Street Talk Big Thinker

When Scott Ginsburg’s Gulf-stream IV pulled to a stop in Burbank, Calif., his guys from Reno and San Francisco were already waiting on the tarmac with a limo. Mail Devine from Dallas made the introductions, then we all stood around waiting while Ginsburg–who had pulled an all-nighter working on his latest project-changed clothes back on the plane. He emerged outfitted in Hollywood battle dress: black Armani suit, black knit shirt, Prada shoes, Then we all piled in the limo to go meet Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks and Brian Grazer, Ron Howard’s partner in imagine Entertainment. The meeting was called to explore the possibility of Katzenberg and Grazer producing programming for Ginsburg’s new business, an Internet broadcast site called CoolCast, This was a big moment in the life of Ginsburg’s fledgling business, and he had invited me along to see how it went.

For the next 40 minutes, while we slogged through traffic to Beverly Hills, Ginsburg and the boys carried on like the good-natured oilmen in the movie Wheeler Dealers. The conversation ricocheted wildly, One minute Ginsburg was rehearsing what to say if Katzen-berg asked about American Beauty, which was produced by Dreamworks. “Loved your film, Jeffrey.” he grinned. “Absolutely loved it.” The next minute Matt was wondering aloud how they could measure success in a particular venture. All the while the team pumped the engineer for details from the CoolCast test labs. I had a hard time keeping up, especially when the momentary topic dipped into incomprehensible technical jargon. One understandable word, however, was used often and with relish. By the time we passed the Hollywood Bowl, I was drunk with it:

“That’s a lot of dough.”

“How much dough you think he’s getting?”

“Whose dough is backing that deal?”

“I hear that they’ve got a bunch of dough lined up.”

The closer we got to the Dreamworks offices, the more the conversation narrowed, focusing mostly on who was going to say what to whom. When our chauffeur pulled the long, black limousine in front of the office building at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive, Ginsburg and the Dough Boys headed off for one final strategy session. I walked across the street to the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, backdrop for the movie Pretty Woman, ordered a pot of coffee, and looked over my notes on Scott Ginsburg’s career.



GINSBURG WAS HAPPILY WORKING IN Washington, D.C., as a senior staffer to the Senate Finance Committee- on the Democratic side-when Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980. The Reagan landslide relegated Senate Democrats and their staffers to the backbenches. “If Ronald Reagan hadn’t been elected. I’d still be in Washington,” Ginsburg told me over a crab-meat pizza appetizer at Voltaire, his flashy new restaurant in North Dallas, two weeks before our excursion to Hollywood. Looking around for what to do next, he thought of radio. “Power was shifting,” he explained. “The media was taking over the influence that the government once held. I still wanted to be at the center of it.”

In his college days at Tulane, Ginsburg had briefly volunteered at the school’s radio station. “I thought it would be a great way to meet girls,” he said. “Only it didn’t work out quite that way. The station’s format was heavy on Led Zeppelin. I should’ve been playing light jazz.”

Ginsburg may have misunderstood the appropriate format to motivate coeds, but he did not misunderstand the opportunity thai radio itself presented. “1 viewed myself as a B- student in a C- student industry.” he told me. “Regulatory laws limited radio station ownership to 14 stations total–seven AM; seven FM. Even large companies like CBS were limited to 14 stations. 1 figured one guy by himself could be as big a player as those guys.”

It took Ginsburg a year to work up a business plan and line up investors. His first station was in Coral Gables. Fla.

By 1993. Ginsburg’s Evergreen Media was headquartered in Dallas and owned 11 radio stations, half of them in major markets like Chicago. Los Angeles, and Miami. In 19% Congress changed the law. and radio turned into an acquisition free-for-all. Two of the biggest battlers were Ginsburg and fellow Dallasite Tom Hicks, whose Chancellor Broadcasting knocked heads so often with Evergreen that the two decided to join forces. The 1997 merger created the second largest radio group in the nation, second only to CBS. its coming-out party included the purchase of Viacom’s 10-station radio group for$l billion.

