Welcome to ZEN! We are an enabler of creative talent, empowering talent from the worlds of music, film, video, multimedia and media to work together creating new forms of quality entertainment. We believe that the mind that measures will never be happy, and we were created by a Grammy Award winning Producer who has spent his entire lifetime creating outside of the box systems encouraging collaboration and distribution.

A MESSAGE FROM EDDIE IZZARD, JACK HEALEY, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTION CENTER, BURMA....

STARTING PRE-PRODUCTION ON A FEATURE FILM PROJECT: WORKING TITLE "LIFTERS" By Robert Kranzlin

ARE MUSIC BLOGS THE NEW WALL OF SOUND?
Technology may have made it simple to obtain digital music, but it hasn't provided an easy way to sift through millions of tracks to find the tunes we like.

Jack Healey and the US Campaign for Burma align stars to help raise awareness of human rights abuse Jim Carrey, Jennifer Anniston, Woody Harrellson and others join the team. . Watch the Will Ferrell video here:

;Where is the Future of Media Heading? Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis explains all in his CUNY Slideshow Presentation. This is a not-to-be-missed report for everyone who wants to be a part of the creation of future media. ">

The Weekly Music News Report
Weekly Music News from Around the World


It's Not Enough to Have Free Speech
When Adbusters found its spoof ads banned by the corporate media, the question of the right to communicate came into play.

John Lennon Documentary "3 Days in the Life" May See the Light of Day.
We've screened some of it at our GEMS shows, we've had our panel discussions discussing it, and now Worldwide Video's "3 Days in the Life" just may see the light of day. Afterall, this really IS the first reality show......



Broadcasters Tell FCC Regulation Won't Boost Local Content
Broadcasters are warning the Federal Communications Commission against requiring additional local broadcast content or more evidence of local public service during license renewal. Responding to suggestions from consumer groups and some legislators that local content and "public interest" are casualties in media mergers and proposals from the FCC to do more, the broadcasters say there is little evidence of problems under the existing rules, and additional ones are unnecessary and ill-advised. B&C: Broadcasters cite logistical and First Amendment concerns.


Hollywood Taking Sides In Network Neutrality Debate
As in the recent television writers' strike, the major studios are at odds with some members of the creative community over digital distribution. This time it's about a public policy issue known as network neutrality. Some lawmakers, public interest advocates and big technology companies are pushing for federal rules that would prevent Internet service providers from blocking or slowing certain content flowing through their high-speed lines.



Startup Premium Movie Channel Seeks Fourth Co-Owner
The startup premium pay movie channel formed by Paramount Pictures and two other film distributors is going to enlist a fourth company as a co-owner, according to a report from Pali Research, which explored the question of who might be this "mystery" partner. The most obvious candidates are mail-order DVD movie renter Netflix or Google, Pali said, also citing a longer list of more remote prospects.

A Letter from Bruce Springsteen on the Passing of Danny Federici
Above photo (c) Steve Zuckerman

The View From Gate 14
And why most of America resents our administration

Maintaining Independence the Blair Witch Way
Daniel Myrick, Creator of "The Blair Witch Project" maintains his creative independent spirit

Tim Robbins Powerful and Empowering Keynote from the NAB Show

Creating Your Own Network
Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine on the Future of Interactive Media Networks.

Senators debate future of Web
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday his agency has all the authority it needs to prevent Internet service providers from discriminating against Web surfers and that new legislation is unnecessary.

From Bricks and Mortar to Digital Music Master
As music merchants struggle to adapt their business models, one New York shop is embracing the Web

XM Programming VEEP To Innovate Tribune

Could Interactive Media Save the Airline Industry?
Richard Branson to the Rescue

New Joint Premium TV Channel Venture By Viacom/Paramount/MGM/Lionsgate

How Gossip Girl is Saving Television: Or Is it Really?
How a wunderkind producer, seven tabloid-ready stars, an army of bloggers, and a nation of texting tweenagers are changing the way we watch television.

ASCAP Creates A Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers

Just as citizens of a nation must be educated about their rights to ensure that they are protected and upheld, so too must those who compose words and music know the rights that support their own acts of creation. Without these rights, which directly emanate from the U.S. Constitution, many who dream of focusing their talents and energies on music creation would be economically unable to do so - an outcome that would diminish artistic expression today and for future generations.

At this time, when so many forces are seeking to diminish copyright protections and devalue artistic expression, this Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers looks to clarify the entitlements that every music creator enjoys.

The Making of Bjork's "Wanderlust" 3D Video

RECORD STORES FIGHT TO BE LONG-PLAYING
NOW added to the endangered species list in New York City, along with independent booksellers and shoe repair: the neighborhood record store.

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD VISION AND HOW MYOPIA CAN DESTROY YOUR CAREER

Since we're in this for the long run, we're going to want to create and maintain relationships that will last as long as possible. Keeping this in mind, it's imperative to realize that we meet the same people coming into the business as we do once we've arrived. And with that in mind, it's important to accept the fact that this is a business where ego's proliferate, and money dictates a majority of the decisions.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE: BUT WHICH PEOPLE ARE WE SPEAKING OF?
Two year ago, while in the early stages of producing the Global Entertainment and Media Summit while still in New York City, I created a promotional piece that justified the state of the entertainment industry. I put a photo of a dinosaur next to a photo of Tower Records with signs saying "Going out of business." The promotional piece said: "Don't let this happen to you." I had fun making that promotional piece happen. We had more fun watching our visions become a reality.

