From left: Albert and Gerstein
As part of Mediabistro’s Profit From Your Passion series, we spoke to media moguls Melissa Musen Gerstein and Denise Albert, who’ve spent most of their careers in the TV business.
Albert’s first job out of college was at Inside Edition; she’s also done on-air reporting for local stations and the NBA, and eventually became a producer for Good Morning America. Meanwhile, Gerstein has worked as a producer on various shows, from Anderson Cooper 360 to The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. When the two met, they realized they had a similar desire to create a parenting-based lifestyle company. The result is The Moms brand, which started as a syndicated newspaper column, got picked up as a show for NBC and now includes a weekly show on Sirius XM Radio. Here’s how it all went down, according to Albert:
[When Melissa and I met] I was pregnant with my first child, and I felt like there was conversation missing in the parenting world. I wanted to have very smart conversations, and not talk about being pregnant, and not necessarily talk about how many diapers or poops or bottles my kid was going to have during the day. And so I had this idea to really do what I know and love, which is television and journalism, but in the parenting space. Melissa and I were connected through another person and we were told, ‘Oh, you guys have the same idea.’ And so that’s how we originally began as Moms in the City. We wanted something where we could have this parenting conversation in a forum that we knew — television.
To hear more from Albert and Gerstein, including how they’ve broadened their reach, read: Hey, How’d You Start Your Own Lifestyle Brand, Melissa Musen Gerstein and Denise Albert?