News From NewYorkBusiness.com
E-Trade stock plunges on account worries
Shares tumbled to a three-year low after performance issues lead to fears that the company had frozen its clients' accounts.
Judge says no to monitor in blast probe
The judge said that Con Ed is already working with state and city officials; lawyers for the injured tow truck driver claimed the utility was destroying evidence.
LIU appoints new Brooklyn chancellor
Morgan Stanley-Prime Brokerage managing director Joel Press will succeed Monsignor Thomas Hartman as chancellor of the Brooklyn campus.
Stacey Lynn Koerner, 33
Director of broadcast research
Initiative Media New York
It was the moment when Stacey Lynn Koerner knew she had arrived. During an interview about the 2000 television season, she flippantly said, “Everybody had their panties in a twirl last year about Action,” a show on the Fox network.
When she saw the quote in Variety the next day, she was horrified. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to get fired.’ ”
In fact, her colleagues loved the quip, solidifying her role as one of the most frequent-ly quoted experts on television and viewing trends.
Ms. Koerner’s visibility has made her a valuable asset at Initiative Media, a media buying firm. “I’m brought into meetings to give clients a heads-up in terms of where programming is going and how audiences are changing,” she says.
After she graduated from college, Ms. Koerner was unsure whether to go into business or music. She worked at CBS as a researcher while singing with bands on the side. But music, she says, was “always gnawing at me.” So she finally quit the network to try singing full-time.
She fronted several bands, recorded CDs and did commercials. But when she was offered a job in regional theater for $300 a week—“before taxes!”—she realized why she missed the media business. So Ms. Koerner went back to school for a master’s degree and then took a job at an ad agency as a researcher.
In 1997, she joined TN Media (which later merged with Initiative Media), and her career took off. She now runs all of Initiative’s broadcast research, and she’s also a guest lecturer at universities. Last year, Ms. Koerner was ranked by Advertising Age as the third-most-quoted media agency executive.