Mevio Inc. (formerly known as PodShow) was an American

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

entertainment network, founded in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

in October 2004 by

Adam Curry Adam Clark Curry (born September 3, 1964) is an American podcaster, announcer, Internet entrepreneur and media personality, known for his stint as a VJ on MTV and being one of the first celebrities to personally create and administer Web site ...

and Ron Bloom.

History

PodShow Inc. was founded in

in October 2004 by

and Ron Bloom, as a digital media network, with the aim of helping people publish and market their podcasts, and to help listeners find podcasts that suit their interests. In August 2005, PodShow received about $8.85 million in

Venture Capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

from the

Sand Hill Road Sand Hill Road, often shortened to just "Sand Hill" or "SHR", is an arterial road in western Silicon Valley, California, running through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Woodside, notable for its concentration of venture capital companies. The road h ...

firms Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Sherpalo Ventures. On August 23, 2005, PodShow announced the launch of the

Podsafe Music Network Podsafe Music Network (PMN) was the primary archive of podsafe music (music available for use in podcasting without significant licensing difficulties) on the internet. It was established by Mevio, a podcast production company founded by Adam Cu ...

. The site allows musicians or record labels to upload

podsafe Podsafe is a term created in the podcasting community to refer to any work which, through its licensing, specifically allows the use of the work in podcasting, regardless of restrictions the same work might have in other realms. For example, a so ...

music into their system so that podcasters may download it for use on their podcasts, as well as the ability to sell music to listeners. In September 2005, PodShow acquired Podcast Alley, a directory that can be used to help people find and subscribe to podcasts. In February 2006, Curry announced Podshow L.A., a production division being set up by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff. In September, BT PodShow, a service co-branded with British Telecom was launched for the UK and

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. On September 29, 2006, PodShow Inc. announced that the company had raised a second round of venture funding from new and original investors, totaling $15 million, led by

DAG Ventures DAG Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. DAG Ventures works with startups in providing early stage and growth stage funding. Since its founding in 2004, by Tom Goodrich and John Cadeddu, the firm has backed ...

.PodShow Receives $15M From Leading Venture Firms as Company Accelerates Its Growth on the Internet and Beyond
In July 2008, mevio secured $15 million in a Series C funding round led by Crosslink Capital and including

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

, Sequoia Capital, Sherpalo Ventures, and DAG Ventures. Mevio intends to use the investment to continue expansion of its broadband entertainment offering and to launch new vertical entertainment networks. In December 2012, it was reported that Mevio's co-founder Ron Bloom was to move the company to Hollywood, California under the new name ''Bitesize Entertainment''. Bitesize acquired an 8,000 sq.ft. studio space at the

W Hotel W Hotels is an American upscale lifestyle hotel chain owned by Marriott International that is marketed towards a younger age group. History W Hotels was launched in 1998 with W New York, a conversion of the former Doral Inn hotel on Lexington ...

at Hollywood and Vine and was to create a "set of channels geared towards a mainstream audience." In April 2014, Mevio ceased operation and closed down their service, giving content creators and broadcasters 10 days to migrate their feeds and content to an alternative platform before losing it permanently. The website went offline, with no statement from the company. In March 2016, Mevio's successor ''Bitesize Networks Inc.'' was fined for breach of contract after it failed to pay Vertamedia LLC for generating internet traffic for Mevio in 2013. Bitesize was soon purchased by American television broadcaster

Media General Media General was an American media company based in Richmond, Virginia. The company's origins can be traced back to 1887 when Richmond attorney Joseph Bryan acquired ''The Richmond Daily Times'', which later became ''The Richmond Times-Dispatch ...

, and produced the syndicated series '' Hollywood Today Live'' for Media General and

Fox Television Stations Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Co ...

from the Hollywood and Vine studios. It was ''de facto'' shut down at the end of April 2017, when Nexstar Media Group merged with Media General and immediately shut down all of Bitesize's operations, as it considered the entire enterprise to be out of format with its broadcasting operations.

Podcasts

Mevio had a small stable of flagship podcasts, including Adam Curry's ''

Daily Source Code The ''Daily Source Code'' (DSC) was a podcast by Adam Curry, known as the "Podfather", often considered a pioneer of podcasting. Curry talked about his everyday life and events in the podcasting scene or the news in general, as well as playing mu ...

'', and latterly ''

No Agenda ''No Agenda'' is a podcast hosted by Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak that is recorded twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. The show is primarily focused on mainstream media deconstruction. The show has no advertisers and ...

