I'd watch that email format

We're a group of entrepreneurs who’ve been working at the intersection of media and technology for over 15 years, driven by the belief that intelligently collected consumer data can inform decisions more accurately than the hunches of media executives. In 1999, we launched garageband.com, which introduced crowd-sourcing to the web. Garageband let unsigned artists get feedback on their music, and also awarded recording contracts to artists whose music rose through the ranks, based on the input of the garageband.com reviewing community. The company was acquired by myspace.com, and became the backbone of its independent music community. In 2004, we started Integrated Media Measurement, Inc., which helped networks better understand the audiences for their new shows. We developed a technology platform that did this with more specificity than anyone else, and IMMI was ultimately acquired by Nielsen. During the decade we were tracking TV viewing, it became painfully obvious that the process networks used to create new content was horribly broken: less than ten percent of new shows wound up finding an audience. The process was also upside down: rather than trying to figure out what kinds of shows audiences wanted to see, networks spent huge amounts of money trying to find audiences for untested new material, both good and bad. And there was one other glaring problem: the same small group of people created virtually everything on TV. Given our data-driven approach to solving media problems, and our history at garageband.com of finding great new music, we concluded that using the crowd to both source and vet new material would significantly improve the odds of success in the challenging world of episodic TV. We make our money finding talent that otherwise wouldn’t be found, and becoming producers of shows that our reviewers want to see produced.