Meet VENN, the company hoping to build MTV for the gaming generation

VENN, a new company launching with $17 million in funding from some of the biggest names in gaming, is hoping to harness the power of streaming media's online celebrities and funnel them into a channel that can command the kind of advertising revenues of the networks of old. The vision harkens back to the golden days of MTV, when shows like TRL ruled the media landscape and a New York-based network set the cultural agenda through the prism of pop music. For the creators of VENN -- who include Ariel Horn, a four-time Emmy-winning producer who brought the commercial storytelling from his network days working on Olympics broadcasts for NBC (a division of Comcast) to the esports phenomenons of Riot Games and Blizzard Entertainment; and Ben Kusin, a former global director of new media at Vivendi Games -- MTV is the template for creating a cultural commodity from what's becoming the lingua franca of a new generation of consumers.