Spicing up restaurant reviews with web videos
About a year ago, "Check, Please!" President Tim Bahr approached David Manilow, its founder and chief executive, with the idea of doing "Check, Please!" on the Net. "I saw the TV show's production format fitting very well with major trends in media -- the move away from consumer reliance on experts and professional reviewers to getting information from real people," says Bahr.
"Check, Please!" has become a foodie's favorite in its seven years on public TV. However, the Emmy Award-winning show, which features a trio of ordinary people dishing about local Chicago restaurants, isn't doing much for its founder and chief executive, David Manilow. Indeed, with less than US$200,000 in annual revenue from fees, the program generates only a tenth of what an average McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) pulls in.
So Manilow is hitching his star to a medium with richer promise: the Internet. While continuing to produce "Check, Please!" for WTTW, where it airs three times a week, Manilow and President Tim Bahr are trying to drum up $2.5 million to develop Checkplease.tv.
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