Maryland Business

Mario Armstrong, the Baltimore techie and media personality, won his first Emmy Award last week.

Armstrong, who is president of Mario Armstrong Media, was named Best TV Show Host/Moderator for his work on the Maryland Public Television Program “You Can Afford College.”

The National Capital Chesapeake Bay chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences had given the award as part of 20 categories at the 53rd Annual Capital NATAS Emmy Awards in Washington, D.C.

“I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Maryland Public Television for believing in me,” Armstrong said in a statement.

In the 2010 “You Can Afford College” program, Armstrong gave parents and students a plan for finding financial aid.

But his MPT stint isn’t the only place you can find him. He’s continually helped consumers on latest technology issues, trends and products on different radio and TV segments. Armstrong has been on CNN, NBC’s “Today Show,” heard on WYPR, NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and he hosts a daily digital-lifestyle talk show on SiriusXM radio.

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Responding to a rising chorus of complaints about rush-hour crowding and service breakdowns on the MARC Penn Line, the Maryland Transit Administration unveiled a plan to group the trains into six- and seven-car sets — compared with six, eight or nine cars — and run them more often.

The result would be about 1,000 additional seats per rush hour, MTA officials said. And given the negative fallout from the “hell train” incident last summer — when a Penn Line train broke down en route to Baltimore, trapping about 1,200 passengers aboard MARC 538 as temperatures approached 90 degrees — you could see where the MTA would be anxious to get the word out.

An e-mail hit my inbox Monday at 9:41 a.m. about a “significant Penn Line schedule change” effective March 14, pending approval by the Maryland Board of Public Works. At 10:09 a.m., I got another e-mail — this one about the MTA website “operating very slowly or not responding at all” thanks to heavy traffic to the site sparked by the Penn Line announcement.

Sure enough, #marcfail tweets filled Twitter in short order. “#MARCfail = not making prior arrangement for extra server capacity for the @MTAmaryland website prior to a major schedule change email,” wrote @insidecharmcity, a persistent MARC critic.

A tweet by @mtamaryland at 10:16 a.m. informed followers — and @insidecharmcity specifically — that the site was back up and running.

Sometimes the Maryland Transit Administration must feel like it can’t catch a break.

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Years from now, when people look back at Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, I think naming him Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” will seem like an understated honor.

Often when my eyes glaze over my Facebook news feed, I think about how many people are active users. As of the end of this year, more than about one out of every 12 people on the planet use the social network (about 550 million users out of the world’s approximate 6.8 billion). When you factor in that the world population includes those too young or too old to use Facebook, and millions of others who are not fortunate enough to have regular Internet access, the number is even more staggering.

Very few inventions and innovations — if any at all — have both affected so many people on a global scale, and can be traced back to one individual.

It may seem odd now, but skip forward 100 years, and I’d suggest Zuckerberg’s influence in the 21st century will be comparable to the impact Thomas Edison and his light bulb had on the 20th. Edison didn’t invent electricity, he revolutionized it; Zuckerberg didn’t invent the Internet, but he made it something that most of us can’t live without (me included).

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The Sun’s Jay Hancock got well-deserved props in the Twitterverse Tuesday for his column on the latest in the St. Joseph Medical Center stent investigation (including praise from an old Daily Record/Maryland Business friend now at the Wall Street Journal).

Hancock revealed his star turn in some Abbott Laboratories’ e-mail correspondence subpoenaed by the Senate Finance Committee as part of its investigation into allegations that St. Joseph and Dr. Mark Midei needlessly implanted stents — metal mesh tubes, which Abbott makes, designed to prop open clogged heart arteries — in hundreds of patients. It seems an Abbott marketing exec took exception to a Hancock column on stents and asked a colleague if a “Philly” connection might be able to take him outside and, shall we say, do him bodily harm.

I won’t speak for Hancock, but this is typically a badge of honor for a newspaper columnist.

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That’s the fallout as pop culture and wizardry once again invade the tiny box office at the Senator Theatre under new management.