HOW THE PRESS SHOULD BECOME THE PRESS-SPHERE
The ecosystem of news has a new structure, a new structure to media and while we realize that there are many different ways to look at that, we need to look at how many news organizations are getting it wrong by not adapting to new business models. The music industry needs to look at their own failure to adapt to change, and instead of embracing it, even the entertainment media business models could be looking at new business models for news. What follows is a story on how new models for news could be created, directly from the founder of Entertainment Weekly.

HOW ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA IS FAILING AND WHAT THEY NEED TO DO IN ORDER TO CHANGE WITH THE TIMES

Billboard has quite a few problems.... A shrinking base of potential subscribers and a relatively weak online presence are two of the main issues. One of the annoying symptom of the Billboard's inability to offer a pleasurable Web experience: Lack of hyperlinks at Billboard.biz. In this article about Tommy TV, the just-launched online video joint venture between Sony BMG and Tommy Hilfiger, there is no link to the actual site. Imagine that...a web article about a website doesn't contain a single link to the article's topic. Geesh. Even the New York Times regularly links to outside web sites.

TIM ROBBINS KEYNOTE AT NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS

Tim Robbins offered a wonderful keynote speech at the NAB Show.
To hear his speech, click the link found in the subject title.


THE FUTURE OF MEDIA IS ABOUT NETWORKS.
The future of media is less about products and more about networks. Find out how one publication, Glam, has gotten it right!

AN INSPIRATION FROM OUTSIDE OF THE BOX THINKING
An inspirational presentation from M Dot Strange who is is a mixed media animator from San Jose, Ca. He recently singlehandedly completed an 88 minute animated film entitled “We are the Strange” which made its world premiere in January of this year at the Sundance Film Festival. A reviewer that saw the film M dot made in his bedroom with 9 PC’s over the course of 3 years said “it looked like something Hollywood would make for 70 million” He has recently been featured in the NY Times, ABC World News , Wired.com and his youtube videos have been viewed over a million times.

He describes the journey he I took with my animated feature film “We are the Strange” From my bedroom to Sundance and beyond and back to my little studio again after turning down Hollywood deals and deciding to self distribute and make my films his way.
.

M dot Strange: Berlin Talent Campus 08 from M dot Strange on Vimeo. ZEN Founder Steve Zuckerman as Associate Producer on 2nd Les Paul and Friends CD, Disc to feature Billy Gibbons, Slash, Cyndi Lauper, Jeff Beck, Alison Krauss and many others. We anticipate a September, 2008 release (The first in the series won us 2 Grammy Awards.)

SPECIAL PROJECT ANNOUNCEMENT! ZEN, and our new on-Demand Video Channel launching shortly called GEMS TV is creating the very first feature comedy motion picture made up entirely of edited user-generated video content! With a worldwide premier at a famous Comedy Club in Manhattan, here's your opportunity to participate in what will be called "The Worst Movie Ever Made." Join us by clicking this link!

BRIAN S. TARR UNVEILS "PROJECT STORYTELLER"

Your stories should be of inspiration, positivity, optimism, and integrity. Simply create a video of yourself telling the story of your experience with the outside negative world, how you overcame the obstacles by maintaining a positive attitude ... and what great things came of it. Click here for details!

The highly successful GEMS Global Entertainment and Media Summit which originated in New York City has expanded its show to South Florida for a special two day conference, seminar and trade show dedicated to artist and business reinvention, maintaining creative control and sustainability at a time of change.

If you're looking for change---if you're a performing artist or filmmaker, media maker or distributor, wanting to join forces with other creative alchemists who are committed to creating quality sustainable entertainment, you have come to the right place.

At ZENtertainmentNetwork, we embrace technologies to help us connect, to help us create the type of projects that touch and inspire others. We're an innovative production company, artist development network, a group of outside-of-the-box thinkers who all believe we have something important to say and want to share it with the world.

We put the ZEN in Entertainment.
ZENtertainmentNETWORK is The Ultimate Entertainment Network--a network of change agents, actors, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, choreographers, media-makers, producers, directors, photographers, writers, models and agents---who share the belief that by working together we can---and we will---create projects of meaning and substance---because we care about what we do and its positive effect on the world.

Members of ZEN are encouraged to stay in touch with other members to build projects together. Additionally, it is highly recommended that ZENster's are encouraged to provide the core team behind the website with news and updates that are relevant to our newsletters and our special events.

It is our belief and intent to create a network where creative talent from around the world can work with one another to create great projects and events.

ZENtertainmentNETWORK was created by Steve Zuckerman, the same man who brought the world the New York Music and Internet Expo, GEMS: The Global Entertainment and Media Summit, and who enabled a team to create the two time Grammy Award winning Les Paul and Friends featuring Sting, Joss Stone, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and a host of others.

