Grow Indiana Media Ventures.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Profile - Brief Article

Check on cable or satellite television and you'll find all kinds of business-news coverage--plenty of programs and even whole networks devoted to the subject. But it's all national, not local.

That's the observation that nagged at Gerry Dick back in the late '90s. As a reporter for WRTV, the ABC affiliate in Indianapolis, he did some business coverage, but he was well aware that there was nowhere Hoosier business people could turn for a truly healthy dose of local TV coverage that was strictly business.

Dick took it upon himself to fill that programming gap. He left his job at WRTV, took a day job at the Indianapolis Economic Development Corp., and five years ago launched his own program called Indiana Business This Week. What began as a half-hour program airing in Indianapolis has evolved into a full-hour weekly business show carried by affiliates across the state. Today it goes by the name Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick.

A key factor behind the growth of the show is the company formed just under two years ago to produce it. Grow Indiana Media Ventures is the creation of Dick, who heads the company, and Scott Jones, CEO of Indianapolis-based Escient Inc., key backer of Indiana high-tech initiatives and a regular viewer of the program. "We started bouncing ideas back and forth and said, 'Why don't we create a company?'" Dick recalls.

Grow Indiana Media Ventures has a simple enough mission: "Our business model is to produce and distribute Indiana business and technology content," Dick says. But the vision doesn't stop with the TV show.

"The TV show is the engine," Dick says, but Grow Indiana Media Ventures has a number of other ways to distribute business content. Its Web site...