8C
BUSINESS^e ClMcUttt $o(t
Thursday, February 23, 2006
BofA forum brings vendors
and corporations together
Continued from page 7C
is 15 percent
“We are well on the road to
our goal of 15 parent spend,”
Taylor said. “Obviously, it’s
part of our business outreach.
As a conununity bank, it’s our
duty to reach out to business
es in this community.”
While the forum brought
BofA executives and vendors
together, vendors also con
nected with each other.
The bank sponsored a busi
ness fair at the Charlotte
Convention Center where
suppliers will connect with
BofA sourcing and supplier
managers, executives, col
leagues and industry peers.
Debra Lee takes charge at BET
Continued from page 7C
BET Jazz, BET Gospel and BET Hip Hop.
‘Ttebra has been the architect with me, if you
will, of BETs success,” said retired founder
Robert Johnson in a telephone interview from
Washington D C. “She has held every senior
strategic position in the company She has
helped define the company and she’s helped
direct the company”
The network now reaches more than 80 mil
lion households in the U.S., Canada and the
Caribbean, according to Nielsen Media
Research, with 2005 its most-watched year
ever, representing a 17 percent increase in
viewership over the previous year.
‘When I went to BET, I was so excited about
working for a black-owned company and a
company that was in the media business that
serves the black conununity” Lee said. “One
thing Harvard Law does is teach you that you
can change the world, and I knew I wanted to
do that, it was just a question of how.”
Bom in Columbia, S.C., and raised in
Grtensboro, Lee had her sights, on a career in
journalism. But by the time she started her
luidergraduate work at Brown University, law
took center stage.
In 1980, Lee moved to Washington D.C. hop
ing to parlay her legal career into government
work. She decided to take a job at the presti
gious law firm Steptoe & Johnson, planning “to
hide out until the Democrats came back into
office”
But she would never get her shot in a
Democratic White House.
“BET was a client at the firm,” said Lee, “and
I found communications something that I real
ly loved and I started working with BET Five
years in, Bob asked if I could come on
board , and the rest is history”
Of course there were moments when she
questioned the move.
“Oh, there were times when I said, ‘Did I
make the right decision,”’ she laughed. “Going
fiom a firm of 200 lawyers where everyone
appreciates the law and everyone understands
the law to a company which had, I think, 80
employees, none of whom were lawyers and
they didn’t care. They just knew they had to
get something on the air tomorrow night.”
What kept her committed was the diversity
the company offered. “I was working on all
kinds of projects,” Lee said, which included
now-defunct publishing, clothing and restau
rant enterprises. “Every six months we were
starting something new.”
Lee is now looking to develop scripted series
for the channel. Last year she tapped
Hollywood produrer-director Reginald Hudlin
to helm the effort - a hire heralded by many in
the industry as a further sign of Lee’s executive
acumen.
“If she does nothing else than hire Reg
Hudlin, Debra Lee will be a huge success,” said
Johnathan Rodgers, president and CEO of the
black lifestjde network TV One, noting
Hudlin’s Hollywood credentials that feature
movies and television series including “House
Party, “The Bemie Mac Show,” “Everybody
Hates Chris” and the adult animated “The
Boondocks.”
‘Tt was a statement to the creative communi
ty,” said Rodgers, “and a statement to America
that they were no longer going to be stuck in
comic and video programming That, in fact,
they were going to give the audience much
more, and we all benefit fiom that ”
BETs programming could benefit fiom the
upcoming merger between its Viacom sister
UPN and The WB into The CW network, vrith
some of urn’s slate of black-oriented shows
likely to be displaced in the deal. But BET
spokesman Michael Lewellen says “it’s too
early to speculate about the fate of UPN shows
sinco no one has seen a formal rollout of the
CW prc^amming plan.”
Lee is currently looking to further the fran
chise beyond television to magazine and book
publishing. Also, BET Mobile will provide con
tent for cell phones.
‘1 have to answer the question of where do we
take this brand fiom here on out,” Lee mused
Ch
wJ
hutterbugs look beyond prints
Continued from page 7C
whose Sierra Custom Design
studio in Bishop, Calif,
transfers photos onto ceramic
tile to add sparkle to Jacuzzi
rooms, restaurant murals,
tabletops and fireplace man
tels.
“It’s functional art versus
just decorative art. People
like to touch it. It’s a little
more personal.”
While film processing gen
erated just $3.9 billion last
year, compared with $6.2 bil
lion in 2000, digital printing -
including consumables used
at home - churned out an esti
mated $3 billion more in
sales, said Dimitrios Delis,
research director at the
Jackson, Mich -based Photo
Mariceting Association.
In addition, putting images
on wood, stone, plastic and
metal as well as paper of all
kinds - birthday cards, calen
dars and storytelling photo
books that “people actually
use instead of just keeping
around for storage or display’”
_kaou^t in an ertra $1.5 bil
lion, Delis guessed.
The digital revolution has
sidelined film, and the rever
berations are being felt
worldwide. Film behemoths
led by Rochester-based
Eastman Kodak Co. are rac
ing to transform th^nselves
into catchall digital players
but relying more than ever on
high-margin inks, chemicals
and paper that go into mak
ing prints.
Tb get there, they must bat
tle head-on with cons\uner
electronics heavyweights like
Sony Corp. and Hewlett-
Packard Co. in the rapidly
evolving digital camera mar
ket Tie latest camera mod
els, even the cheapest ernes,
have improved to the pdnt
where jneture quality is most
ly taken for granted - sending
the crowd looking for extras
beyond megapixel resolution
and liquid-crystal-display
screens.
“We’re at an inflection point
where the easy stuff putting
cameras in people’s hands, is
winding down,” said Chris
Chute of IDC, a market
research firm in suburban
Boston. “Now it’s going to
take skill, innovation, a lot of
creativity to make money off
of all these cameras. It may
mean printing personalized
coffee-table books, managing
your own photo archive
online, finding new ways to
share pictures on displays.”
In under a decade, digital
cameras have landed in just
over half of the nation’s 110
million households. That pen
etration could reach 55 per
cent to 60 percent this year
and top out at around 70 per
cent by 2009, analysts say
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