R.E. TV is back.
After a two-year hiatus, the show once known as
the "Real Estate Show Case" on
Cablevision's system has been reinvented with a
twist: It is now called L.I. Real Estate TV
& lirealestatetv.com, an independent venture
launched last month by five Long Island
partners.
First, the TV show. The half-hour show is being
relaunched in a rolling pattern, first in
Suffolk County, where it now airs 14 times a
week on Cablevision channels 25 and 88. The
company's plan calls for expanding the program
to Nassau County in November and to Queens and
the other New York City boroughs by the second
quarter of 2002, according to vice president and
media relations director Thomas Cavallaro. So
far, the show is primarily a venue for local
real estate firms to advertise their listings
(to a background of "30s-something
music," Cavallaro says), intercut with
short features such as "Tech Tips" for
consumers provided by the Long Island Board of
Realtors.
Produced in a studio at the Long Island Tech
Center in Great River, the show was originally
created in 1993 by Robert Chereskin, a
Cablevision veteran who also launched other
local "magazine" shows, such as the
"Long Island Fishing and Boating
Report." In 1998 the real estate show,
which was part of Cablevision's Photo
Advertising Channel, was bumped, partly to make
room for the Animal Planet, Chereskin says. But
he retained the rights to the show when he
retired earlier this year.
He didn't stay retired long. After a few weeks,
Chereskin says, he was persuaded by Cavallaro, a
former cable TV ad executive, and his other
eventual partners to recreate the show as
president of L.I. Real Estate TV. With $25,000
in capital, the group set a blitzkrieg start-up
schedule, launching the show in less than two
months.
Besides Chereskin and Cavallaro, the partners
include Steven Oakley, production director;
Steven Patti , secretary and sales director and
Nicholas Valastro, president of Valtech
Solutions, a Carle Place-based Internet
development company. Valastro also runs
PermitsPlusonline.com, whose Web site (www.PPOLI.com)
provides listings of real estate services,
ranging from lawyers to title insurance.
And that brings us to the Web site,
lirealestatetv.com, which Valastro calls a
"sister site" to Ppoli.com. Like the
TV show, the Web site has several real estate
"sponsors" but is still far from a
finished product. Eventually, features such as
"Ask the Experts" will be added,
Cavallaro says, providing more comprehensive
content and quicker turnaround than the same
TV-show version. While there's more to come, the
R.E. team says, one thing is already clear: Real
estate is quickly catching up in the multimedia
race to grab consumer's attention.
Stay tuned.
Real Estate Editor Ronald E. Roel welcomes your
comments and questions. He may be contacted by
e-mail at
roel@newsday.com
.
