BlogTalkRadio Chats About New Financing and New Plans

Many of you know my good friend, John Havens, V/Business Development at BlogTalkRadio. Among other things, John is a blog expert, co-founder of PodCampNYC and is a podcasting and blogging consultant to NY:MIEG and moderated an event for us last year that was incredible. John emailed me the other day to give me an update about some exciting news from BlogTalkRadio he thought you all might find of interest. -Bill

June 25, 2008, 8:02 am
BlogTalkRadio Chats About New Financing and New Plans
Bits in The New York Times
By Brad Stone

The pirates of radio are losing their eye patches and going legit.

In the old creaky-wheel analog days, people who didn’t have the face, voice or political views for traditional radio turned to the slightly romantic practice of broadcasting illegally over unlicensed radio frequencies.

But today there is the more legitimate and egalitarian medium of podcasts, and a host of companies are eager to get people up and running and to make their broadcasts available on the Web.

One of those companies, BlogTalkRadio, has drawn attention of late by making it easy for the talkers to start talking with nothing more than a computer and a telephone. The New Jersey company said it just closed an initial $4.6 million round of financing led by The Kraft Group, the owners of the New England Patriots, and some ambitious plans for expansion.

BlogTalkRadio was founded in 2006 by a former telecom executive, Alan Levy, who demonstrated a knack for good timing in the 1990s by starting and selling his company before the walls caved in on the industry. After the bust, Mr. Levy began buying distressed telecom assets and ultimately turned some of that excess capacity into BlogTalkRadio.

FOR THE COMPLETE STORY FROM THE NYTIMES CLICK HERE