If you're looking for an innovative network to promote, market, distribute your entertainment projects, create new alliances that actually work---build teams---and collaborate---all with the guidance and leadership of visionaries committed to artistic integrity and creative control of the creative spirit----than ZENtertainmentNETWORK is for you. A special tour is being created----so join us, have fun---and be proactive!

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We have the possibility to create an entirely new entertainment network and system, one that empowers creators and creatives to reach down deep inside and realize ones potential, a network of people who believe that by working together to develop and produce our own projects, we can create projects and careers outside of the existing system—a system that does not work, a system that does not develop talent, a system totally dependent on pleasing shareholders than pleasing an audience, a system that is so out of touch with the needs of the people, that their very actions push them further away from the people they are trying to serve.

Imagine if you will, a network where a talented writer can tap into our talent pool and find the talent they need to produce their projects----totally outside the system---totally different than any other system ever created….. imagine if you will---that this network was developed and spearheaded by an award winning producer whose work secured him the attention of both the major and independent media for helping to start a music revolution? Imagine, if you will, that by being part of this network, you had the opportunity to be led, empowered and inspired by those who have already made it, those who were committed to artistic integrity while balancing it with commercial success.

Imagine if you will, that this network existed for the sole purpose of empowering and enabling talent around the world to be empowered, be aware, be excited, and to grow as a community---and that new projects of integrity were created by the network---with your participation? Imagine if this network actually created a system where the revenue of ownership of the various projects it developed was shared amongst the project participants?

The time for such a Network has arrived.
Welcome to your future.
Welcome to ZENtertainmentNetwork
What’s your ZEN?
Changing the way we do business. One person at a time.

By Howard Bloom
Honesty has clout. A story of soulpower from my early corporate days at "Engulf & Devour".
There's a new form of capitalism struggling to be born among us. In reality it's been here all along, but we've failed to see it. It's a Capitalism of Passion, a capitalism vibrant with the power of something that has to seize the heart of every CEO, VP, manager, and mailroom worker-the power to care, the power to feel the emotions of the people you serve, and the power to feel your own emotions in new ways.

Capitalism is partially brain-dead today. Its group IQ is low.and so is its collective creativity. The reason? Corporate business needs to find its heart and soul. More specifically you and I have to move up a notch or two. We have to use a capacity in our daily work that only saints have previously been required to possess--something whose facets we'll explore in future episodes. I call it "tuned empathy."

My own experience in the world of corporations, politics, and even the scientific community is this:

· If you champion the interests of millions of people outside the picket fence of your friends, your co-workers, and your family;
· If you seek truths others don't see, you find them, you question them, you test them, and when you sense their solid, you battle for them;
· If you know that unseen truths are not just logical;
· If you know that tracking truths takes both emotion and reason;
· If you know that truth feeds off of supersaturation-off of unconventional study and off of minute-to-minute immersion in your field,
· If you know that your instruments for divining truth are:
your gut feeling
PLUS your intellect
PLUS continual contact with folks outside your social sphere
PLUS the sum of all you've learned by following every curiosity that's in you,

Then you will outdo your competitors. Why?

Because serving others is the real purpose of the deadened institutions in which so many of us have become deadened cells. If you serve others with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your intellect, you may be loathed, you may be hated, and you may be mocked, harrassed, and hounded, but you will succeed.

Here are a few personal adventures that hint at what Third Millennium Capitalism can be. They're tales of how telling truths you'd think would get you fired can lead to success for you, for the public, and for the companies whose unwritten rules you've broken.

Back in 1973, I was a scientist five years into a 20-year-long Voyage of the Beagle, an expedition into the world of corporate and popular culture. I'd landed in a place I'd never expected to be-a 23rd Floor Manhattan conference room at Gulf & Western Industries.


Gulf & Western was one of the mightiest conglomerates of the mid 20th Century. Corporations were in a feeding frenzy. They swallowed smaller firms alive, discarded the parts they felt were unimportant-like the people who'd built the firms from nothing-and either kept the remains or sold the dismembered pieces for a profit.

Time Magazine called it the era of "Voracious, Inc." The worldwide business community summed it up with an even more threatening nickname "Engulf & Devour." The term "Engulf & Devour" was coined specifically to describe one of the worst of these mega-predators-the company in whose offices I was
ensconced: Gulf & Western Industries.

Gulf & Western had chewed up a venerable giant of the film business, Paramount Pictures. Along with the meat had come the feathers and the beak.
One of those feathers was a music lightweight called Paramount Records.

Music was a hot property in 1973. It was the boom-time of psychedelia and rock. CBS was making a fortune off of tie-dyed stars like Janis Joplin.
RCA was hauling in profits from The Jefferson Airplane.and was still riding high on the greatest solo rock and roll revenue producer of all time, Elvis
Presley. Atlantic Records was getting rich with new albums from a beachhead act of the British Invasion, The Rolling Stones, and with Led Zeppelin, the
central band in an even newer movement, heavy metal. And Capitol Records was raking in profits from the foursome that had landed the British Invasion
on American shores-the Beatles.

