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Thinking Big in a Small Market
Host of local cable show goes after some big guests
By Karen Kaplan- More Articles
Published on 11/11/2001
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How many accountants do you know that are in show business?
John A. Troland is one. You might not see his name in lights in Hollywood — at least just yet — but the New London-based accountant and business planner is on TV every week, hosting his talk show, “Business Beat Live,” on Channels 24 and 25, Eastern Connecticut Cable.
Troland, 58, was happy with his self-owned business until he caught the television bug seven years ago. At that time, “Southeastern Connecticut Small Business Journal,” a now-defunct business-oriented TV talk show, was being aired on another local cable public access channel. The producers asked him to be a guest on the show, and, intrigued, Troland agreed.
“It was the first time I'd ever been in front of a TV camera,” says the garrulous Troland on a recent weekday afternoon in his Williams Street business office. The April 1994 segment was a success, and he began to get more involved with the show.
“Over the next eight or nine months, I helped (the producers) get some guests, I helped co-host,” he explains. “I never felt nervous or intimidated.”
Fascinated by live television, Troland began to consider forming his own TV business show.
“I started thinking about it and developed the 'Business Beat Live' name,” he says. Coming up with a workable format was fairly simple: Troland watches talk-show host Larry King as often as he can, and ultimately decided to fashion his own show after King's, using a single guest for the hour-long segment, or for special guests, a two-hour segment.
Since Eastern has a local franchise in Waterford, and is also a public-access cable company, Troland was able to get an on-air slot. He pitches local advertisers, to pay for the segment.
Even though Troland had no TV experience before getting involved with the Small Business Journal show, he likes to consider himself a natural on his own show.
“The more I did of it, the more successful I became at it,” he says. Troland carries in his wallet at all times a small white card printed with a piece of Larry King's advice: “Be yourself. Never try to be someone else. Never force anything, and never give up.” He follows it religiously.
“I sort of carry it around with me as a little reminder,” Troland says with a laugh.
Although it all came together rather quickly, developing the show required a bit more than chutzpah, snagging advertisers and reserving a time slot, Troland concedes.
Starting in '94, after he realized he wanted to create the program, Troland hooked up with a local veteran TV producer, Michelle Carbray Hinton. The two researched a variety of show formats, show names and potential guests, and formed Trobray Televison Productions, their production company for the fledgling show.
The first “Business Beat Live” segment aired May 17, 1995 — just 13 months after Troland's first on-air experience — and has continued weekly ever since.
Although Hinton initially was the show's assistant producer and co-hosted a number of segments, these days she acts mostly as a consultant, Troland says. As executive producer, he's got things under control.
On the set
On another recent weekday afternoon, Troland is at Eastern's Waterford studios, getting ready to interview Jeff Benedict, Congressional hopeful and author of “Without Reservation,” the book that questions the Mashantucket Pequots' right to federal recognition and to own Foxwoods Resort Casino.
In order to accommodate guests' schedules, some of the Business Beat Live shows are pre-taped for later airing. In the winter, Troland occasionally takes a break and airs reruns.
The production studio on this day is dominated by three TV cameras arranged at different angles, each facing a small round table on the set where Troland and Benedict are seated. On a wall behind the table is the show's logo, depicting two men in profile with a microphone between them and the show's name superimposed over the figures in maroon and white.
The set is basic, with a gray rug and backdrop, and the chairs don't match each other or the table. Above the backdrop, the walls and ceiling are covered with puffy black sound-insulation squares. But this doesn't show up on-screen.
A table microphone between the two men encircled with a maroon-and-white label reading “BBL” is a prop, Troland explains, as both he and his guest are body-miked.
In the control room next to the studio, several small screens at a large computerized console show each of the cameras' views. On one screen, Troland faces the camera; on another, Benedict faces the camera and on the third, both men are seen. Public access Coordinator John Schroeder is manning the console and “switching” the show, or selecting the shots for the final cut as each man speaks.
On this day, as with most others, Troland's show doesn't need additional crew. No one has to move the cameras as neither man is required to leave the table for any reason or walk around the studio during the interview. If Troland is doing a “field” show, however, out of the studio, Eastern can provide him with a cameraman or crew. Or, Troland says, he might hire his own.
Once the show's taping is complete, Schroeder explains, it is programmed into the cable system and runs as scheduled.
In the studio, Troland is into the first 15 minutes of the segment, asking Benedict why he is running for Connecticut's Second District Congressional seat.
Benedict responds that his campaign is unrelated to his book, and the interview is off to a running start.