More than 700 tickets have been sold thus far for Thursday’s midnight show of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 at the historic Senator, says Kathleen Cusack, the theater’s new operator. An equal amount have been pre-sold for weekend performances.

“We’re not used to this sort of level of interest,” said Cusack, comparing the ticket sales to the staid art cinema crowd at the family’s other theater, The Charles, downtown. “It is certainly a cultural phenomenon that people seem to take with great seriousness.”

That’s putting it lightly.

Just before midnight, Cusack said she was preparing for hundreds of Potter fans to gather outside the Senator’s doors for the latest fan-fest of the movie series based on the seven books by J.K. Rowling.

Expect costumes – as some will post as Harry, Hermione, Hagrid, Ron and even dearly departed Dumbledore. Daring devotees of “He whose name cannot be spoken” are also likely to show in dark duds.

The pending Hogwarts-a-thon has left Cusack a little astonished.

“I have even heard of groups of people who want to take their kids out of school on Friday to see the show,” she said.

Cusack and her father, Buzz, were recently named by the Baltimore Development Corp. as operators of the Senator after prior owner, Thomas Kiefaber, closed the 71-year-old theater amid financial difficulties. The city had purchased the Art Deco-style theatre in north Baltimore at a foreclosure auction and eventually turned over operations to the Cusacks, who own the Charles Theatre downtown.

The theater, which has about 840 seats, reopened on Oct. 15. Renovations and addition of a couple of eateries are underway.  Tickets are $7.50 for a matinee and $9 for the regular show. Groups of 25 and more can purchase at a special rate.

The film is expected to remain on the large screen there “for a while,” Cusack said.

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It’s been one week since a New York Times report on the Tribune Co. and its corporate culture hit newsstands and the Web and the story is still generating chatter — locally and nationally, online and in print.

The story generated local interest for obvious reasons: Tribune Co. owns the Baltimore Sun, and its takeover of the daily paper and other prestigious media properties in January 2008, and its subsequent bankruptcy filing, have been closely monitored.

More titillating than its “financial hubris,” however, is the New York Times’ account of “sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective” at the Chicago-based company. Call it Senior Executives Gone Wild (allegedly — said senior executives have denied much of the bad behavior recounted in the story, and board members say the stand behind Tribune management and their leadership of the company).

Three different people mentioned the story to me at last week’s “TechNite” celebration, I guess because I work in media and so the assumption was I would naturally be interested in any corporate shenanigans at The Sun’s parent company. And I suppose I am to an extent, in an I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-reading sort of way.

(Posting pictures of your office poker party on Facebook? Really? Plus, there’s the unintentional comedy of a corporate memo containing the phrase, “News and Information is the NEW Rock n Roll.”)

What I’m more interested in, though, is the whole notion of corporate culture.

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After dropping MASN, the Ravens have ended the mystery after two weeks of who will carry the team’s television shows that include Purple Passion and the John Harbaugh Show.

The team on Friday announced that WBAL Plus and Comcast SportsNet will be airing all Ravens television programming, a move that gives the team a broader reach and a foot in the door in the Washington market.

Last year in an exclusive interview with The Daily Record, Ravens President Dick Cass said he’d like to see the team get more exposure in Maryland counties that were arguably split between Ravens and Redskins fans. Namely, Prince George’s and Frederick counties and even parts of Montgomery County.

Looks like this is one way to make that happen and then some (considering Comcast’s reach is broader than just the Washington Metro Area).

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So maybe the ACC didn’t top the 15-year, roughly $3 billion SEC television rights deal of a couple years ago. But as I said in today’s story, both nearly double the member schools’ television revenue. The deal cable sports network ESPN and the ACC struck last week is worth about $1.86 billion over 12 years and as media consultant Steve Dresner put it, “It’s now time to play ‘who’s going to top this?’ ”

Conference television deals used to hover around the eight-year mark, but Dresner points out the trend is turning toward longer and for more money per year. He predicts that the major conferences (like the Pac-10 or Big 10) will now settle for no less than a billion-dollar deal.