Teenagers were the fastest-growing market on the planet. Since 1968, platinum-priced executive newsletters had sprung into being promising to explain this puzzling cash-explosion, the emerging "youth phenomenon".


The forces underlying the youth explosion were simple. America had just been through the longest peacetime period of prosperity in its history. The
trickle-down effect had carried the wealth from the pockets of parents to the allowances of their kids. Kids have no necessities to spend on, so every cent a teen received was squandered as "disposable income".

What were the first things teens with money in their pockets plonked their coins and dollars down to buy? Usually those antique 12" vinyl music-Frisbees called LPs (short for Long Playing records) with roughly ten songs apiece.

So a foothold in the music business was a necessity for a conglomerate, especially one dedicated to engulfing and devouring. Paramount Records, Gulf
& Western's entry to the music industry, was scarcely even a single toe-rest, much less a solid footing. Paramount Records had once been a firm that sold the soundtracks from Paramount's movies. But soundtracks had stopped selling way back in the mid-1960s.[i] Now, in 1973, Paramount Records had just one lonely star-a singer/songwriter who'd sold tons of records in the late 1960s but was on her way to oblivion. Her full name was Melanie Safka Schekeryk, but she went under just her first name, Melanie.

As Melanie sank from her former heights, the only Paramount Records replacement in sight was a band the press loved but the public did not,
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

So Gulf & Western acquired the distribution of another thirteen record companies. And it plucked a president to run this operation from the golden nest of CBS-one of the most successful firms in the 20th Century music business. (We'll poke into the mystery of CBS'incredible levitation.and of its eventual fall.later).

That CBS executive, Tony Martell, had made his name by aiding in the launch of a most-unlikely success story-a strange concept-record with an even stranger subject matter. The concept was a holy grail several had striven for but none had yet been able to achieve-a "rock opera". The music's
writer was the 23-year-old son of a church organist from London's All Saints Church. He had staged a minor musical called Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in a London School[ii] at the age of 19. Now he'd moved into something seemingly even more alien to the music of the day: a rock and roll version of the story of Christ from the point of view of Judas Iscariot. The upstart composer without a band and without an electric
guitar in his hand was Andrew Lloyd Webber. His preposterous project was called Jesus Christ, Superstar.

And Jesus Christ Superstar sold like crazy. That may have been an accident.

I was at ABC's flagship New York FM station, WPLJ, one afternoon in 1970 when one of PLJ's most popular DJs-Dave Herman--stood chatting with his arm resting on a tall stack of promotional albums that had come in that week's mail. When a pause arose in the conversation, Dave looked down to see what his left elbow was covering. The album cover caught his eye. "What's this?" he said, his eyebrow lifting with curiosity. He picked the album up, read the title on the front jacket, slid the record halfway out of its sleeve, skimmed the list of songs on the label, and said, "Hmmmmm, it looks interesting. I think I'll play it as soon as I get on air." Then he slid the LP back into its sleeve again. Fifteen minutes later Jesus Christ Superstar made its radio debut on Dave Herman's turntable. The rest is history.

The idea of music about Christ as a rock singer of sorts, a superstar, had fired an influential dj's imagination. Was this Tony Martell's sly work? Or was it just a fluke? In business, many make the mistake of crediting you with a success you didn't create. They fail to ask whether you were one of those who had built and driven the train or whether you were merely along for the ride.

But back to Engulf and Devour. On paper Gulf & Western handled fourteen record companies and possessed a division president with a platinum track
record. That's on paper.

In reality, nothing worked. Tony Martell's teenage son, TJ, had been diagnosed with a fatal case of leukemia. TJ was alive and chipper. But every good day was a reminder to Tony of the loss that might be just around the corner.

Martell dove into a deep depression. To save his son, he focused his energies on tracking down the world's top leukemia researchers, getting to
know them personally, learning the nature of their work, helping them find additional funding, and seeking a cutting-edge medical treatment that could
reverse fate. Which meant that at 9:30 each morning, Martell entered the Gulf & Western Building-a boxy, big-windowed, concrete-and-steel skyscraper
on the Columbus Circle corner of Manhattan's Central Park--went straight to his 24th floor office, passed through the anteroom, said good morning to his
secretary, stepped into his huge corner office overlooking the park's trees and lakes, locked his wooden double-doors, and didn't come out again until the sun was sinking in the windows of the Gulf & Western building's west side, where the fading rays turned the clouds red behind the Hudson River
and the panorama of New Jersey's greenery. Then it was time to go home again.

Martell would eventually fail to save TJ, but would found The TJ Martell Foundation for Leukemia, Cancer and AIDS Research. This was heroic.

But it meant that Gulf & Western's record holdings ran on automatic pilot, headless.and seemingly mindless as well. One indication of its witlessnous
was the fact that it had hired me.

