User:Vipin cpp/Robert.K.Gray (Finance, POP Radio, VSource1)

Robert Gray

Robert.K.Gray (17 April 1956 – present) is an inventor, a creative entrepreneur, businessman, inventor of in-store broadcasting, inventor of  health club private silent local simulcasting, and Founder of POP Radio Corporation.

Contents

1.	Background and Early Life 2.	Early Career 3.	Career 4.	Family 5.	External Links 6.	References

Background and Early Life

Mr. Gray was born in Great Neck, NY, the son of David Gurvitz, an automotive dealer, and his wife Alice Esther Kotler. Mr. Gray has one brother Harrison Mitchell Gray, also an automotive dealer. Both brothers were educated at Great Neck North Junior and Senior High School (1969-1974) and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania (1975-1978) gaining a degree in Finance and Marketing in 1978.

Early Career

While at Great North Senior High, (1972) Mr. Gray was disenchanted with the sound created by early 1970’s rock bands at school dances and sock hops, so he initiated a small enterprise, to launch a monthly dance for students and their friends called Dancing Unlimited, held at off campus facilities, these scheduled events brought hundreds of students from multiple schools on the North Shore of Nassau County, Long Island in New York. Mr. Gray was one of the early pioneers of spinning records for a local dance event as the transition began for the use of disk jockeys along with the use of less local live bands. The cost of live bands was increasing while the audiences taste toward recorded songs and the depth and versatility of a disk jockey library was becoming more appealing.

Attending the club life in Manhattan or New York City in the early 1970’s Mr. Gray recognized a new kind of music that was developing which later became known as 70’s disco. This music appealed to Mr. Gray and he began to package individual songs or cuts all together on compiled 8 track tapes,which sometimes was referred to as a disco mix. 90 minute tapes would usually fit about 25 songs and could be considered an early stage for what is referred to today by Apple and others as an iMix.

Mr. Gray recognized that commercial establishments that wanted to appeal to a changing 60’s to 70’s style were interested in using these commercial free disco mixed tapes. So as a teenager he began selling his compilation tapes to hair salons, clothing stores, and some restaurants.

Mr. Gray sold thousand of dollars of disco mix tapes and thousands of dollars of disk jockey managed dances and events while in high school and at the University of Pennsylvania (1972-1978).

Once graduated from Penn, (1978) Mr. Gray founded the Segway Corporation with the intent to provide programmed music for contemporary hair salons, clothing stores and restaurants. Segway found their early niche with clothing store chains as they signed long term agreements to provide music for Ann Taylor, The Limited, The Gap, Ups N Downs, Proving Ground, Merry Go Round, Paul Harris and G&G/Wave Stores. Deep in new contracts to provide music for retailers, Segway was acquired by a Seattle based competitor for $2 million (1982).

Career

Mr. Gray created a totally new angle on providing music for stores in 1984 when he founded POP Radio Corporation. Mr. Gray invented the idea of providing stores with their own proprietary or signature radio station, sponsored by advertising. The first drug store chain to sign was Eckerd Drug, contributing 1700 stores to their own program entitled Eckerd Radio, delivered via satellite with soft rock music, a personal DJ, health tips and advertising for products on the store shelves. POP Radio went on to sign 22,000 grocery, drug and mass merchandising stores from 210 chains in the US and Canada. The biggest chains in these industries participated including Kroger, Safeway, Winn Dixie, Ralph’s, Albertson’s, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Thrifty, CVS, A&P, Pathmark, Kmart, Walmart and Toys R Us (1984 – 1990). 300 advertisers bought time on the network and a new form of media called in-store broadcasting was formed.

Mr. Gray was joined by Robert Hussey, his business partner in 1984, and POP Radio went public on NASDAQ in 1986 (POPX) and was acquired by Heritage Media Corporation in 1990 for $86 million. Heritage went on to combine POP Radio with their Actmedia acquisition to form the Heritage In-store Media Group, which was sold along with other Heritage broadcast properties in 1998 for $1.7 billion to Newscorp.

From the day Gray invented in-store broadcasting to the present, this audio broadcast methodology was a permanent evolution of the way that music is played in stores and the new in store broadcast systems are also used in health clubs, movie theatres, entertainment complexes and even gas stations. In store broadcasting and signature radio stations have also gone worldwide used in at least 34 countries around the world.

In 1992, while working on a pilot program to design a private Health Club Television Network for Bally Health Clubs, Mr. Gray again invented private silent local simulcasting (PSLS). This design was created as a courtesy to health club patrons who did not wish to listen to multiple television channels broadcasting simultaneously. Mr. Gray discovered that a successful format for private television in any health club would be to focus on the cardio area, to offer many different television channels and to make each audio signal available via silent local radio broadcast on individual radio channels (often indicated under each TV with signage). The system and design worked and has since created another evolution in viewing television in health clubs (1992-1993) that is the normal way of watching while health club members workout to this day.

In 1995, Mr. Gray was involved in a new design for a dating program called Introvision. What was unique about Introvision was that the compatibility and matching of couples was, for the first time, based around behavioral questions like “Do you like to drive fast?” or Do you prefer to socialize or stay home?”

Prior to that time, date matching had only been offered based on cupid advisors, like the design in Together dating, or video selection, like the design in Great Expectations dating.

Mr. Gray added a scientific element based on computer matching of behavioral questions (1995-1997) that is the same foundation used in eHarmony and Chemistry today. Introvision was intended to be marketed by an infomercial, but it lacked the purchasability in 1997 that is available today through the Internet. And Introvision became a start up victim of the issue “right place, wrong time.”

Mr. Gray went on to become an investment banker working one year for the Atlanta based firm, J.P. Turner, and then opened his own boutique placement firm, vSource1, Inc. in 2000. vSource1 designed one of the pioneering websites allowing entrepreneurs to post their own business plans for angels and venture capitalists to review. They also offered to market these business plans to venture capitalists and early stage investors and called their design an “Open Capital Exchange.” Mr. Gray remains the General Partner of vSource1 to this day (2000-2009) and the firm has millions of dollars for public and private companies to date.

Family

Mr. Gray was married in 1989 to Karen Castles; they had two children, Caroline Emily Gray (1992) and Alexander Stephenson Gray (1995). After the sale of POP Radio Corporation and the invention of Private Silent Local Simulcasting, Mr. Gray moved his family to Atlanta, Ga. They spent 10 years there (1994-2003) and for the benefit of his wife’s career, the family moved back to Manhasset, NY in 2003. The Gray couple divorced in 2007 and Mr. Gray currently lives in a home with his two children in Great Neck, NY.

See also

POP Radio Health Club Television Introvision American Outreach Media vSource1 In-store Broadcasting Private Silent Local Simulcasting Open Capital Exchange

External Links

www.vSource1.com

References

POP Radio, Media and Marketing Decisions, May 1988, page 67, Adweek, May 1988, page 17, POP Times, September, 1988, page 7, Forbes Magazine, April 5, 1989, page 30.