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At 50, Magid Follows Its Advice And Embraces New Media
Back in 1976, Frank Magid remembers taking a group of top ABC executives on a retreat to a Wyoming ranch. At the time, his firm, Frank N. Magid Associates, was already famous as a kind of Mayo Clinic for broadcast TV, celebrated for its use of innovative research and consulting techniques to boost ratings for local TV-news programs.
But that week, the big-city television executives got a lesson in much more than the TV industry. "Even in his early teens, my son Brent was already an expert fly fisherman and a wonderful rider," Frank recalled. "Every morning he'd go to each cabin and wake them up. Then after the business meeting, he'd teach them something that many of them had never experienced: fly fishing or riding."
As Frank N. Magid Associates celebrates its 50th anniversary, much has changed in the television industry. But the company -- now under the leadership of president and CEO Brent Magid -- is still thriving by teaching media executives new and often unfamiliar skills.
Besides its longstanding work for local and national broadcasters, the company now does extensive research and consulting work for cable, multichannel TV, first-run syndication, Internet, wireless, gaming, newspapers, magazines and other media that it uses to help companies adapt to rapidly changing consumer attitudes and technology.
"For many years, a lot of people just knew us for work in the local television business, but we've grown at every turn along with the expanding and changing media and entertainment business," Brent Magid said. "We've taken our own medicine about the need to adapt to those changes. Today the depth and breadth of our experience and research in every aspect of the media business sets us apart [from other research and consulting businesses] who work from project to project or only know one or two areas."
That strategy seems to have paid off. While the firm does not release financial details, it currently has the largest client list in its history, and is on track for another record year financially, despite a cost-conscious corporate environment that has hurt other consulting companies.
"They have become premier research company in country, in part, because they have evolved into this amazing...