I was a 28-year-old who had no legitimate credentials for a place in the corporate world or in the music business. I'd been involved with science
since I was ten. My obsessions were cosmology, microbiology, geopolitics, and psychology. At twelve, I'd helped conceive a computer that had won a
Westinghouse National Science Prize. At sixteen, I'd been a lab assistant at the world's largest cancer research center, The Roswell Park Memorial
Cancer Research Institute in my hometown, Buffalo, NY. Before my freshman year of college, I'd designed and implemented research on Skinnerian
Programmed Learning at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Education. And by the age of 20, I'd edited conference proceedings for the psychologist
Sol Gordon, head of New Jersey's Middlesex County Mental Health Clinic and an author who would go on to sell several million copies of his books. This
was not a stunning business bio.

Like most kids I'd become a music addict at the age of thirteen or so. But I'd listened to all the wrong stuff--Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff,
Bartok, Errol Garner, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and Stravinsky--not to rock and roll.

My only claim to even the faintest hint of legitimacy was that I'd edited a national rock magazine and had increased its circulation by 211% in a year.
(Another tale we'll mine for its mysteries and for its revelations later in the book.) Even my real reasons for being in the pop-culture-and-conglomerate world were suspicious.

I was on the track of a mystery that had puzzled me more and more each year since I'd been thirteen. What inside of us compells us to imagine gods,
devils, heavens, and hells? Why do folks in some religions go into ecstatic spells? Where are the gods inside of us? Where are our elemental passions-our glints of what we call divinity? How do we manage to reach them? How can they be explained in the language of science? How can we
harness our core emotions to increase the power, the crispness, the snap, the creativity, the richness, and the intensity of our daily lives?

The answer, it seemed, did not lie in the ivory tower, that great devourer of scientific researchers and of college professors-a prison I'd been destined to end up in since the age of ten. The answer, I was convinced, lay in the real world of getting and spending, of profits and losses, and of the modern myth-making machine.


Charles Darwin had found the secret to evolution in a five-year voyage that took him out of the confines of Cambridge and Oxford, where the high priests
of mainstream science were caged. He'd found the finches that gave him his clue in a spot way off the map of science, the Galapagos Islands. I was
convinced that the next Galapagos Islands, the islands of personal passion and of mass emotion, lay in a 20th Century terra incognita, a place where no
scientist I knew of had tried to mount an expedition-in the media and its companion, the star-making machine.

Over at Gulf & Western, they didn't care what my motives were. They didn't care what sort of fieldwork I'd done so far in five years of TV, advertising, publishing, and graphic design. They didn't care that by a fluke I'd landed on the cover of Art Direction Magazine. The folks at Gulf & Western only saw that I'd made money in mass quantities for a magazine whose owner had merely muddled along for years.

So they asked me to create from scratch a public and artist relations department, a new team to keep singers happy and to garner publicity. Again, they didn't give a hoot that I'd never done one whit of public relations in my life. They had a failing company. Any source of profit would be just fine.

When I first arrived at Gulf & Western's music operation and was given an office with three windows overlooking the park, this H.Q. of tunes was a
most peculiar place. There were no staff meetings-ever. There were no lists of the records we were putting out. No one gave us any sense of what
to do from day to day. Heck, there wasn't even a list of the names and addresses of our fourteen record labels.

The morning routine went something like this. The head of sales came up the elevator at 9:30 wearing a business suit, said hello to everyone, then went
into his office, closed his door, and disappeared for the day. The Vice President over my head did the same, though he took off his jacket, rolled-up shirtsleeves, answered his door if I knocked, and treated me with a mixture of kindness and gruffness when I got excited and wanted to share the news of some new triumph.

The head of promotion (the department that gets radio stations to play your songs) ambled in in jeans and long, blond hair about eleven looking sleepy, kept his office door open, and emerged from his lair periodically to flirt with his two secretaries. He was married with kids. The question of the day
seemed to be which secretary he'd have an affair with first. (Later he would have affairs with both.)

Then there was the head of A&R. A&R is artist and repertoire, the talent-scouting arm of a music company. Our A&R head was an enthusiast. Every day he walked into my office burbling that he'd just found a new megastar. He was very convincing, despite the fact that he substituted the phrase "yada-yada-yada" in many of the places where full sentences are customary. It took a few months to realize that none of his stars had careers. None got on the radio. None went anywhere.

Our company was by no sense of the imagination a team. And one thing intuition revealed quickly: it takes teams to make stars. It takes teams to
make companies. Twelve of our fourteen labels had no teams-none at all. Even the presidents of the labels seemed elusive, as if they'd been invented
by some lowly staffer on LSD.

But there were two gems in our stack of chaff and dandruff-two companies with teams that had a work ethic and a passionate determination to succeed.
One was Sire Records-the company that would eventually sign and build careers for Madonna, The Ramones, The Talking Heads, The Smiths, Tom-Tom
Club, Depeche Mode, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ice-T, The Pet Shop Boys, and Bryan Eno's collaborations with David Byrne. The other was Dot Records-the number-three company in country music with a team spirit that was ferocious, driven by a fierce desire to climb to number one.

So I tried to give the singers and musicians from Sire and Dot that extra boost they needed to succeed-and used simple correlational studies and other
scientific techniques to figure out exactly what made careers in the record business go to the top.then applied every lesson-and there were many.

