Larry's Gitlin's Background
Larry Gitlin is a digital media consultant, an entrepreneur and intrapreneur, a media business product developer, a media strategy consultant, and a digital media marketer / audience builder with a specialty in both traditional broadcast as well as internet-delivered digital media. As such, Larry is a technologist whose deep understanding and experience represents the intersections and integration between software and firmware, multiplatform applications, data transfer through telco, wireless, cable, and satellite, and revenue generation through content creation and distribution.
Larry has created and co-created several successful start-ups, and built company divisions that contributed hundreds of millions of dollars in market capitalization for new company start-ups as well as in the Fortune 500 alike. Those successes include INTERVU purchased by Akamai for three billion dollars, ZVUE corporation with a financial raise of over 100 million dollars and market cap of a quarter billion dollars, and QWEST Communications, a twenty-one billion dollar telco pioneering in voice, video, and data transmission (triple play) as well as digital media.
Larry has been a key player in three companies becoming public entities within ten years. Prior to that, Larry was an award-winning filmmaker and TV executive and, early in his career, a session musician in Los Angeles.
Biography
Larry Gitlin is the second child of Nathan and Binnie Gitlin, born in Detroit Mich., and raised in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles. His father was a dentist and an accomplished musician, playing woodwinds in notable amateur orchestras in Detroit and LA, and playing saxophone in big dance bands during the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. His mother, Binnie, was a homemaker and talented businesswoman who pioneered the re-cycling movement in the 1960’s with the re-usage of silver from dentist offices, helping to create that industry as a substantial revenue center for non-profit organizations. His sister Nancy was a schoolteacher who became a top script supervisor in Hollywood, joining IATSE, and then teaching the craft at the American Film Institute and the Los Angeles Film School. While still in high school, Larry showed his aptitude for music, winning a full scholarship to the prestigious Interlochen National Music Camp in percussion where he is still an alumni, and the highest Superior Music Achievement Award in Los Angeles for writing and performing a percussion ensemble during his junior year at Granada High School.
Music Career
Larry began playing drums and percussion at age 12, and was playing professionally at 15, with his mother driving him to gigs and then picking him up in the wee hours of the morning. He studied with some of the best teachers in LA, including Murray Spivak and Joe Porcaro, and played in bands and orchestras with award-winning conductors and composers such as Elmer Bernstein, Don Ellis, and more. He financed his way through college at University of California, Northridge, studying fine arts, psychology, and business, by playing gigs at night and touring throughout the US when school schedules permitted. It was during this time that he developed his passion for scuba diving, racquetball, and cycling which continues to the present.
After college, Larry toured with marquee acts such as Loretta Lynn, and played with great nostalgia bands and legendary Hall of Famers including Sam Moore, Joe Tex, the Shirelles, Spanky and Our Gang, the Platters, Merle Travis and many others. He became an LA session musician performing live and on tracks with top sidemen including Ken Gradney, Paul Barrere , and Sammy Clayton from Little Feat, and Garth Hudson from The Band, as well as with award-winning record producer/songwriters and television music composers and producers such as Velton Bunch and Clif Magness. Larry also co-wrote two songs with Magness, purchased by Scotti Brothers Music, and became a member of ASCAP.
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Film and TV
While continuing to play music, Larry entered the entertainment business by doing PR and producing videos for Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, then unknown, and successfully secured a PR coup for them by selling their concepts, without a best-selling book at the time, to TV executives in LA that resulted in a groundbreaking appearance on a popular Los Angeles morning show. The appearance resulted in a huge increase in their current book sales and helped to drive their exploding seminar business. For the Diamonds, Larry produced, directed, and co-wrote “Health For America” which is believed to be the one of the very first infomercial ever created in that format – infomericals now having transformed product advertising and sales through the television media. The Diamonds next book, “Fit For Life”, became one of the biggest, best-selling non-fiction self-help health books in publishing history.
Larry then began his first media business, Good Life Productions, which produced videos and live events for entrepreneurs, authors, seminar instructors, and corporations, including Mrs. Gooch’s, the first health food supermarket that became a large part of Whole Foods Markets today. During that period, he was a segment producer for a PBS series on Lyme’s disease, doing segments and production management for hot music shows like “Rapmania” with the biggest Rap acts at the time such as Ice-T in a live simulcast from the Apollo Theater in NYC and the Palladium in Hollywood, and “Video One, with the popular VJ Richard Blade. Always comfortable with technology beginning with music studio production, he ran synced audio playback and did production management for many music videos including Steppenwolf (Jon Kay), and the hit “Centipede” for Rebbie Jackson, sister of Michael Jackson, who wrote and produced the record.
Larry stayed active in music TV production doing live TV shows with some of the greatest music artists in history including Charlie Daniels, Linda Ronstat, Kenny Loggins, Stephan Stills, Sam Moore, Roger Mcguinn, and many more. He also line produced other awards shows, including The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Awards where he worked alongside great Hollywood acting legends Gregory Peck, Charleton Heston, James Stewart, Michael Landon and cinematic pioneers and award-winners Joe Biroc, Phillip Lahrop, Alan Davieu, Haskell Wexler, and many others.
