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Innovation + Job News

St. Paul startup MIDART takes aim at the future of broadcasting

Joe Tracy has a new paradigm for an old medium: television.

The name of his St. Paul startup MIDART is an acronym for the key elements of the company's strategic platform: mobile, internet, digital, authentication, retransmission and timing.

MIDART's goal is to acquire and operate "under-valued or over-leveraged" television stations around the country and capitalize on new technology, media, and revenue streams.

Tracy, a 25-year veteran of broadcast sales and management, left CW Twin Cities (WUCW) last September to devote himself full-time to MIDART. By mid-February, MIDART had raised more than a third of its $750,000-round equity goal, according to an SEC filing.

"It's a really, really interesting time to be in broadcasting," says Tracy. "Some guys are either shaking their head and getting out, or they're being squeezed out."

Instead, Tracy sees opportunity. While the past couple of years have been "some of the worst years broadcasting has had," he says, "behind that there is this new wave of technology that, in my opinion, represents the next wave of broadcasting growth."

MIDART's "three-screen" approach involves extending traditional broadcasting (and related revenue streams) to newer media models like mobile broadcasting and customized, interactive websites. As general manager at the local CW station, Tracy grew a successful mobile-texting strategy and instituted cross-media collaborations, with the online Star-Tribune, for example.

Tracy also hopes to maximize broadcast capacity with local programming on secondary channels (as in channel 11.2 or channel 2.4) and to capitalize on authentication and retransmission fees from cable companies or web-content providers, for example.

Add to Tracy's own experience MIDART's impressive list of collaborators, which includes meteorologist Paul Douglas and Digital River co-founder Todd Frostad, who have partnered to create Weather Nation and Singular Logic. Like other MIDART team members, the pair's expertise in technology and entrepreneurship fit nicely into key aspects of MIDART's business plan.

While MIDART aims to "streamline operations and content delivery," Tracy doesn't imagine a media-behemoth ownership model--a model that he says has played a part in broadcasting's recent decline.

"We need to buy a bunch of stations to create that economy of scale," he says, "but at the same time, you have to provide local programming that's relevant. If you're too macro, and you're just treating it as a business, then you're not a broadcaster anymore."

MIDART's next step is a big one: to start acquiring stations. Tracy expects to "close a deal or two" in the next few months.

Source: Joe Tracy, MIDART
Writer: Jeremy Stratton
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