When the A&R guy from Paramount Records came into my room with his star-of-the-day and his yada-yada, I was polite-I loved his buoyancy. But when he left, I went back to work strategizing, directing my growing staff (the only staff that was mysteriously given budgets to hire new employees while other departments were told to slim down), landing roughly 600 stories a month for Sire acts like Renaissance and the Climax Blues Band, and getting feature stories in a new magazine called People for folks like Donna Fargo and Roy Clark-now-forgotten entertainers who paved the way for country-music's charge from its hideout in the Bible Belt into the mainstream of American culture.

Then one day the A&R guy trapped me. His gonzo-megastar tale of the moment, told with the usual wild excitement, concerned a thirteen-year-old girl from Crown Heights in Brooklyn-a very marginal neighborhood. This kid, his new discovery, was going to be a monster, a superstar, a gorilla, a smash.
Sure, just like Augie Meyers and the rest who'd slipped into invisibility despite their modicums of talent. "And guess what," the A&R maestro said "I've
set her up to do a showcase at the Plaza Hotel tomorrow at noon."

Yikes. This was a smart bomb I couldn't dodge. The Plaza hotel was just a short and pleasant walk away. I was the head of the Public and Artist
Relations Department. That meant that on the rare occasion when a singer or musician who didn't come from Sire or Dot managed to actually make it to a
nearby stage, I had to be there to make the artist feel that we, The-Company-That-Didn't-Exist, were paying attention to him or her. If the company was doing nothing for a singer, I told him so. But still, I owed him or her the courtesy of my presence.

So the next day at fifteen minutes to noon, I left my office and my growing staff and walked at top speed along the lower margin of Central Park, not
stopping to take in the spring-time scenery, straight into the white-with-gold-trim elegance of the Plaza Hotel, into one of The Plaza's nightclubs, and sat down at a small, round table, expecting to hear some unfortunate kid who couldn't carry a tune if you put it in a bucket and Krazy Glued the handle to her palm.

The room darkened. The lights came up on the small semi-circular stage. Out came a squashed-looking African-American adolescent a mere 4'8" tall with a microphone in her hand. Her eyes swept the room, seeming to peer with intensity directly into my face and into that of everyone else in the mini-amphitheater-like curve of nightclub tables. There was something ferocious and commanding about those eyes, as if she'd reached through your
skin, had grabbed you by the esophagus, had pulled your nose up to hers, then had given you a silent command to sit, to stay, to pant, and to obey.

Then she opened her mouth and sang. For half an hour she gripped you and everyone else your peripheral vision could see. Her hold on your ears, eyes, and throat extended to your body and to those gods of bone-deep passion I'd been hunting for. She dragged you at high speed through hell and heaven, through the exaltation of being dipped, thrown, lifted, and flown.

The team it would take to turn this exquisitely controlled raw power into a career did not exist. Paramount Records, her label, was a name on paper, not a going company. But two minutes after she began to sing, I opened a space for her in my priority list-a very big space indeed.

Two weeks later our president's misfortunes were used against him. Dot Records and Sire Records were steadily upping their revenues, their profits, and their prestige. But our other twelve labels remained anonymous sinkholes into which maintenance dollars flowed never to be seen again. Meanwhile the company Gulf & Western Industries had swallowed when acquiring us, Paramount Pictures, was a giant in the film industry--a studio run with deftness, precision, and artistry.

Paramount's president, Frank Yablans, did a bit of maneuvering, and one day, with scarcely an announcement, I came to work and discovered that our President now answered to a new boss. From this day forward, Tony Martell, he man with the dying son, would be slid under the thumb of Paramount
Pictures' president, Frank Yablans.

I'd never seen Frank Yablans. None of us on the 23rd Floor had. All we knew was that he had a reputation akin to Adolph Hitler's and Attila the Hun's.
Gossip implied that intimidation was his game and that he could turn you into ash and powder simply by looking your way.

The news of his move down the corporate organization-chart stirred Tony Martell, our president, out of his grief. In fact, Martell did something unprecedented. He threw a meeting of his department heads.


This meant that we, the chief honchos, seated ourselves at eleven o'clock one bright morning around a big, previously unused conference table in a
windowless unused conference room. Before us we discovered a neatly-typed list of records the company was planning to release during the next few
weeks, all disks none of us had heard of. Our president seated himself at the far end of the table, cleared his throat, and prepared to take charge. Then the door opened, you had the feeling that laser lights and the sound of trumpets had streamed into the room, and, as if walking on a path of lightning bolts, in strode a small man with a four-thousand-dollar suit and an expression masterfully contrived to strike terror into even a titanium-armored heart.

Our six-foot tall prez shrank as this multi-megaton Napoleon walked the length of the room. Martell slumped back in his chair until his chin seemed to dip almost below the line of the conference table's top. When the mini-Napoleon reached the conference table's head, Martell slid out of his seat like a flattened jellyfish. Then the newcomer took over the Power Chair from which our noble leader had just oozed.

This was the human Godzilla we'd all heard of, Frank Yablans. Yablans glanced at the list of upcoming releases on the table in front of him,
picked the first one, turned to the executive on his left, and said, "You. What are you doing to promote this record?"

