Brendan Canning is the co-founder and chief commercial officer of Triple B Media, which operates Bark TV, a new multiplatform channel featuring 24-hour-a-day programming dedicated exclusively to dog lovers.
The premise of Bark TV is simple: People love dogs and people love watching dogs. Bark TV, which averages several million viewers per month, is the home for feel-good dog content with a mix of original programming and licensed television series.
Brendan is a seasoned television executive with decades of experience in content distribution.
He’s used that experience, and his love of dogs, to get Bark TV on screens across the United States via Xumo, Dish, Sling TV, Local Now, DistroTV, its own dedicated Roku app, and Streamstak, Triple B Media's owned and operated platform.
Bark TV is also available in more than 80 broadcast markets throughout the country as an over-the-air (OTA) diginet channel.
Bark TV just wrapped up its first Barkademy Awards, and nominations were open to any and all viewers of the channel. Owners uploaded photos and videos of their dogs, and winners were crowned in five categories: cutest, best trick, best bark, owner lookalike, and celebrity lookalike.
The best part? All nominees get their photos and videos broadcast to millions on Bark TV.
Brendan caught up with K9 Magazine to talk about his dogs, work, and life.
Tell us all about all the dogs you've loved in your life.
I've had three dogs in my life. When I was 10, my father brought home an Irish Setter, and her name was Cara. She had a lot of wild energy, and since I was a kid, we got along great.
I got my second dog right after my wife and I got married. Her name was Maggie, and she was a Golden Retriever. Maggie was a special dog for us, because it was the first living being that my wife and I took care of.
There’s a window of time in life where a lot of couples get a dog before they have children. It’s a crawl-before-you-walk situation. So Maggie was very, very special to us.
Scout is the dog we have now, who is so elegantly gracing the cover of this magazine. We got him about 12 years ago, and he’s an English Lab who's just a beautiful soul.
Our kids have grown up with him, and he’s lived a long, healthy life. He’s mostly deaf at this point, but we'll figure it out. There’s a lot of hand signals and doggy sign language going on in our house.
You're obviously a huge dog lover. How long have dogs been a major part of your life, and how would you explain the importance of dogs to someone who hadn't ever experienced the joy of a canine/human relationship in their life?
I’ve had dogs at every major stage of life — childhood, as a newlywed, and now with grown children. They become part of the family immediately and just get intertwined into everybody’s life.
Dogs then became a part of my professional life when we launched Bark TV. We just knew from our own experiences that there were millions of people out there who simply love dogs as much as we do.
One of my favorite things about dogs is that you get immediate feedback; you just know where they stand at all times. With human beings, you always wonder what their agenda is, even if only subconsciously.
There is none of that with dogs. If they love you, they will tell you that. If you walk into a room and they're lying on the ground, they see you, and that little tail wag starts up, it just warms your heart every time.
They can't help but show you that love. Human beings have their guards up. Dogs are true and honest.
What are your favorite things to do with your dog(s)?
My favorite times with Scout are when we're sitting watching TV at night and he’s rolled up next to us. Scout’s a big dog, so he doesn't come up on the couches or chairs with us, but we love those quiet times where he’s content and peaceful and right at our feet.
He's so cute and so calm, and I just love the idea that he considers us part of the pack.
You have a really interesting career... What advice would you give to the many people who want to follow your path in career terms? What are the absolute best (and worst) things about your work?
The best thing about my work is that I have the responsibility of making decisions about what people will like, or sometimes not like, on their television screen.
People spend a lot of time in front of their screens these days, and we have a responsibility to them. We take it seriously, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a fun job.
Triple B is all about superserving a specific fan base, and we operate about a half-dozen niche channels. We have Billiard TV for all the pool players out there and Boxing TV for fans of the sweet science. Millions of people love dogs, so we created Bark TV.
At Triple B, we seek out sports and hobbies that have a rabid fanbase, and we aim to serve them. We’re consumers at heart, and that really informs us about what could make good television.
And that’s the advice that I would give. Be consumers first of whatever line of business you want to get into.
Aspirations, hope, and dreams are great, but understand that it takes small steps every single day to reach your goals. In most instances, those small steps include being a consumer.
In my case, I'm a consumer of television and video content, and I’m fascinated by all the different platforms that are emerging to reach billions of people.
Some content I love and some content I don’t like, but everything informs me in one way or another. It helps me to make good decisions in my career.
We always tell people, “We're not curing cancer here.” Putting cute and entertaining dogs on TV is not the most serious job of all time, but television and streaming are an important part of our culture.
It's an important part of our economy. Understanding the media landscape that we're living in today and what works and what doesn't is essential to my job.
