Sunday, February 26, 2006

DailyCandy

Business Week just featured and article about the concept of media company's buying up websites and editorial content. Robert Pittman and their private equity firm have invested in an eNewsletter/website called www.dailycandy.com. There are specific on-line editions in 10 cities from New York, LA, Miami and next is Atlanta.

This eNewsletter and website allow for new trends in fashion, restaurants, entertainment to be marketed to a very valued target audience, mostly women 18-34 with income and spending power.

Business weeks says that this webzine may be worth as much as $100 million dollars.

The trick to the valuation is to have a very professional staff and approach including a professional editorial team and advertising sales team. The rate card for advertising in Daily Candy goes from a few thousand dollars per ad to the thirty thousand plus per city edition. DailyCandy claims more than one million subscribers.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Media Mensch

For the last few years, I have been thinking about my early career in media at WNBC Radio, WYNY-FM radio, Home Box Office/Cinemax, The Movie Channel/MTV and realized how interesting that time was and how fortunate I was to be working in that industry.

Some of the people I worked with early in my are some of the most influential people in media today and over the past twenty five years. This blog is a way to capture some of those stories from the "old days" or the "age of innocence" when we were creating and inventing the early days of cable television.

From 1977 through today, I have been fortunate to have worked with Robert Pittman (Creator of MTV and former COO of AOL), Tom Freston (Chairman, Viacom), Judy McGrath (CEO, MTV Networks), Jeff Bewkes (CEO, Time-Warner), Herb Scannel, (President, MTV Networks), Brown Johnson (VP Programming, Nick Jr., Bill Roedy, President, MTV International and many others.

During those early years I had the opportunity to be at Bruce Springteen's first concert at Madison Square Garden and presented him with an WNBC satin baseball jacket, was one of a few dozen people at "Cousin Brucies" last radio show at WNBC.
I was also the "N-Car" driver in the summer of 1978 in which over 2 million people had "WNBC is going to make me rich" bumber stickers on their car. That summer I gave away trips to London, Kawasaki JetSkis.

At HBO, we worked hard and played hard. I was responsible for the HBO Premium Incentive program that included all the coffee mugs, beer steins, t-shirts, tennis shirts, directors chairs and other items that had the HBO logo on them.
We had our holiday parties at Radio City Music Hall and the Museum of Natural History under the Great Whale.