In reality, nobody was doing anything to promote any record, much less a record not a soul had heard. But I don't think the long-haired, jeans-wearing Promotion Head upon whom the withering stare was fixed wanted to admit that. So he mustered all the brain cells he had used in college to answer essay questions about matters he'd never studied, and made up an elaborate story on the spot, a fictional saga of his heroic efforts.

Then Yablans turned to the next executive in line, opened his Howitzer mouth, and fired the same question. Executive number two--our sales chief
in his business suit--followed executive number one's creative example.

About four executives later, Yablans finally got to me.

Now remember, I was new to the corporate world. Science was my religion, and the first commandment of science is, "the truth at any price including
the price of your life." Galileo had spent his last nine years under house arrest and the Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno had died at the stake so
that I might have the privilege of infiltrating the corporate world.

"I'm not doing anything about this record," I said. "In fact, I'm not doing anything about ANY of the records on this list. 99% of the music we sign
doesn't stand a chance of success. Working on it would be a waste of effort and of time. But there's a girl one of our labels has just signed who is getting 40% of my attention." And I proceeded to describe the thirteen-year-old wonder from Brooklyn, Stephanie Mills.

When I finished, Yablans abruptly walked out of the room, his face frozen, leaving five executives unquizzed but still quaking like the Oakland
Overpass during an earthquake. My immediate superior, our top vice president, grabbed me by the arm with a grip designed to take my humerus
bone to the breaking point and hissed, "You fucking nun. If you ever do that again, you're fired."

When I arrived back at my office, my secretary told me that I'd received a phone call. It was not my exit notice. Instead, it was Frank Yablans' secretary. Mr. Yablans had set up a meeting for the next day at noon with all of his East Coast vice presidents and department heads. He wanted me there. And he wanted me to bring Stephanie Mills.


Thus began an expedition into the powers of tuned empathy.of using your own feelings as a mirror of those you serve-your customers, your audience, your
flock.

From that point on, the Paramount Pictures people treated me as a member of their staff, calling me in when they were planning campaigns to break major
films. They put me in charge of their campaign for Cybill Shepherd and her boyfriend, Paper-Moon-director Peter Bogdanovic. They let me architect a
music-press assault for the soundtrack orchestrator of Robert Redford's The Great Gatsby-Frank Sinatra's legendary arranger Nelson Riddle. And they
gave me full control of the press effort for The Life and Times of Sonny Carson, directed by Frank Yablans' little brother, Irving.

No one at Paramount dared get near The Life and Times. They thought Frank had simply tossed his brother a few million dollars of production money to
keep him out of trouble. What's more, the film was about a controversial black activist. Irving Yablans would eventually make a fortune creating Friday the 13th. Carson would resurfance in the early 1990s as a leader of the anti-Korean, anti-Semitic movement in the New York black community. And
I'd become the leading "black" publicist in the music industry. But that's a story for another time.


The corporate VP who'd threatened to fire me for being "a nun" was tossed out of the company two weeks later by Frank Yablans (which sickened me,
since beneath this VP's gruffness was a deep commitment to his people and to his work).

Ten months later, Gulf & Western finally tired of the music business. It sold its record holdings to ABC Records. ABC flew a Vice President to New
York from LA. He gathered all 57 employees in the New York office, told us to go on working in our normal manner, and promised us that our jobs weresafe. "No blood," he said, "will flow in the corridors of this company."

On the following Friday, everyone in the company, everyone in that room, received a pink slip in the mail. Everyone with a single exception-me. And I
resigned. Why? The company had fired my staff. Without the team I'd built there was no way I could accomplish anything.

The VP who had made the "no blood in the corridors" speech appeared unannounced in my office the next morning, having taken the redeye in from
the West Coast. He laid a blank piece of paper on my desk, told me to write my name at the top, to write the name of all the employees I wanted to keep,
then to fill in the salary I wanted for myself and the salaries I wanted for the members of my team. I gave us all a modest raise and went to work for
ABC.

A year later I got a call from the attorney who had negotiated the sale from Gulf & Western to our new owners. "You know why ABC was willing to pay so
much for Gulf & Western's record holdings, don't you?" he said. I confessed that I didn't have a clue. "The reason," he said, "is you."


This was prosperous. I was a novice to the corporate world. I was a scientist learning the hard way that the politics around me only made sense
if you saw them in terms of wolf packs-with alpha animals, beta animals, and with small, competing, carniverous teams bound to each other by instinctual
loyalty. I told him he was wrong.


His answer: "No, listen carefully to me. What did you do for Dot Records? And what did you do for Sire? You increased their cash flow, their profits,
and their market share. I'd say you doubled or tripled their worth." The rest of his explanation suddenly made the puzzle pieces fall into place.

Why had ABC not fired me? Because, the lawyer explained, "The President of Sire Records, Seymour Stein, and the president of Dot Records, Jim
Foglesong, both flew out to California to meet with Jay Lasker, the president of ABC Records. Do you know what they told him?" As usual, I didn't
have a clue. "That without you they would bolt.they'd find a way to leave ABC."

