First on TheDesk.net: The founder and developer of Xumo who sold the company to Comcast and Charter several years ago is jumping back into the world of startups with a new venture that aims to leverage artificial intelligence to effectuate new forms of storytelling.
This week, Colin Petrie-Norris brought his latest venture, Fairground Entertainment, out of stealth mode with a promise to develop a premium slate of original content with independent creators, who will be supported by Fairground throughout every step of the journey.
In an interview with The Desk on Monday, Petrie-Norris said Fairground has two main objectives: Attracting content creators who are interested in leveraging new artificial intelligence tools to help support their storytelling efforts, and then onboarding, developing, qualifying and distributing projects.
The company will not develop artificial intelligence software or tools of its own; instead, Petrie-Norris and other staffers will work with content creators to figure out the best approaches based on specific goals outlined for each project, and then use existing tools to complete them.
“I’m not trying to compete with the generative AI services; I’m here to sell picks and shovels to the coal miners,” Petrie-Norris said. “I don’t profess to be an expert in AI. I am an expert in the entertainment industry first. I know how monetization and distribution works.”
He also has spent a lot of time surveying the industry since leaving Xumo last year, and he knows artificial intelligence is disrupting a number of industries at the moment, including media and entertainment.
Petrie-Norris knows more than a thing or two about industry disruptions. More than a decade ago, his work on Xumo began, developed as one of the first free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platforms in the world to franchise the linear TV playbook for online video content.
Xumo eventually grew to serve more than 300 FAST channels, with the company financially supported as a joint venture between programmatic advertising firm Viant Technology and electronics manufacturer Panasonic. Viant was acquired by magazine publisher Time, Inc. in 2016; four years later, Xumo was sold to Comcast.
Today, Xumo isn’t just a FAST platform — it operates as a joint venture between Comcast and Charter, and exists as a connected TV solution that powers Xumo TV and the Xumo Stream Box. Xumo Enterprise also serves as a business-to-business solution; its FAST channels and underlying technology power Google TV Freeplay, a dedicated FAST app that exists on newer-model Android TV devices.
All those initiatives were overseen by Petrie-Norris during his time as Xumo’s CEO, a role he held until the surprise announcement of his departure last May. The decision to leave was his, and he parted ways with Comcast and Charter on good terms.
“I enjoyed my ride with them,” Petrie-Norris said.
But there were people who did not enjoy the news of his departure: His sons.
“I had all of these aspirations about this wonderful time we’d spend together,” Petrie-Norris offered. “They were rather horrified to have dad show up with so much time on his hands. As teenage boys are, after a couple of weeks, they said, yeah, this isn’t going to work for us.”
Translation: Time for dad to go back to work.
Inspiration struck sometime between the time his kids were tired of him, and last October, when Petrie-Norris cryptically posted to social media that he was “looking forward to updating my LinkedIn profile with my new thing soon,” without offering any indication of what that might be.
But the germ of the idea that became Fairground Entertainment had been planted well before that, and it was starting to take shape. One of his first phone calls was to Tim and Chris Vanderhook, the brothers who co-founded Viant and who bankrolled Xumo in its pre-Comcast days.
The Vanderhook brothers have already thrown their support behind Fairground Entertainment: Viant led a seed round that raised $4 million from a syndicate of investors — money that will help Petrie-Norris and Fairground Entertainment roll out its first slate of original programming produced using artificial intelligence technology in the third quarter (Q3) of this year.
“This team led by the Vanderhooks are world-class, and some of the best ideas and the best entrepreneurs you can get,” he said on Monday. “If you look at Viant, they are at the front row of the AI indsutry, particularly on the advertising side. I think they are doing some very interesting, very avant garde, things in AI, which resonate well with us culturally. So, I think they are a match. They are a terrific partner, and I think the Vanderhooks are as well. We go way back, and I’m a big fan of them. I hope they’re big fans of me.”
They are.
“Fairground Entertainment shares our vision for innovation in streaming entertainment, centered on the transformative power of AI,” said Tim Vanderhook said in a statement on Wednesday. “Viant Technology founded Xumo together with Colin, so we know first-hand that he is a skilled entrepreneur. His expertise in scaling and monetizing streaming platforms makes him the ideal leader to move the content creation space forward with an AI-first approach.”
As for the elephant in the room — Petrie-Norris says he’s acutely aware of the concerns expressed by some in Hollywood and beyond about using artificial intelligence to create content, and specifically about how artificial intelligence tools might displace jobs that are performed by human beings today.
Artificial intelligence was one of the key elements that sparked twin Hollywood strikes last year that ground all TV and film production to a halt for months, and the industry won key concessions from many of the major studios that rely on union actors, writers and behind-the-scenes workers to craft the theatrical blockbusters and hit fall and spring TV series that bring in the dollars.
That said, Petrie-Norris notes — correctly — that artificial intelligence is not going to go away. But he also believes that good storytelling starts with ideas hatched by human beings first. Just as animation brought the world a talking mouse and computer-generated imagery made best friends out of a cowboy and a space ranger, artificial intelligence will usher in a world of new stories and franchises that cannot physically be captured from the real world.
First, the artists of tomorrow who want to bring their stories to life today using artificial intelligence need to be encouraged with the kind of support and guidance that someone who has helped disrupt the entertainment industry before can provide.
That is what Petrie-Norris wants to do — build a community of hundreds of content creators who might be starting out on social media and video platforms today, and give them the expertise and inspiration to execute on their ideas, backed by a studio built from the ground up with the goal in mind of distributing and selling their projects.
“The creators will be very much a part of that story,” Petrie-Norris said. “We intend to attribute the work to the creators, and give them the credit and the exposure that they deserve.”