'' hosted by Curry and

John C. Dvorak John C. Dvorak (; born 1952) is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a regular columnist in a variety of magazines. He was vice president of Mevio ...

. Other shows included ''

The Dawn and Drew Show ''The Dawn and Drew Show'' is a podcast starring and produced by a married couple, Dawn Miceli (born in West Allis, Wisconsin) and Drew Domkus (formerly of the Scaterd Few). The hosts describe themselves as " ��two ex gutter punks who fall in lo ...

'' (from October 2005 to October 2008),

Madge Weinstein Madge Bertha Weinstein is a fictional Internet personality who maintains ''Yeast Radio'', which has developed a cult following and was among the 50 most-subscribed-to podcasts in 2005. Weinstein is the creation and alter ego of underground film ...

's ''Yeast Radio'' (from July 2005 til April 2008), CC Chapman's ''

Accident Hash Charles "C.C." Chapman is an American author, marketing consultant, and frequent speaker about content marketing. He is a former manager of PodShow's Podsafe Music Network, and was a prominent figure in the community of podcasting and podsafe ...

'', ''Podshow Radio'', ''Reaching for Lucidity'' (from 2005 to 2010), ''The Frank Truth'', ''

Pop17 Sarah Maria Austin (b. January 1986) is an American author, tech entrepreneur, and Internet personality. She is the CMO and co-founder of metaverse funding platform, QGlobe, and former CEO at Broad Listening, an artificial emotional intelligence ...

'', ''The Scene Zine'', ''Naive London Girl Podcast'', ''Unleashed'', ''tech

vidcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

'', ''GeekBrief.TV'' (from December 2005 to June 2010), ''Madpod'', Alex Balcerski's ''Ride The Pine'', ''It Could Be Worse...'', ''The Alex Show Podcast'' and ''Cranky Geeks''.

Criticisms and Controversy

After the release of PodShow+ on July 6, 2006 other podcasts's

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

feeds were copied and modified by PodShow, with PodShow copyrights overwriting original feeds. Instead of

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

feeds linking to the original, they linked to the internal cache.

addressed the issue in the following Saturdays episode of the

in which he stated "We basically

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Places United States * Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community * Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County * Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah * Cache County ...

that, no different from what iTunes does." Curry went on to explain by saying "What should have happened was that the link underneath the orange on white

button should be a direct link to the original, with original information, no added bits from us, original

copyrights A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

etc, Instead of linking to the external feed, it went to the internal feed. It wasn’t a bug, it was a dumb mistake, it slipped through." PodShow and the PodShow Network have not released broadcast metrics publicly. On March 3, 2007 Adam Curry stated "For the record, In December 2006 the network produced 52 million download requests." This has created keen interest and rampant speculation by the public, due to the PodShow's notoriety. No clarification has been provided by Adam Curry or the PodShow Network on their use or definition of a "download request". This is of noteworthy interest, as a "download" is commonly interpreted as a single download request which results in a download, while a "download request" could include all requests made for a download (including failed download requests, system-to-system requests, internal administrative requests, or automated time-scheduled RSS feed requested). Additionally, "download requests" may include not only PodShow-owned podcasts, but any "download requests" made through links listed on the PodShow Network website to many independent podcasts. PodShow's relationship with

Sirius Satellite Radio Sirius Satellite Radio was a satellite radio (SDARS) and online radio service operating in North America, owned by Sirius XM Holdings. Headquartered in New York City, with smaller studios in Los Angeles and Memphis, Sirius was officially lau ...

ended on May 1, 2007 without any formal acknowledgment or media release by

or the PodShow Network. Speculation is that Podshow, having no control over its podcasts compression consistencies, could not guarantee audio quality across the multitude of content being produced. According to P.W. Fenton, the producer of "Adam Curry's Podshow on Sirius", the contract Podshow had with Sirius Satellite Radio had simply expired without any acknowledgement by either company. In fact, P.W. Fenton continued to upload 4 hours of programming each day, hosted by Adam Curry, before learning from a tech at Sirius that the show hadn't been broadcast for weeks.P.W. Fenton's personal recollections

References

External links

* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140408051129/http://www.mevio.com/ , date=April 8, 2014 , title=Mevio.com Defunct American websites Defunct companies based in California American entertainment websites Podcasting companies Internet properties established in 2004 Internet properties disestablished in 2014 Companies established in 2005 Companies disestablished in 2014