Wednesday, July 21, 1999

PPI merger with Atlantic Televison

From across the Atlantic and across a shared office space, in the cold month of January two entities merged. Doug Propp merged his company PPI with Howard Gibbons’ Atlantic Television and since the two have gone on to produce original stories and show segments about America in America and Internationally. Some of their “only in America” segments have been on a prison that trains inmates Opera; an underwater hotel in Key West, where guests have to dive to their rooms; and a preacher in the south who preaches while holding onto a poisonous snake, tongue rolling and all (the snakes tongue, that is).

The three divisions focus on original stories and documentaries, production services in European and US standards, and a corporate video division. Broadcast and streaming media production are in the works—they have the content, now it’s just a matter of getting a webmaster in to handle all that! :)

Their party, in their office, on Wednesday July 21st was a sweet small affair of mostly television people with some Net types thrown in for good measure, like attorney Steve Filler. He was chatting with Robet Kyncl, manager of HBO European Programming Operations. Thomas Aguierre-Smith, who does video content management consulting for companies came with Lee Morganroth of Symbiotic Media. The two are schoolmates from MIT and are now bringing some of their “stuff” to market. Julia Stoecker just started working at Atltantic and Brandon Cook, an architect student and teacher at Columbia were also there enjoying the cool sounds from the live jazz band and enjoying some of the nice dry wine. Just before leaving Doug introduced me to Judy Burger who just moved up from Austin, TX and is doing some consulting here.