Commerce St.

TV Finds Channel on the Web

Superstation satisfies both video and news lovers.



YOU WOULDN’T EXPECT A computer guru to learn about the latest technology news via video or by tuning in to television. But can you watch videos and live news broadcasts on a computer? WorldwideTV.Com enables its Internet patrons to do both.

Mark Bunting, owner of Sky Television Inc. in Dallas, boldly claims that WorldwideTV.Com, his real-time Internet video network featuring dailytech-nology news broadcasts and a virtual library of technology videos, is the first World Wide Web superstation.

He may be right. Since its November launch, the station has grown to more than 150 hours of available programming with an average of I million video requests, or hits, per month. Bunting projects that World-wideTV.Com will bring in some $4 million by (he end of 1997, making it one of the top 20 revenue-generating Internet sites.

Overly optimistic? Database powerhouse Oracle and Internet magazine publisher Meck-ler Media don’t think so. They’ve committed cash and technological assistance to the station, By capitalizing on Oracle’s industrial-strength database and query capabilities. Bunting has already begun digitizing all (he high-tech industry video he can find to feed WorldwideTV.Com, from CEO speeches to [raining and promotional programming. “I want to have the world’s largest vat of computer video stuff,” he says.

And Bunting knows computer video. From his offices in Deep Ellum, he produces “Burning’s Window to the World of Computers” for United Airlines in-flight viewing, closed-circuit programming for Computer City stores, corporate video for everyone from Sun Microsystems to Microsoft, and (he syndicated show “The Computet Man” for The Learning Channel.

While total revenues from Bunting’s Sky Television Inc. hit $20 million in 1996, he scrubbed plans logo publie alter the market bloodied Internet technology stocks late in the year. Bunting is currently entertaining investor offers lor his Internet TV station.

-Mark Stuertz



THE MEETING I NEVER MISS

KIP TINDELL, PRESIDENT AND chief operating officer of the Container Store, came out of one “really good” meeting-a “directional meeting”-to talk about the meeting he never misses-the quarterly Container Store staff meeting.

Container Store was the first retailer of storage and organizational housewares, and now the company owns and operates 17 stores in seven states, as well as a mail-order operation. CEO and chairman Garrett Boone and Tindell started with a store on Forest Lane in 1978 and in the last fiscal year posted $120 million in sales.

Who’s at the meeting? All store managers, department heads. the entire management team, as well as people who arc in training. It’s a l00-person meeting.”

What goes on? “Goals and priorities are established and there is recognition for those who’ve made them, even corny prizes, We get together on strategies for next season. It’s very much like a revival.”

And these are not just typed presentations, says Tindell. “Sometimes they’re even skits. We make il enjoyable so everyone can retain it. Whole teams give presentations; the in-house ad team might lei us hear the new radio spots.”

What makes it so great? “After three months, we’re richly in need of this meeting. We have discovered through the years that if we “re all on the same page of the song-book and know the goals, things work efficiently, even joyfully. If not, it’s a nightmare.

“Communication is a rough simile to leadership. The best thing you can do is to let people know where you stand. It’s expensive and all that, but it’s the best money we spend.”

One great moment: “When an Atlanta store manager got up and talked about how she manages to have the best sales figures in the company consistently, there wasn’1 a dry eye in the house.”

If you missed this meeting… “You ’d spend three months dis-connected. Sometimes we do have guests, people from other businesses who are observing. It’s something that you want to show off. We ought to sell tickets.” -Renee Hopkins

Houston vs. Dallas

we may think the intercity rivalry is over, but is it?



ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE was a big feud between the cities of Dallas and Houston as to which could lay claim to being the best business city in Texas.

But when the ’80s bust came and the rest of the business world wondered whether we’d ever recover, it was good business to join forces and together sing the praises of our state. Intercity rivalries were passé; survival was in.

Now. with business booming again and Fortune 500 companies moving in and selling up shop. Dallas has gained quite a reputation in the world of American business.

Maybe this means the fight’s over and everyone knows that Dallas is the best business city in Texas.

But just try telling that to business people in Houston, where a favorite topic of financial circles is. again, the Dallas business community-and its shortcomings.

Sure, they say, Dallas is doing OK. but Houston has more– it’s more international, more entrepreneurial, more cosmopolitan and just plain more fun than Dallas.

“The weather here is better,” insists one prominent Houston businessman, who switched from hot Dallas summers to humid Houston nights years ago and has no intention of coming back. But he still has business dealings in Dallas and | thus has no desire to be quoted I by name. After all, getting | caught in the middle of an intercity grudge match could be bad for business.

Native Houstonians have come by the spirit of one-upmanship naturally, but few are as sensitive on this issue as former Dallas business people who now call Houston home. One transplanted banker who travels in high circles was careful to put a safe distance between himself and Dallas, saying, “I sold my home in Dallas. If] hadn’t, no one would really have believed Id moved here.”

Last April, the Houston Image Group was formed with a five-year, $5 million commitment from the City Council, a million or so dollars from the likes of Texas Commerce Bank and Shell Oil. and a mission to promote “the attributes that make [Houston] a great place to live, work and play.”

Visitors “don’t expect the city to be so green, or the people to be so friendly, or the arts to be so great.” intoned Elyse Lanier, wife of Mayor Bob Lanier and chairwoman of the group, at the conference launching the campaign.

Or, she might as well have added, so much better than Dallas. -John Carroll

Don’t Look Back, They’re Gaining



FIERCE COMPETITION HAS ALWAYS FUELED Dallas’ development. The State Fair of Texas, the biggest in the country, sprouted from contention between two factions of Dallas businessmen who couldn’t agree on where to hold the first event; each side put on its own fair in 1886, doubling the revenue of delighted merchants.

First National Bank changed the face of Dallas banking forever in the 1950s, when it decided to unseat Republic National as No. 1 in the Southwest by being friendly to its customers, a revolutionary idea at the time. Republic retaliated with a taller building that launched a battle of skyscrapers that continued into the ’70s.

One of the city’s longest-running struggles ended in the front-page headline “GOODBYE, DALLAS!” in the final edition of the Dallas

Times Herald on Dec. 9, 1991. The Herald staff referred to the more conservative Dallas Morning News as “The Snooze”; News employees called their blue-collar rival “The Crimes Herald.” As is often the case, this war was won in the trenches; The News had a circulation system the Times Herald could never match.

-Tom Peeler