Let’s take a look:

• The Pac-10’s current deal expires in 2012 and is roughly worth an average of $53 million per year to the conference. The conference recently expanded to 12 teams (after trying for 16). But it also has to deal with the fact that its most popular football team, the University of Southern California, is facing severe NCAA sanctions. However, according to the Sports Business Journal, networks are still stumbling over each other to make a bid.
• The Big Ten’s deal expires in 2016 and is valued at an average of $100 million per year to the conference. The deal also created the Big Ten Network, which News Corp. projects could pay $2.8 billion to the conference over the 25-year life of the deal.

Considering the ACC and SEC deals doubled conference television revenue, both conferences stand to score monster deals for double-digit years this decade. But at what point does the madness stop? I’m not saying these conferences aren’t worth $200 million per year — if the ad revenue is there (and so far it is), then by all means sign on the dotted line.

But given the recent rash of schools switching conferences, including now-fizzled rumors about the University of Maryland going to the Big Ten, it seems these contract lengths are a bit audacious.

As Randy Eaton, Maryland’s interim athletic director, said to me last week, “If two or three schools left the ACC and the conference added five more, we’re all back at the table. Either way it’s the conference wanting to renegotiate or television wanting to renegotiate.”

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After more than eight years, Stan “The Fan” Charles is returning to the daily airwaves in Baltimore on Fox Sports Radio’s 1370 AM.

The founder of PressBox, a multi-platform sports media company known for its Web site and monthly print publication, will host a one-hour show called PressBox Sports Radio on weekdays starting at 12 p.m. The show will start Monday and will cover local sports (from high school to pro), will address sports business developments and will feature PressBox writers.

Charles was last on the daily airwaves with CBS Radio (1300 AM) doing a 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. show until the station released him in November 2001.

In an e-mail to me, Charles noted this will be the first time he’s on during the day.

“I was almost exclusively a night-time sports talker from 10 p.m.-1 a.m. … some 7 p.m.-10.p.m.,” he said. “The one exception was 1987, when in WFBR, I was on 5 p.m.-7 p.m., Drive-Time Sports.”

The partnership with Fox Sports Radio (WVIE) is the latest in PressBox’s efforts to deliver its product in a multitude of media channels. The company, which has weekly television and radio shows, also recently began producing the nightly sports casts for WMAR’s 11 p.m. news.

Other than strengthening its brand, the idea is that the more platforms PressBox is available in, the more ways its advertisers can spend money.

PressBox celebrates its 4th anniversary in April.

Fox 1370 is also boosting its radio lineup with more local talent and adding former Baltimore Oriole Chris Hoiles in the afternoon. Hoiles  will co-host a 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. weekday slot with Adam Gladstone, the former director of minor league operations for Ripken Baseball.

Hoiles and Charles are filling up the three-hour block the station used for nationally-syndicated radio sports personality Jim Rome.

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I know I’ve already blogged about this so I’ll keep it short and sweet. The January sweeps television ratings came out this week, and once again WJZ (Baltimore’s CBS affiliate) is riding high with the No. 1-rated nightly newscast.

WJZ’s 11 p.m. newscast drew a household rating of 8.8, while WBAL (Baltimore’s NBC affiliate) drew a 6.7. (ABC affiliate WMAR drew 2.2 for its late night newscast and FOX affiliate WBFF drew a 4.4 for its 10 p.m. newscast.)

After this fall’s experiment, Jay Leno will soon be off the air at 10 p.m., but the damage has been done. Compare WBAL’s 6.7 with what it drew last May, when it was the No. 1 nightly newscast: then, the station had a 10.2 rating. WJZ had a 9.7.

Now the real recovery test for NBC affiliates starts when the network broadcasts the Winter Olympics beginning next week. Jordan Wertlieb, WBAL’s president and general manager, told me during an interview last month he believes NBC has the ability for a quick turnaround.

“We’re glad to see they’ve been reactive to local stations,” he said at the time. “Of course we always hope the rating goes back up.”

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