Ask a New Yorker: Who are you?
Andy: My name is Andy Sansone, and I’m the President and owner of Big
Apple Channel. This gentleman over here is Dale Kanzler and he is the person
in charge of sales and marketing. We are here to speak with our new friend Kennedy
Moore. We’re looking forward to chatting about what we’re doing
and what he’s doing and the synergies of our work together.
Ask a New Yorker: Tell us about yourself and Big Apple Channel.
Andy: I have owned an advertising agency in the New York City metropolitan area
for quite some time. One of my larger clients is GreyLine Sightseeing Double
Decker Tours. I still have that business but wanted to do something on line.
I have a lot of relationships with advertisers within New York City already.
So how could I capitalize on those relationships, but to form some sort of online
entity! Video is a very powerful way of marketing your business these days and
much less expensive than it would be to run ads in newspapers and things of
that nature. Therein lays the opportunity that we came up with Big Apple Channel.
We were originally going to build it as a site where we develop all the content
ourselves by having folks on the streets talking about culture, stories, and
different things in the news. Things about New York, fairs that are going on,
parades, and getting feedback from tourists, and from people thinking about
New York . That became a little bit of an expensive endeavor. So we changed
the business model a little bit now were basically a regional style Youtube.
Ask a New Yorker: Terrific, have you ever been mugged in New York?
Andy: (laughter) No.
Dale: Neither have I, but I got mugged in New Orleans once.
Ask a New Yorker: Great digs for Big Apple Channel. How did you find this apartment?
Andy: Through friends in New York. My friend moved out to Westchester, and I
took it over. I love the Upper West side. It’s a great location.
Ask a New Yorker: You have a landmark down stairs.
Andy: Barney Greengrass.
That is the local landmark, it’s a fabulous deli known for their whitefish
salads.
Ask a New Yorker: O.K., back to Big Apple Channel. I take it you’re profiling
businesses rather than people?
Andy: True, its more about the business in New York City. Like I said before,
we wanted to produce a lot of our own material but that became costly. We haven’t
abandoned that, it’s just on a much smaller scale. Folks log in for free
and post their videos just like they would on you tube. We’re just a very
specific place, and all the video has to be New York City centric.
Ask a New Yorker: Hyper, hyper local.
Andy: So what we would like to do eventually is build up more of those folks
on the streets and really go after some interesting stories being talked about
right now.
Ask a New Yorker: What are you doing for quality control over what gets posted
on Big Apple Channel? There are a lot of crap videos out there.
Andy : Absolutely, it takes a lot of time. That’s me. It’s on the
backend and I have to sift through every day, sometimes multiple times a day
and got through exactly what’s coming in. Because we want everything to
be New York City centric. I don’t want it to be outer fringes. I don’t
want it to be absolutely irrelevant. It has to be relevant and has to be perfectly
set for the category that it’s in and about New York. If it’s not,
it’s not on the site.
Ask a New Yorker: Are you planning other platforms for Big Apple Channel?
Andy: I have very close people in my life who are in the production world and
I’ve talked to them about what I’m doing. We would like to eventually
produce shows specifically for New York City. Maybe it would be a reality based
type of show .We haven’t really gotten too far down the line as of yet
to the exact specifics of the shows. But it’s endless and this is a stage,
and when you have a web site, there are different stages you have to hit. You
have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run.
Ask a New Yorker: I love all the water
towers outside your window.
Andy: I did see a documentary which was very interesting. A lot of them are
made out of wood and there are only a few companies that still service them.
Ask a New Yorker: There seems like a lot of synergy between what we’re
both doing?
Andy: I have a lot of thoughts on this. A lot of folks in business tend to keep
things to themselves, thinking that their ideas might be stolen. I think the
complete opposite. I like sharing back and forth. I give away everything that
I have. I show you what I’m doing. If there’s something we can do
together I think there’s more to gain from that type of attitude than
to hold it down close to the vest.
Ask a New Yorker: Thank you guys and good luck with everything. Hope we can
do something done the road together.