Those were the wages of truth in the days of Engulf and Devour. Those are the wages of truth today.

s for Stephanie Mills, our department got her into everything from The New York Times to Seventeen Magazine with a whole bunch of television shows in
between. Then she landed the lead in the Broadway production of The Wiz, the first black-written, black-produced Broadway musical. My staff and I
did most of the publicity for the show, using it to pull in a landslide of additional press for Stephanie.

Stephanie never became the household name I would have liked. But the base for Stephanie's career was well-laid. Mills would have three number-one R&B records in the late 1980s ("I Feel Good All Over" (1987), "If I Were Your Woman" (1987), and "Something in the Way (You Make Me Feel)" (1989), three gold albums, and would sell several million LPs and CDs.


And I'd learn more from the experience about what musicians, film-makers, and you and I really do for those who buy our work.

THE GEMS AWARDS: A NEW POSSIBILITY FOR THE PLANET
THE GEMS AWARDS FOR ACHIEVEMENT IN THE INSPIRATION OF HUMANITY

HONORING TODAYS HEROES

A hero is someone who stands for something against all odds, someone who risks themselves to make a diffeence for others, someone who takes action even when they are afraid.

In everyone of us, a hero exists. However, many of us forget that child inside of us, the explorer, the one who looks up into the sky and sees greatness. The GEMS Awards for the Inspiration of Humanity provides an important message to the world---a reminder that each of us is here to make a difference.

Citizens from all nations will be asked and encouraged to submit a short video or editorial statement about their own personal heroes and the difference this person has made in the world. Much like the character played by Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life," George Bailey, a man who has done so much for others---but just wasn't recognized publicly. The GEMS Awards for Achievement and Commitment to Humanity will give voice to the life changing idea that we all make a difference in the world, no matter how big that difference may be.

“Never before has the availability of technology allowed communication to occur in a decentralized manner, and because of this, both "mainstream" as well as alternative artists are rethinking their career strategies both long and short-term. This phenomena was most apparent at the Global Entertainment & Media Summit, where thinkers and doers in many fields came from all over the world to exchange ideas and present platforms by which this evolution could occur in an effective and inclusive way. I was most impressed with the realistic outlook on the part of most of the participants, who fully understanding the difficulty of the task at hand, still seemed truly willing to tackle the obstacles ahead and to help create an industry that will be even better than the one which it will replace…”

--Michael Masucci,Director EZTV Media www.eztvmedia.com

From THE CASE AGAINST THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND FOR TURN TOWARD THE LOCAL

BY JERRY MANDER AND EDWARD GOLDSMITH

Corporate Consciousness

According to Advertising Age, About 75 percent of commercial network television time is paid for by the hundred largest corporations in the country. Many people do not react to this statistic =s being important. But consider that there are presently 450,000 corporations in the United States and some 250 million people with extremely diverse viewpoints about lifestyle, politics and personal and national priorities. Yet, only one hundred corporations get to decide what will appear on television and what will not. These corporations do not advertly announce their refusal to finance programs that contain views disconsonant with their own; their control is far more subtle. When television producers think about which programs to produce, they have to subordinate other considerations to the need to sell the programs to corporate backers. An effective censorship results.

While one hundred corporations pay for 75 percent of commercial broadcast time and thereby =dominate the commercial channels, they now also pay for more than 50 percent of public television. During the Reagan years, federal support for noncommercial television was virtually eliminated, leaving a void that public television filled by appealing to corporations. In 1995, the Gingrich-led Congress threatened to remove the remainder of the public support, leaving the field entirely to corporations. As corporate influence grows in “public” television, so do the visibility and length of the corporate commercial tags before and after the shows they sponsor. Whereas public television once features such modest messages as “This program has been brought to you through a grant by Exxon,” now we see the Exxon logo, followed by an added advertising phrase or two and an audio slogan. Recently, several so-called “noncommercial” TV stations, such as PBS affiliate KQED-TV in San Francisco, have announced that they will accept commercials. This, of course, was the original intention of defunding them, from Reagan to Gingrich.

The average U.S. viewer already watches 22,000 commercials every year. Twenty-two thousand times, corporations place images in our brains to suggest that there is something great about buying commodities. Some commercials advertiser cars; others advertise drugs---but all commercials agree that you should buy something and that human life is most satisfying with inundated with commodities. Between commercials there are programs, also created by corporations, that espouse values consistent with the ads.

This idealogical training via television and other forms of advertising is inevitably becoming the norm all over the world. It is a further expression of the way corporations create the ideal condition for their own expansion.

Additionally, No manager of a publicly held company could ever place community welfare above corporate interest. An individual might personally wish to do so, but such a gesture could subject the company to seriously damaging lawsuits by victims.

…..As a result, we have witness countless cases in which companies deny any responsibility for corporate acts that caused death, injury, or illness. We have heard cigarette company executives lie, with great transparency, about the products’ harmful effects. We have heard the same from manufacturers of pesticides, chemicals, asbestos materials, and birth-control technologies.

In instances such as these, withholding information means that people----perhaps tens of thousands of people---become sick. Some people die. In other contexts, murder charges would be in order.