By Meredith Blake

March 10
Riverside resident Gary Lico is president and CEO of Norwalk-based CABLEready, the television industry’s top independent program representation firm.

What was missing in the industry that made you want to start your own business?
I started my company in 1992. I was working at the time as VP of sales, cable and Eastern region, at Columbia pictures Television. … (And my) contract was up and to be honest, when I went in to ask what they were going to do about renewing it, the minute I asked the question, I realized I was giving up control of my life to someone else. Plus, the thing I liked, cable sales, was becoming bigger by the moment and I was smart enough to realize my bosses were going to want to get their hands all over those deals, leaving me to do what I didn’t really enjoy as much, syndication … Which has been a declining and tougher business since then.

What was the first program you sold?
The first show we got was a kids’ show called “Capelli & Company” produced by Hearst Television. It was the first and only locally produced television show Nickelodeon ever bought. That was our first deal. Our next big deal … was a program which became “Inside the Actors Studio.”

How were you first approached by “Inside the Actors Studio”?
We had hired a guy who knew the Studio’s lawyer, and the dean of the Studio had been doing these seminars, and also shopping them around to various networks, but to no avail. We took a meeting with them and were asked, since we were the supposed cable experts, did we think that a series taped seminars with college alumni would se… Based on that description, maybe not, but when the alumni are Paul Newman, Al Pacino, names like that, we said yes and went to a convention in France the next day and launched our sales effort right away and Bravo got the idea rights away and signed up.

What do you see as the future within your industry?
We just started a new business … CableU … an online business that takes advantage of all the research we have … (We’re) not pitching programs that have an advertiser attached or a promotional value for something else on any other network. We bring other, independent voices and ideas to the networks we pitch, freeing them from the sense of sameness in which they’re often trapped. Plus, with our new business, CableU, we’re the one and only independent monitoring service of cable networks, something the industry has needed for a long time.