Larry became an “in-demand” production manager and line producer for commercials, TV shows and films, working on commercials for Nestles, Nike, Pepsi, Bally’s, Taco Bell, Miller Beer, and a host of others. He worked on eight feature films, including “The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers – Turbo the Movie”, the PBS film “And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him”, and his last film “ Unknown Cyclist” with Lea Thompson (“Back to the Future”) and Danny Nucci (“Titanic”), joining the Director’s Guild of America (DGA), the Producer’s Guild, The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and NATPE. Before leaving the film business for digital media, Larry began performing senior executive operations and sales/marketing roles for prominent Production and Post-Production companies such as Sound Satisfaction where he became Chief Operating Officer and Head of Sales. Sound Sat won the Emmy two years in a row for innovation in sound design on the TV hit “Beakman’s World”, and did post audio work on dozens of hit television series and feature films. Larry also produced several successful home videos and two feature films: “Godmoney” with director Darren Doane, and “Kinda Cute..” with director Josh Stallings, which won a Savannah Film Festival Award for Best Picture.
Digital Media
It was during his active Film and TV career that Larry became enamored with technologies that were to change entertainment production and distribution forever. While doing a stint at a post house, he became friends with Peter Cohen who owned and operated the first Avid Non-Linear Editing System in Los Angeles. Then, after downloading on a dial-up internet connection his first 8 sec mov movie file and seeing TV thru telco first hand.. Larry was hooked. He realized the world of entertainment was going to change dramatically and wanted to be a part of it.
Larry had become computer proficient years earlier by being one of the very first to transfer the hand-written classic film production form created by Harry Caplan, his mentor and a legendary Production Manger, into an early version of Excel, and using it the budgeting and production process… several years before Movie Magic, one of the first consolidated production programs.
He now turned his attention to audio and pictures through the Internet (IP). He was soon recruited by INTERVU, the creator of the Distributed Content Delivery Network. As employee #32, he created the broadcast and production division of the company, pioneering with his team data transmission and webcasting with methods that have become standards in the industry. He encoded and put up on the Net what is believed to be the very first re-transmission of a broadcast TV show, “The Johnny Cochran Show”, for CourtTV. He created the first satellite-direct-to-encode farm in the industry for INTERVU and did the Emmy’s, the Golden Globe Awards, one the first sports events on the Internet “The Hollyfield / Bean Fight” for Showtime, and dozens of other music, sports, news, and entertainment shows for Internet Distribution. Larry put Music Choice, then a new music distribution company, on the Internet as well for INTERVU distribution, and worked with many other top entertainment companies and studios entering the Internet TV and audio world for the first time.
As NBC was an early investor in INTERVU, Larry often consulted at 30 Rock in the new and growing field of TV to Internet convergence, did live shows from Radio City Music Hall, and performed IP consulting work for shows like “Homicide”. He was also assigned the role of Project Manager for “VideoSeeker” believed to be the very first video search engine in existence, developed for NBC. He led a team of 12 development database engineers, and delivered the product on time and on budget, flawlessly debuting it in NYC for NBC at a major press conference. At INTERVU, Larry Exec Produced, Produced and/or Directed scores of major webcasts and IP broadcasts, for major entertainment companies and trade entities, including Microsoft, during his years there.
In 1999, Akamai purchased INTERVU for $3 Billion Dollars.
Larry continued consulting and building media businesses when he was recruited by Qwest, the multi-billion dollar telco (RBOC) headquartered in Denver, Co., as Vice-President of Business Development (Corporate) and as such was two reports from the CEO of the 65,000 person company. At Qwest, he created and launched a large digital media business suite trial called Media Express, and co-authored and co-launched a comprehensive Internet Security business suite trial, working with Fortune 500 partners all over the world such as IBM Global Services, HP, and Schlumberge/SEMA in London, as well as media companies such as Deluxe Film Labs, and many more. While at Qwest, Larry also sat on the Corp. Strategy Team, developing forward-looking media strategies, acquisitions, and partnerships.
Larry bought a home in his dream location of wine country in Sonoma County and moved there during his tenure at Qwest, enabling him to develop close relationships in Silicon Valley.
After Qwest, he consulted with several companies in the Valley, and was recruited by ZVUE in San Francisco, the creator and distributor of the first sub-$100 dollar Portable Media Player (PMP), that became distributed by Walmart and other mass retailers. At ZVUE, he created the media division, built and led the team, and secured content deals from many major studios and independents, including CBS/Showtime, UMG, and dozens more. He built the first website with his team, and helped to make ZVUE the forth-largest Internet Network at the time, with 28 million unique visitors per month.
ZVUE became a public company in 2006
Since ZVUE, Larry has continued to consult with, build, and launch companies. His activities have taken him all over the world, including Eastern Europe. His efforts of late revolve around building Internet TV Channels and Multi-Platform distribution, and he has focused deeply on mass audience and traffic building. He consults with companies to adopt innovative, proven marketing and audience-building techniques to create significant revenues from media products that become digital properties in multi-platform.
Over the years, Larry has been a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Directors’s Guild, NATPE, and the Producer’s Guild. He has had an active speaking agenda in the major industry trade shows and conferences throughout his career, and has participated in university educational forums as well.
