When Josh and I signed the papers on our acquisition of the CNG Media Group six months ago, the former owners, Jen and Les Goodstein, took me on a tour of their offices at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn. To my surprise, as we toured the spacious location, they opened the door to a room that held a table loaded with microphones and a console.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Oh,” Jen Goodstein said. “That’s our radio and podcast center.”
“What?!” I exclaimed.
“Oh yes, we’ve been doing Brooklyn Paper radio podcasts,” she replied.
I was in awe! It’s just what I wanted to do for our media company, and here it was! Remarkable.
And so a new journey began!
As always it takes a village to get things done. Since my dear friend Kia Eshghi is a sound engineer, I asked him to evaluate our equipment, and in short order, we upgraded everything to the standards of any professional radio/podcast studio.
I was ready and I was blessed that Tony Rotunno, the editor-in-chief of all our Brooklyn papers, and his colleague Johnny Kunen, were ready too. Actually, they were recreating their broadcasts with a new format and state-of-the-art equipment.
I was delighted to launch my part of the show, “Power Women” interviews, and who personifies that better than Judy Sheindlin, better known to the immediate world as Judge Judy.
She and I have been friends since our growing up in Brooklyn and going to James Madison High School in the Midwood section, and we both grew up with loving parents who made us feel special and were our best cheerleaders. I always felt I could do anything because my parents were always my safety net. Judy felt the same.
We talked on the broadcast about getting to where we are today, but let me say no more. You can tune into the show yourself because it’s available on the BP Radio link on the left side of the page or on our QNS.com.
Each week, tune in and hear “Power Women” talking about how they got to where they are.
My next interview is Pat DiMango, who was lifted from her Brooklyn Supreme Court bench where she had just been appointed to be the administrator of the Criminal Court Division, by Judge Judy to be in Judy’s new show, “Hot Bench.” The show is now in its sixth season, on CBS 2 at 9 a.m. every morning.
See you on the radio!
Amazon challenge: my take
With shock and terrible disappointment, I see that the Amazon deal in Long Island City has been cancelled, after political forces worked to stop the best thing that could have happened to our borough. It seemed so clear — an opportunity for our borough to become the leaders of the tech revolution and see the creation of thousands of jobs.
Just a few weeks ago, I ventured over a short bridge from Astoria to Roosevelt Island to experience a new world created at our footstep: Cornell Tech, a collaboration of Cornell University and Israel’s Technion. With the massive financial help of our former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s philanthropy and former Cornell graduate Jamsetji Tata, owner of Tata Motors.
We were on our way to becoming the East Coast’s Silicon Valley — but better because we are a great diverse borough with endless possibilities and one of the reasons why Amazon wanted to be here. Amazon’s presence would have made us all more successful on many levels. Over the next few years, the impact of the “trickle-down effect” from creating high-paying jobs would have lifted everyone.
Editor’s note: This column was edited since its original publication in The Queens Courier on Feb. 14.
