If ManiaTV had its way, college students across the nation would be chucking televisions out of their dorm rooms and tuning in to Internet programming every day.

And with a tagline like &f*ck television,& that&s exactly what ManiaTV is hoping for.

Streamed live over the Internet 24 hours a day, ManiaTV is a combination of music videos, short films, animation and video games spread across a variety of shows in a programming setup similar to normal television networks.

Unlike television, however, broadcasting over the Web offers ManiaTV a level of freedom and viewer interaction beyond what television can offer.

&From day one, ManiaTV was to be a viewer&s network,& said Christy Kruzick, one of 14 &CyberJockeys& for ManiaTV. &Chat room interaction, message boards and Web cams allow for the viewers to directly influence the programming. Where else can a viewer chant, &kill the video, kill the video,& and get a video stopped mid-play 10 seconds later?&

Kruzick was originally an intern in ManiaTV&s public relations department, where her love of music got her recognized as a possible candidate as a CyberJockey. After an audition process, she was offered the position and accepted, and can currently be seen Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. in several programs.

One of the programs, &The Daily Independent,& plays artists from some of the biggest independent labels, and Kruzick helps to create content for feature stories based on the feedback she receives from viewers.

ManiaTV is the brainchild of founder and CEO Drew Massey, who thought of the idea a few years ago while eating at a cheeseburger restaurant in Palo Alto. He decided to merge the two biggest entertainment mediums of his generation: television and the Internet.

But to differentiate itself from regular television, Massey would structure his programming differently with fewer commercials, more independent content and more involvement from the viewers. Based in Denver with offices in New York and Los Angeles, ManiaTV finally went live on Labor Day 2004.

The fledgling Internet broadcast network has been steadily gaining support from both viewers and advertisers. The network has the support of large corporations such as Dell and Intel, as well as the Naval Air Force, and has acquired the rights to broadcast music videos by major artists like U2.

Since its launch, ManiaTV has had over a million unique visitors, and viewers are encouraged to submit feedback and content to the network. Viewers can even enter contests to win prizes or apply for a job as a CyberJockey.

ManiaTV recently made a stop at the Sacramento State campus as part of its college campus road trip tour, and the response from students was supportive.

&The Sacramento State students were so cool and open-minded to us,& said Paul Haffey, West Coast tour representative for ManiaTV. &They took quite a liking to the &f*ck TV& shirts that we handed out by the dozens.&

By the end of this semester, the campus tour will have visited over 90 campuses across the nation and reached a potential two million students, said Kevin Staunton, director of business development at ManiaTV.

ManiaTV currently broadcasts in three different quality streams for narrowband and broadband users, in order to reach as many viewers as possible, even those with lower connection speeds. As bandwidth availability increases for more users, higher quality streams will be added, said Daniel Murphy, head of technology for ManiaTV.

Providing a choice of download streams is vital to ManiaTV&s success, as it is not targeting just home viewers with high-speed connections, but also office workers and students with laptops using wireless connections at college campuses.

&Because so many people are tied to the Internet for daily use, ManiaTV has proven to be a nice alternative for those who spend fair amounts of their time on the Internet,& Kruzick said.

For more information on how to become involved with ManiaTV and to view its programming, visit www.maniatv.com.