June 4, 2025
UnchainedTV began as a one-woman media revolution. In late 2014, after the final wrap of her nightly show on CNN Headline News, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jane Velez-Mitchell picked up a GoPro camera and hit the streets. Her goal: to document a rapidly growing but largely overlooked movement the plant-based lifestyle and animal rights. “I’m unchained,” she declared. And with that, a new chapter in media history was born.
Velez-Mitchell, a veteran host and reporter with experience at CNN, CBS, Disney, and Telepictures, had always used her platforms to spotlight animal issues. But traditional media wasn’t telling the full story. Determined to shift the narrative, she launched LunchBreakLIVE in 2016 on Facebook Live—a daily vegan cooking show that garnered 17 million views in just one year. With over 800,000 followers on her Facebook page, she empowered citizen journalists to livestream from animal rights vigils, vegan festivals, and protests worldwide.
In 2018, her platform, JaneUnchained, officially became a nonprofit organization. One year later, she produced the award-winning documentary Countdown to Year Zero, exposing the link between animal agriculture and climate collapse.
By 2020, Velez-Mitchell teamed up with Emmy-winner Eamonn McCrystal to co-produce New Day New Chef, an award-winning vegan cooking series featuring celebrity guests. The show premiered on Amazon Prime and was later picked up by PBS stations across the U.S. and by Gusto TV, often dubbed the “World’s Best Food Channel.”
Encouraged by their success, McCrystal proposed the launch of an independent, nonprofit streaming TV network. With just $50,000 in seed funding, UnchainedTV was born in 2022—the world’s first free, plant-based streaming TV network. Its first original series, Pig Little Lies, made history as the first reality TV series starring pigs and has since been viewed more than a million times across UnchainedTV and other platforms including PBS.
UnchainedTV quickly expanded to include live trial coverage of animal activists prosecuted for open rescues from factory farms, reinforcing its commitment to investigative journalism and advocacy.
By 2024, the network had produced two award-winning vegan lifestyle television series. Kale Krew won “Best City or Regional Program” at the prestigious Taste Awards—often considered the Oscars of food television. That same year, UnchainedTV launched the first plant-based/animal rights FAST channel, a growing media trend that now reaches between 66–69% of U.S. viewers. This move brought UnchainedTV’s message to new global audiences.
Now in 2025, UnchainedTV has emerged as a fully formed media ecosystem with more than 2,000 titles in its library, ranging from documentaries and biographies to live events, cooking shows, and video podcasts. It publishes daily across social media, produces weekly podcasts, and regularly creates news articles picked up by Google News.
Often called the “Vegan CNN” or “Vegan Netflix,” UnchainedTV is the world’s only free, streaming television network solely dedicated to the plant-based lifestyle and animal rights. It documents, aggregates, and broadcasts the work of leading animal advocates around the world, offering a living history of the movement in real time.
In many cases, UnchainedTV is the only media outlet covering high-impact trials, campaigns, and investigations. Its programming includes hard-hitting journalism, inspiring documentaries, vegan cooking shows, reality TV, live news coverage, health segments, and more.
Backed by research that shows societal shifts occur when just 10–15% of a population embraces a new behavior, UnchainedTV aims to spark that tipping point. Its mission is to educate and inspire people to explore the benefits of a vegan lifestyle for personal health, environmental sustainability, virus prevention, and animal welfare.
The vision? To help shape a cultural transformation—touching food, fashion, science, and entertainment by filling the information gap left by advertiser-driven mainstream media. By leveraging mass media platforms like streaming TV, FAST channels, VOD, social media, and online journalism, UnchainedTV is driving the plant-based movement into the mainstream.
UnchainedTV is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. You can watch now at UnchainedTV.com
UnchainedTV began as a one-woman media revolution. In late 2014, after the final wrap of her nightly show on CNN Headline News, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jane Velez-Mitchell picked up a GoPro camera and hit the streets. Her goal: to document a rapidly growing but largely overlooked movement the plant-based lifestyle and animal rights. “I’m unchained,” she declared. And with that, a new chapter in media history was born.
Velez-Mitchell, a veteran host and reporter with experience at CNN, CBS, Disney, and Telepictures, had always used her platforms to spotlight animal issues. But traditional media wasn’t telling the full story. Determined to shift the narrative, she launched LunchBreakLIVE in 2016 on Facebook Live—a daily vegan cooking show that garnered 17 million views in just one year. With over 800,000 followers on her Facebook page, she empowered citizen journalists to livestream from animal rights vigils, vegan festivals, and protests worldwide.
In 2018, her platform, JaneUnchained, officially became a nonprofit organization. One year later, she produced the award-winning documentary Countdown to Year Zero, exposing the link between animal agriculture and climate collapse.
By 2020, Velez-Mitchell teamed up with Emmy-winner Eamonn McCrystal to co-produce New Day New Chef, an award-winning vegan cooking series featuring celebrity guests. The show premiered on Amazon Prime and was later picked up by PBS stations across the U.S. and by Gusto TV, often dubbed the “World’s Best Food Channel.”
Encouraged by their success, McCrystal proposed the launch of an independent, nonprofit streaming TV network. With just $50,000 in seed funding, UnchainedTV was born in 2022—the world’s first free, plant-based streaming TV network. Its first original series, Pig Little Lies, made history as the first reality TV series starring pigs and has since been viewed more than a million times across UnchainedTV and other platforms including PBS.
UnchainedTV quickly expanded to include live trial coverage of animal activists prosecuted for open rescues from factory farms, reinforcing its commitment to investigative journalism and advocacy.
By 2024, the network had produced two award-winning vegan lifestyle television series. Kale Krew won “Best City or Regional Program” at the prestigious Taste Awards—often considered the Oscars of food television. That same year, UnchainedTV launched the first plant-based/animal rights FAST channel, a growing media trend that now reaches between 66–69% of U.S. viewers. This move brought UnchainedTV’s message to new global audiences.
Now in 2025, UnchainedTV has emerged as a fully formed media ecosystem with more than 2,000 titles in its library, ranging from documentaries and biographies to live events, cooking shows, and video podcasts. It publishes daily across social media, produces weekly podcasts, and regularly creates news articles picked up by Google News.
Often called the “Vegan CNN” or “Vegan Netflix,” UnchainedTV is the world’s only free, streaming television network solely dedicated to the plant-based lifestyle and animal rights. It documents, aggregates, and broadcasts the work of leading animal advocates around the world, offering a living history of the movement in real time.
In many cases, UnchainedTV is the only media outlet covering high-impact trials, campaigns, and investigations. Its programming includes hard-hitting journalism, inspiring documentaries, vegan cooking shows, reality TV, live news coverage, health segments, and more.
Backed by research that shows societal shifts occur when just 10–15% of a population embraces a new behavior, UnchainedTV aims to spark that tipping point. Its mission is to educate and inspire people to explore the benefits of a vegan lifestyle for personal health, environmental sustainability, virus prevention, and animal welfare.
The vision? To help shape a cultural transformation—touching food, fashion, science, and entertainment by filling the information gap left by advertiser-driven mainstream media. By leveraging mass media platforms like streaming TV, FAST channels, VOD, social media, and online journalism, UnchainedTV is driving the plant-based movement into the mainstream.
UnchainedTV is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. You can watch now at UnchainedTV.com
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