Monster Cable started 35 years ago selling high-end speaker cords, but the Brisbane company is adding something different to its portfolio – two TV series co-produced with actor-rapper Nick Cannon.
One will be a series that tries to inspire teens by introducing them to famous DJs, while the other will feature Monster founder Noel Lee to inspire other entrepreneurs, Cannon said in an interview after Monster’s annual star-studded press conference here at the International CES.
“It’s a new plateau that Monster’s going to be producing television and other types of content,” Cannon said.
The two Monster-related TV series take the company in a slightly different path.
“It is designed to carve out our own path that we hope will be bigger than what we did with Beats,” said Lee, 65, who started the company in a San Francisco garage.
Cannon said the series about DJs taps into an entire culture that’s popular with youth. DJs “are the new rock stars,” he said. “Kids don’t want a guitar anymore, they want DJ equipment.”
Not so coincidentally, one of Monster’s latest products is a pocket-sized portable DJ device.
Each episode will follow one youth as he or she meets a famous DJ. The subjects will be “young kids who may not have the proper guidance and just need some direction, connecting them with a world-famous DJ and not only giving them the skills of a DJ, but just helping them with everyday skills and motivating them and uplifting them and watching that journey. It shows the power of music, sound and how it can change someone’s life.”
The former Nickelodeon star said the final contracts for the series are still being worked out, but noted that as chairman of Viacom’s TeenNick channel, it’s not hard to figure out where they’ll be seen this fall.
The other series will center on Lee, and there are cameras following him as he scoots around CES on his gold-wheeled Segway.
“It’s going to be telling his story as an entrepreneur, as an innovator and as an inventor and bringing all of those worlds together and inspiqa3ring and helping others who want to follow in his footsteps,” Cannon said. “He has such a phenomenal story and he’s such a character.”
Cannon said there were several networks bidding for the series.
