Is "PR TV" next? Last week marked the debut of "Stars of PR (with Cindy R)" on internet radio station VoiceAmerica (http://www.voiceamerica.com). The 'Cindy R' referred to in the program is Cindy Rakowitz, a 25-year PR veteran who, before launching
her own PR firm (RakNRoll Entertainment) in 2001, was VP/public relations for Playboy Enterprises for 15 years.
"I really drank the Kool-Aid when I was there, and would strangle anyone who said a bad word about Playboy," says Rakowitz, who turned her experience at Playboy
into "Rabbit Stew," a screenplay that's been optioned by a major studio. But when Playboy founder and current septuagenarian Hugh Hefner started dating teenagers en masse,
Rakowitz decided to move on.
Rakowitz, whose clients include the Bogart Foundation for Pediatric Reasearch at L.A. Children's Hospital and TriYoga, which has more than 600 Yoga studios throughout the
world, was approached by VoiceAmerica executives earlier this year and asked to launch a radio program on the PR profession. (VoiceAmerica.com, a division of SurfNet Media Group,
currently has about 100,000 listeners.) Rakowitz, who was the chief spokeswoman for Playboy during most of her time there, relished the opportunity to educate, enlighten and
inform people about the PR trade. "From my 25+ years in the business, I see too many PR executives who are 'Yes' people who think that PR is the 'good news' department," she says.
"I want to provide lessons about what goes on in the field so people don't think PR is about putting on makeup and having a smiling face."
But Rakowitz doesn't want to go too inside baseball. Rather, she wants all of the radio programs to be "horizontal" in nature. "Each show should be balanced," she says. For
example, a show on fashion would include fashion industry executives, PR firms representing fashion-related companies and reporters who cover the fashion field. "This way, we can
get different points of view and tackle each element of PR," Rakowitz adds. "The sexy angles in the business include a lot of dry stuff, and that's the surprising thing about PR."
The show's first program focused on, natch, "PR and the Presidency." Upcoming topics include "Special Events: the Glory and the Garbage," "The Press Darlings," "Spinning in
a Crisis," "Media Couching" (as in lay down on the couch) and "The Corporatization of PR." Matching PR to the bottom line will be a theme that runs through all of the programs,
which will be broadcast live every Thursday at 10:00 a.m. ET with an encore broadcast 12 hours later; 13 shows are already in the pipeline and an additional 13 programs are
expected. Rakowitz hopes to market the show to commercial radio by 2006. "Most people have no idea about the mechanics of PR," she says, "and there's a big curiosity about what
goes on behind closed doors."
Contact: Denise Dion, director of marketing for VoiceAmerica.com; 602.426.7200, [email protected]
Editor's Note: PR News Editor Matthew Schwartz will participate in upcoming broadcasts.