his behind-the-scenes campaign presence - “the real John Edwards”? The Senator’s campaign, likewise, did not return calls requesting comment.
And was the more than $100,000 spent by Edwards’ One American Committee - itself dedicated to fighting poverty and lifting Americans into the middle class - worth it?
According to several experts on the topic, the project was unique, portraying the senator in a positive informal light that could potentially benefit his presidential campaign. But the cost of the films, they say, was higher than that of traditional political video.
“In terms of politics it’s a lot. In terms of non-political production it is chump change,” said Jeremy Thompson, a Democratic media consultant, who works for the organization Reelpolitik. “The combination of how much was paid, the experience factor and how many pieces [Midline] made, made the whole thing a bit surprising.”
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Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
The Devine Company has recently acquired
NY Rentals.com, a full service apartment and rental site serving landlords, rental agents and tenants in the New York Tri-State Area. Landlords in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut can now post their rental availabilities for free to reach a broad audience of potential customers throughout the area.In addition to current available listings, renters have access to a host of informational resources to make apartment searching easier, all for one low monthly fee.
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