The Ginsburg-led Chancellor vaulted into first place among radio holding companies before the relationship between the two visionary businessmen began to fray. Hicks wanted Chancellor to expand into medium-market radio and into television. Ginsburg didn’t like the idea. So he left, with $260 million in his pocket.

He found a new pony in the form of DG Systems and StarGuide Digital Networks. DG is a distributor of radio commercials. What makes it unique is that it sends those commercials over a satellite network to participating radio stations, cutting a process that used to take days into hours. StarGuide is similar. It beams nationally syndicated radio programs like Rush Umbaugh and Dr. Laura by satellite. But the jewel of StarGuide and the point of the trip to Hollywood is CoolCast.

CoolCast does for the Internet what DG and StarGuide do for radio-it allows web-based media and entertainment providers to jump over web traffic jams via satellite. CoolCast customers will be able to watch programs on their computers much like they watch television-only more clearly and with better sound. All they need is a high-speed phone line.



WHEN I WALKED BACK ACROSS WIL-shire, our chauffeur was parked in an alleyway. A few minutes later. Ginsburg and the Dough Boys rounded the corner. As soon as we climbed in the limo, the air was thick with observation and analysis. The Dough Boys were complimentary of Grazer, less certain of Katzenberg. Ginsburg found Grazer to be smooth and agreeable; Katzenberg was prone to speechmaking. Unfortunately for the Dough Boys, a “janitor” on the Hollywood side of the table kept hijacking the meeting and wasting everyone’s time with technical stuff.

We ate lunch at Le Dome on Sunset Boulevard at a table out front. The conversation meandered-family, dough, radio, dough, food, dough, Grazer, dough, Katzenberg, dough. The Sopranos, dough, and often enough, just dough, in the form of the stock market, which was free-falling. In between whipping our heads around to check for movie stars, someone got on the phone with a broker and broadcast a play-by-play of the carnage. But the bad news was no match for the good cheer-the Dough Boys, who worked together to build Ginsburg’s radio empire and were split up when he left, are back together again.

An hour later, 45.000 feet over the deserts of eastern California, Ginsburg pulled off his shoes and laid back for a doze. The Dough Boys huddled in the bank of seats behind me and, like coaches reviewing the game footage, went over the Hollywood meeting one more time before turning to the dozen others already scheduled.

When Ginsburg finally awoke I asked him, “Why do you do this?” I was alluding to the fact that he has already amassed one fortune; already owns the most expensive house in Dallas; has one of the nicest jets I’ve ever seen; has opened the fanciest new restaurant in town; and bought himself a Porsche dealership. If nothing else, the magnitude of his spending would indicate he already has dough enough to play with. In response to my question, Ginsburg closed his eyes. For a second, I thought I had put him back to sleep. “Studs Terkel wrote a book about work,” he said finally. “He talked about food, sex, all the things you can do for an hour. Basically, the rest of the time, we work. It’s what we do.”

For a while Ginsburg and I talked about the lure of the Internet. Then he rose and padded back to the Dough Boys.

Standing in the aisle with one foot balanced on an armrest. Ginsburg summed up the day. We were about to reenter the same cloud bank over North Texas we had left earlier that morning. “Well, we didn’t strike out with Katzenberg and Grazer,” he said. “But we didn’t hit a home run like we did at Cincinnati Bell when we got them to push our network. We learned a lot. We’ll send Grazer a nice bot-tle of Bordeaux, maybe a six-pack of Bordeaux. Those guys have everything, but he’ll rememher that.”Then Ginsburg and the boys rememhered that Grazer had professed a love of Jack in the Box in the meeting, so they decided to include, along with the wine, a bunch of gift certificates to Jack in the Box.



WE LANDED [N ADDISON IN LIGHT RAIN and immediately found a room at the Million Air (yes, that’s the name) private terminal so Ginsburg could demonstrate the new CoolCast web site, the product of his all-nighter. For five minutes or so. we crowded around the boss’ laptop and watched him navigate the portal through which the customers of Cincinnati Bell are about to experience the promise of the Internet; a fast, full-motion future, brought to you by the Dough Boys.