Through the Wire
by Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 5/11/2009 2:00:00 AM
Style’s Ruby Gettinger Wants You to Come Walk With Her
Ruby Gettinger’s campaign to lose weight — she was 500 pounds — started partly with the simplest exercise: walking. The star of Style’s top-rated original show, Ruby, now is taking that act on the road with a five-city walking tour launching in Philadelphia on May 30.
“There is something about Ruby that really seems to connect with people,” Suzanne Kolb, chief marketing officer at Comcast-owned Style and E!, said, citing comments on Gettinger’s Facebook page, on Mystyle.com and anecdotal evidence.
“The notion of people wanting to have an opportunity to walk side by side with Ruby keeps coming up,” Kolb said.
The walks with Gettinger, who now weighs less than 400 pounds, will be free and open to the public. The Philadelphia stroll will start on Boathouse Row, not Comcast headquarters (The Wire had to ask), but Kolb said the network is working on affiliate tie-ins. After Philadelphia, the journey takes Gettinger to Washington, D.C., (June 13); New York (June 27); Los Angeles (July 11) and St. Louis (July 18).
“This is not a 10K walk,” Kolb said. It’s more of a walk-and-greet that will take her a couple of hours to complete in each city, with many scheduled stops to chat. Style will seek local radio coverage to promote her appearances and encourage local affiliate staffers to participate.
Gettinger is excited about it, Kolb said. Some network events are the type that show stars have to be talked into, she said. “There’s other times where they call us every day to make sure it’s happening. This is one of those times.”
“It seems like this is something the network, our talent and the audience all seem to agree is a good idea,” Kolb said.
Season 2 of Ruby debuts on July 5. Video from the walks will make its way into interstitial programming and online features, Kolb said.
Ovation TV Gets 'Jools’: Better Later than Never
Ovation TV programming and production senior vice president Kris Slava is a big fan of U.K. music program Later … With Jools Holland.
“I’ve lusted after it for years,” Slava told The Wire last week. “Michelle [Zajic], our head of acquisitions, was stalking it.”
It finally became available and arts-focused Ovation signed a deal with BBC Worldwide to secure U.S. premieres of the show’s next 27 episodes — three “series” in British-TV terms. It launches Labor Day weekend with a marathon, then settles into a Thursday night slot on Sept. 10.
The show has been seen on these shores before: BBC America aired it, as did Rave HD, part of Cablevision System’s satellite-delivered HD programming service Voom. Only a week ago, Cablevision’s Fuse network said it was adding it to the lineup this summer. Slava said Fuse is using Rave’s expiring license, after which Ovation will capture those shows (which it thought it would get already).
Ovation will start with Jools’s 33rd series (again in Brit terms), including guests Metallica, Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour, The Killers, My Morning Jacket and Carla Bruni, who also happens to be the wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Mediacom Expansion Plays Well in Peoria
President Obama paid a highly publicized call on the Caterpillar factory in Peoria, Ill., in February, promoting the $787-billion stimulus package that was then just a proposal in Congress. Caterpillar had pledged to rehire laid-off workers if the bill passed.
A scant 25 miles away, in Chillicothe, Ill., Mediacom Communications will reach another milestone in a local effort to put an additional 77 jobs on the local payroll. Mediacom is spending $1.2 million to expand and renovate an existing regional operations building into the cable operator’s national sales and retention center.
Mediacom’s already started hiring and training the new employees, en route to a local work force of about 200. About 35 employees supporting local operations are about to move into a newly acquired office next door to the building at 609 South 4th St. that is being renovated and should be completed by late summer. Without federal stimulus dollars.
No related content found.
Featured Company
-
Telestream
Telestream products are used by the world's leading media and entertainment companies and corporations for transcoding and workflow automation. Telestream helps customers transform their media for multiplatform distribution to web, mobile, DVD, cable VOD, podcast and broadcast pl..more
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
