TV Series Taped in Russ Berrie Professional Sales Lab

The Russ Berrie Institute for Professional Sales will be in the spotlight for a series of prime-time television programs scheduled for the week of September 13 on CN8 -The Comcast Network.

Talk show host Steve Adubato interviews Jim Brown, Executive Director of the Russ Berrie Institute, on location in the Russ Berrie Professional Sales Lab for a television series to air in September.

"One-on-One with Steve Adubato," produced by the Caucus Educational Corp., taped five 30-minute programs in the Russ Berrie Professional Sales Lab at the Christos M. Cotsakos College of Business for a special theme week titled "The Art of the Sale." Steve Adubato, the host, interviewed seven experts on a broad range of sales-related topics.

A 30-minute interview with Jim Brown, executive director of the Russ Berrie Institute, will kick off the series on Monday, September 13, at 8:30 p.m. Brown discussed the background and potential of the Institute and important trends in the sales world. Brown's interview will be rebroadcast on Sunday, September 19, at 4:30 p.m.

Bob Franks, president of the HealthCare Institute of New Jersey, and Trish Wilband, director of managed care for Berlex, Inc., will be featured in a discussion of pharmaceutical sales on September 14 at 8:30 p.m. Nick Matarazzo, senior vice president for corporate sales and marketing for Hachette Filipacchi Media, U.S., Inc., will discuss his career in advertising sales on September 15 at 8:30 p.m. and Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine, will discuss the growth of professionalism in sales and how his magazine captured this trend on September 16 at 8:30 p.m.

The series will conclude on Sunday, September 19, at 7:30 p.m. with a program featuring Karen Brown (M.B.A. ’90), area distribution manager for Motorola Inc., in a discussion of trends in communications sales, and Thomas A. Ryan, vice president of global accounts at Xerox Corporation, in a discussion of the cultural aspects of sales in a global environment.

Trish Wilband, director of managed care for Berlex, Inc., is one of the guests featured in the taping of "The Art of the Sale."

The series of programs was taped on one day in June after weeks of preparation. The program’s producers and crew worked closely with University staff members from the Russ Berrie Institute and other departments to transform the conference room of the Russ Berrie Professional Sales Lab into a fully equipped television set. The TV director and his staff worked in a temporary control room situated in one of the sales labs. Other sales labs were converted into a dressing room, make-up room, and "green room" where guests relaxed prior to their interviews.

William Paterson University is a sponsor of the "One-on-One with Steve Adubato" program. On the program, Adubato, a four-time Emmy Award-winning anchor, conducts in-depth interviews with individual guests in fields ranging from education to business to politics to the arts. The program is syndicated from Maine to Maryland on the CN8-Comcast network.