Troland, who is clearly comfortable in front of the cameras, acts as if he might be in his own home, smiling and following one question in a rapid-fire way with another. He's mindful of the three unblinking eyes trained on him and his guest, but he's unselfconscious, waving his hand to make a point and grinning.
Troland has chosen his guest well; Benedict, who has spoken in front of groups many times, has also racked up considerable on-air time and is relaxed, sitting back in his chair and chatting easily, as one might to a next-door neighbor.
Soon, the first 15 minutes are up, and after a break of two minutes — during which a commercial will be shown on the on-air product — the interview resumes. Troland starts asking Benedict about his views on health care and other topics, and the next 45 minutes, with two more breaks, pass quickly.
Big fish
Depending on the guest, Troland doesn't always spend hours preparing for a show. Sometimes he reads an author's book, or researches the guests themselves; other times, he likes to let the show go on as it will.
“Larry King says, the less you know about something, the more curious you are,” says Troland.
Although most of Troland's shows focus on business, many don't, such as the segment with a man whose brother crashed a plane in New Hampshire; another with the author of a book about O.J. Simpson; or Jeff Benedict, for example. “Those are good human interest stories,” Troland says.
He also schedules a great many authors, garnering leads from many different publications including The Day, USA Today, the Providence Journal, Business Week, and national bookstores to which he brings a notepad in order to write down the titles and authors of new and interesting books that might make for a good show.
Troland may be a proverbial big fish in the little pond of southeastern Connecticut cable TV — or at least a recognizable face, voice and name to many viewers — but he's setting his sights higher these days. Business Beat Live could soon be history if he accomplishes his goal.
“I'm actively pursuing a job in commercial TV,” says Troland. He's working with a New York-based entertainment attorney who represents producers of CNBC and other network programs, and is preparing demo reels, or snippets from existing Business Beat Live shows. Troland is confident that his seven years in local cable will get him to where he wants to be. Even when he was a guest for the first time on the former Business Journal show, he believed he could improve it.
“I thought, 'I could get better guests than these people have,' '' Troland remembers.
Indeed, over the years, Troland has been able to secure a great number of national figures as guests. This summer, he hosted a show with Maria Bartiromo, the franchise anchor on CNBC's stock market TV show. Other guests have included the Harvard attorney Alan Dershowitz; forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee; Sergei Kruschchev, son of former Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Kruschchev, and his wife Valentina Golenko; Dave Campo, head coach of the Dallas Cowboys football team; and Carl Reidemeister, a nationally recognized financial planner.
Bartiromo, who promoted her recent book, “Use The News,” on Troland's show, agreed to be a guest on the show because she was already familiar with it, she and her agent liked the format and she had to be in Connecticut anyway.
“John's audience is very targeted and Maria recognizes the importance of targeted media,” says Barbara Cave Henricks, director for Goldberg McDuffie Business, a division of Goldberg McDuffie Communications, a Manhattan-based book public relations firm.
“John went a long way to accommodate her,” Henricks adds. “He taped her in the studio on a Saturday because she couldn't get away. He was flexible ... People who watch his show are a business audience, and they're interested in business topics. This is much better than a larger audience that has no interest in business. Our goal is to go directly to the right audience for the book, and (Troland's) is the right audience.”
Henricks said a business author that Bartiromo knows had also appeared on Troland's show and had praised it.
Benedict, the author and Congressional candidate, says he has agreed to appear on Business Beat Live because he believes local media exposure is important, even if the show reaches far fewer viewers than does “60 Minutes,” for example. He's been on Troland's show three times to promote “Without Reservation” and once to discuss his political campaign.
“I like to go on local cable access,” says Benedict. “I think it's important to reach local hometown markets. You're not going to reach 2 million people, but you can reach thousands.”
How does Troland get his high-visibility guests? Most of the time, he says, it's pretty easy. As with Bartiromo, with a little legwork he finds their publicists — most authors are represented by their publishers, for example; other guests may have their own agents — and contacts them. And sometimes Troland talks to the potential guests themselves. With Kruschchev, for example, Troland read in a national newspaper that he is a professor at Brown University, and called him there directly.
“He'd never met me, but we talked for about three to four minutes,” Troland remembers. “He was happy to be on my show.”
If it seems that a publicist or potential guest is balking — and, Troland says, this doesn't happen often — he tells them he will get back to them later.
“Or I drop them and go on to the next one,” Troland says. The words “rejection” and “discouraged” are not in his vocabulary. In fact, he says, with every new guest, more doors open to even more guests.
“I get more contacts every year,” he says. “Success breeds success. No one is beyond my reach.”
k.kaplan@theday 
Reprinted by permission
