AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

The Hollywood Reporter

These days, any kid with a YouTube account and a digital camera can fashion himself a media star.

In the prebroadband era, though, it took a little more determination and technical know-how. Just ask Damien Fahey, host of MTV’s “TRL,” who didn’t let the fact that he grew up before the Internet’s ascendance deter his childhood multimedia dreams.

“I built a radio station on the third floor in my room and locked myself in there for months and never left,” Fahey, 27, said over coffee at a Midtown cafe. “But it was like a real-deal radio station with microphones, reel-to-reel machine, CD player, tape decks, mixing board, the whole thing.”

From his parents’ house to radio stations in Springfield and Boston, to MTV to stints on network TV trying out for CBS’ “The Late Late Show” and filling in for Regis Philbin on “Live With Regis and Kelly,” it makes sense that Fahey is now looking to the Web as his latest creative outlet.

Launched last month on the MTV Shorts Web site Andrew Wallenstein 4/22/08 link: http://www.mtv.com/ontv/shorts/ and mobile platforms, “Damien’s Other Show” presents a different side of the affable VJ. Combining humorous and random man-on-the-street interviews with the “desk chat” feel of late night shows, the biweekly shortform series finds Fahey straying from his daytime gig. While it might be a stretch to call the comedy too dark or challenging for the “TRL” demographic, Fahey probably couldn’t get away with asking a 16-year-old Hannah Montana fan if she had more recently ate a donut or “done it.”

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