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>>Erik: How did the VH1 opportunity arise while you were at GM Onstar?
>>Mark: I was working at Onstar in the marketing / digital media field for close to 5 years.
During that time I started my blog, whatevs.org. I tried to keep those in separate areas of
the two kind of concurrently and trying to keep them as separate as possible. Some people
at VHI, a gentleman named Fred Graver, who is also one of my inspirations, He is a tremendously
talented guy. He was a writer for Letterman, a writer for Cheers, a writer for In Living
Color, was president at VH1 for a stretch of time, and came up with shows such as Best
Week Ever, He contacted me when he was launching a brand new show called Best Week Ever in
January 2004. He was interested to see if I would be possibly interested in being a
panelist on the show. I came out and met with him and for whatever reason it ended up not
working out but we really hit if off together and stayed in contact. Close to two years
later, we would email each other every couple months, once a quarter, how`s it going, keeping
up he was starting a new digital division at VH1 that was meant to be a little leaner
and faster than the broader, corporate side of VH1 communications where website launches
would take 8 to 12 months to develop, and launch, and roll out. We were looking to do
something a little bit faster. So, I talked to Fred a little bit about not only what I`d
been doing around pop culture field but also on the work I`d done in the digital media
sphere and those two worlds blended together so that is how the opportunity arose. I think
that we started talking about it August 2006 and by October 2006 I had quit my job at General
Motors and moved out here to do that.