The Sudden Demise of Network Live

One of my very favorite companies folded this past week Network Live. Network Live was started by Kevin Wall, who had been executive producer of both Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005 with Bob Geldof. Network Live was a phenomenal concept where a 'live' concert would be re-distributed across multiple platforms in real time (or delayed); and with heavyweight partners like AOL, XM Radio, AEG, Cingular, and DirecTV it seemed destined for success. As someone who's passionate about models around "Concerts of the Future", I was confident this was well-positioned. However, all good things must come to an end. It seems that the company may not have pulled in sufficient revenues quickly enough to satisfy its investors; and as its initial one-year contracts with the partners referenced above came to an end, they began to pull out. Another challenge was surely the knotty issues of dealing with A-list artists, their labels, publishers, management, and everyone in their respective entourages who would have needed to fully cooperate.

That said, I believe in this model overall -- and I remain confident that real-time, multi-platform deployment is a notion whose time has come. Sadly, this initial experiment has ended -- but it has morphed into a venture called Control Room which will attempt to do something very related in partnership this time with MSN at the outset. The launch of Control Room is tomorrow, October 2nd. Stay tuned.......it's sure to be worth checking out (I'm a big believer in Kevin Wall).