Jenkinson next focused on the acquisition of Net-friendly Flash animated content but was disappointed in finding very little out there of interest at the time. That's when the risky leap to original series was made. "My idea was that I would get into production and do it with really talented, really experienced storytellers and I would marry that talent with the technical expertise." He admits that undertaking animation for the first time in his career was "really more of a natural progression based on the state of technology...what could really play well on the Net." But subsequently, he declares, "I've become really quite a fanatic of animation. You know, it's just the limitless possibilities of what you can do at a price and it's the best use of the technology in terms of entertainment on the Internet at this point in time."

Damon Lee, Urban's President of Production and Development. Photo courtesy and © Urban Entertainment.

Welcome to the 'Hood
In early summer, with the number of original projects beginning to swell, Jenkinson brought his friend and associate Damon Lee on board as President of Production and Development. Prior to joining the fledgling Netcaster, Lee was Vice President of Production at MGM and had earlier held the same post at Silver Pictures (having first received his MFA from USC). Lee and Jenkinson agreed to stay small and spend every dollar they made on creating productive assets instead of creating costly infrastructure and a numbers-heavy staff. "Our philosophy has been, 'Let's be scalable. Let's only bring in-house the essential team and outsource everything else,'" Jenkinson explains. To that end, they have expanded to just 10 key and carefully chosen employees -- which also fits Jenkinson's belief that, "I've always seen this business as a boutique business and I think you have to be really hands on in terms of who is creating and overseeing the content in order to insure really high quality." The dot-com's roster now includes Casey Cuddy as VP of Market Development, Rebecca Ford as Sr. VP Business Affairs and the recent addition of Debra Langford as Sr. VP Production and Development, who comes to the Netcaster after serving as a Vice President in programming at Warner Bros. TV and an earlier turn with Quincy Jones' television operations. As planned, the site's backend technical needs are all being handled outside the company and animation deals are currently in place with the Burbank-based studio Flip Your Lid for the majority of their series, with Elliott studios in Toronto handling other animation shows in the line-up.

Building Up The Block
Building onto their already impressive first year block, UrbanEntertainment recently revealed a full schedule of new shows that will be ready to launch early next year. Jenkinson, obviously enthused, says, "We have a really good line-up of some of the most established and some of the hottest up-and-coming African-American talents in Hollywood. It's great the way talent has responded. I think that they've been very excited by the opportunity to reach their audience directly without any gatekeepers...being able to prove that their ideas have appeal as opposed to having somebody determine that before they get an opportunity to show it to an audience."