I love my job, but the worst part is that there is very little immediate gratification. I just closed a deal that's taken me two and a half years to get done.
The day we closed the deal was a great day, but the 1,000 days in between consisted of a lot of working and waiting. There were a lot of moments when I questioned my abilities and my strategies about how to get the deal done.
Ultimately, you just have to keep the faith that you're on the right path.
To any young people reading this, you have a long career to navigate. Do something you're good at. Do something that is interesting to you.
If you have the opportunity to serve humanity in some grand way or cure a disease, that’s great — do that. But there are other ways to make meaningful contributions to society. Learn what your limitations are, learn what you're good at, and work hard.
Here are our quick-fire questions, are you ready?
Let’s do it.
Which do you prefer and why?
Big dogs or little dogs?
I've had big dogs all of my life. But if I get another dog, I probably would go smaller.
Calm, relaxed dogs or dogs who live at 100mph?
Calm and relaxed.
Dogs who do as they're asked most of the time, or dogs who do pretty much whatever they like whenever they like?
Dogs who do as they’re asked.
Dogs who love to walk by your side or dogs who like to race off and cover ten thousand yards in 3 seconds?
Walk by your side.
Days off or days at work?
Days off.
The fastest route or the scenic route?
Depends on where I’m going.
Nighttime or early morning?
Nighttime.
Describe the last time you laughed out loud because of something you saw a dog do.
Scout’s almost 13, and he certainly acts his age. When he was younger, he was always a threat to bolt and go off discovering, so we eventually had to fence in our yard. But now, he’s content just to hang out.
We were cleaning out the garage last weekend, and he was just hanging out with me and our oldest son, Sean. The garage door was open, there were no boundaries, but he wasn’t even thinking about taking off.
Scout was loving life, and Sean was playing with him, and we were having more fun than you should be cleaning out a garage.
What do you like to do in your downtime?
Hang out with my family or read a book.
Let us in on a secret that very few people know about you.
I would like to become a first-aid instructor.
What is your current favorite…?
TV show?
The Chosen.
Album?
I have many favorite Spotify playlists. Billy Joel is heavily featured.
Film?
The Shawshank Redemption.
Website?
barktvdogs.com, where anyone can upload photos and videos of their dogs and get featured on Bark TV!
Animal charity(s)?
Army’s Legacy Animal Rescue and Sanctuary, which is a local group here in Connecticut. They take on very complicated cases, especially when there are intense medical needs.
If you had to choose just one, what product or service would you say has most changed your life, do you think, and why?
The iPhone has completely changed the way that I'm able to communicate, work, and just monitor my life in general. Having the ability to have the world at your fingertips is life-changing.
It can also be unhealthy, but I try to improve every day and remind myself to put it down a little more. But that's a struggle in the world that we live in.
You can also use the iPhone to watch Bark TV, and we just announced a partnership with pet-focused streaming app Buddi, so that’s always a good thing!
Tell us about some of the most memorable moments from your work.
I was part of a two-person negotiating team with a colleague when I was at ESPN back in 2008. We did the first ESPN-YouTube deal, which was huge at the time.
Nowadays, it doesn’t seem like a big deal — everyone has a channel on YouTube — but at the time, ESPN was a major sports entity that had not previously offered any of its content on YouTube.
We were trying to uncover new distribution opportunities where fans would watch sports content, and YouTube was one of the most interesting new places for consumers.
Also, of course, launching Triple B Media is at the top of that list. We're not part of a larger media entity; every deal and partnership we make moves our company forward in a really tangible way.
The channels that we've launched all started with a conversation, and they developed into partnerships, new technologies, and monetization. And because of all that, viewers get to enjoy the things that they love the most.
Finish the following sentence, "Dogs are..."...
Great content.
And finally, this is always a tough question and often requires some serious thought… If dogs had the ability to speak, and you could ask your dog just one question and one question only, what would you ask them, and what do you think that they'd say?
I would ask Scout if he truly understands how much we love him and that he’s a part of our family. I think he would say yes. I think we’ve made that pretty clear over the last 12 years.
This is an opportunity to talk about any causes, projects, business ventures, etc. that are important to you and you'd like us to tell our readers about.
First off, we would love the readers of K9 Magazine to submit photos of their dogs on barktvdogs.com so they could be featured on the channel. And then tune in!
Bark TV is available over-the-air as a digital network in more than 80 broadcast markets across the U.S., and is also distributed on Xumo, Dish, Sling TV, Local Now, DistroTV, its own dedicated Roku app, and Streamstak, Triple B Media's owned and operated platform.
Thanks, Brendan!
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