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In late 2014, after wrapping her nightly show on CNN Headline News, Jane Velez-Mitchell did something that would quietly ignite a movement. The award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author picked up a GoPro, declared “I’m unchained,” and began documenting a fast-growing and often underreported cause: the plant-based lifestyle and animal rights.
What followed wasn’t a hobby—it was a media revolution. Velez-Mitchell, a seasoned television host with credits at CNN, CBS, Disney, and Telepictures, had always carved out space to spotlight animal issues. But traditional media wasn’t telling the full truth about animal welfare.
Determined to bridge that gap, she leveraged a powerful new tool in 2016—Facebook Live—and launched LunchBreakLIVE, a daily vegan cooking show that would rack up 17 million views in its first year. With more than 800,000 followers on Facebook, she empowered citizen journalists to livestream from animal rights vigils, vegan festivals, and protests across the globe.
In 2018, her platform JaneUnchained evolved into a nonprofit. The following year, Velez- Mitchell produced Countdown to Year Zero, an award-winning documentary laying bare the connection between animal agriculture and climate collapse.
Momentum built quickly. In 2020, she teamed up with Emmy-winner Eamonn McCrystal to create New Day New Chef, a celebrity-driven vegan cooking series that aired on Amazon Prime. The show became an international success and was later picked up by PBS affiliates and Gusto TV, often called the “World’s Best Food Channel.”
Encouraged by their progress, McCrystal proposed something even bigger: a standalone, nonprofit streaming TV network. With just $50,000 in seed funding, UnchainedTV was born in 2022—the world’s first free, plant-based streaming television network.
Its first breakout hit? Pig Little Lies, a reality series starring pigs that made history and crossed the million-view mark across UnchainedTV, PBS, and additional platforms. With that success, the network expanded its mission to include live coverage of trials involving animal activists prosecuted for rescuing factory-farmed animals—offering the kind of unflinching journalism traditional networks often sidestep.
By 2024, UnchainedTV had produced two more award-winning vegan lifestyle series. One standout, Kale Krew, earned the Taste Award for Best City or Regional Program, a recognition widely regarded as the “Oscars of Food.” That same year, UnchainedTV launched the flrst plant- based/animal rights FAST channel. With FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) now reaching 66–69% of U.S. viewers, the move introduced UnchainedTV to an even wider global audience.
In 2025, UnchainedTV entered a new era of expansion. The network’s content library now exceeds 2,000 titles, spanning documentaries, cooking shows, biographies, and live events. Publishing daily across social media and Google News, the platform also maintains a robust podcast collection of more than 300 episodes and growing.
But UnchainedTV is more than content—it’s a cultural archive. Often dubbed the “Vegan CNN” or “Vegan Netflix,” the network is the only free streaming platform exclusively dedicated to the plant-based lifestyle and animal rights. It documents and broadcasts the work of leading animal advocates in real time, creating a living history of the movement accessible to viewers around the world.
From courtrooms to red carpets, UnchainedTV is frequently the only media outlet present at key events, trials, and campaigns. Its multimedia programming includes investigative journalism, inspirational documentaries, cooking shows, podcasts, reality series, health coverage, and breaking news.
The network’s strategy is simple: meet audiences where they are and make plant-based living not only visible, but viable. According to social behavior research, when 10–15% of a population adopts a new practice, it triggers a cultural tipping point. UnchainedTV is determined to accelerate that shift.
Its mission is to inspire and educate, showcasing the benefits of a vegan lifestyle for human health, climate stability, disease prevention, and animal welfare. The vision? To spark a society- wide transformation across food, fashion, science, and entertainment.
UnchainedTV aims to fill the void left by advertiser-driven mainstream media, using streaming apps, FAST channels, video-on-demand platforms, social media, and written news to spread its message globally. And in the words of its founder—this is only the beginning.
