Why this book?

The Pitch:
There's a small town in northern California, and if you work in the technical or production areas of the television industry anywhere in the world, you know the name of the town. You probably wouldn't know it as a place, but as a vendor of high-end television production equipment. The name of that town is Grass Valley.

Turns out that covers the first half of the story. So, a follow on second pitch:
There's a company headquartered in Montreal Canada that has almost 20,000 employees, with facilities around the globe, that took the name of a small town in northern California. The name of that company is Grass Valley. The book explains how both those statements are true.

Why a book about Grass Valley?
The book has several unique selling points. It tells the story of how one company in a very unlikely place, had an impact on a town, that was quickly becoming a backwater. This company also ended up technologically affecting the entire television industry, or as it is simply known today: the media. There was a marketing plug the company started using 25 years ago that stated "if you are watching television, you are watching Grass Valley." The company's reach had gotten to a point where very few television facilities were not using Grass Valley equipment somewhere in their facility. This is still true today.

There are no other contemporary books on the company or the area for that matter. There was a book written in 1996, "The Inscrutable Dr. Hare" by Bob Robertson, who was an early accounting employee of the company. It takes the story up to 1975, when the company was a noticeable success story, but not yet beset by all the turmoil it would face by the 90s. There are also books on the area's history of gold mining and the aftermath, and on the Cornish in the area, who largely migrated to the area because of their expertise in keeping deep shaft mines free of water. Also, a couple of books by Gage McKinney on mining and the person who would eventually set into motion the area's high-tech story back in the 1930s. This book covers vast new ground on how the area created the company, and how the company changed the area, and eventually the entire worldwide television and media universe.

Link to see Grass Valley's prominence in the television and broader media industry

It took the weakest of the three alphabet networks in the 60s to put Grass Valley on the map. That network looked upon the company as their research and development arm. That served Grass Valley for almost 20 years. But catering to the network and other customers, and not creating its own markets worked well until a large Japanese company that creates markets, instead of just serving them came along and re-invented how television was done. That nearly killed the company in the 90s.

Somehow the Grass Valley name has survived until this day against all odds, as it has been surrounded and coupled with much larger companies. Now the name doesn't represent a place anymore. It's just the moniker of an international company, not even headquartered in the U.S.

A couple serendipitous facts: The Grass Valley area is known for its gold mines. If it was not for one mine owner, there most likely would not have been a Grass Valley Group. To add to the cause and effect roll of the dice, the final Grass Valley building in the area sits atop the abandoned mine complex of that mine owner.

Finally, one Grass Valley CEO sold the company twice, and then was brought back in to specifically sell it for a third time.

Who would read this book?
The book has several audiences:

• Let's start with the smallest. There was and is a ground swell of interest locally, by the people who were, and still are involved in the saga. There is also interest from the community at large.
• The television and media industry, worldwide. As the first pitch tag line says, if you work in television, you probably know the name. Many will find it interesting to find out it is a place also.
• It's a cautionary business story. In the story you will see times when Grass Valley didn't move quickly enough, as mentioned earlier, and a couple of times where the company had initiatives that were way ahead of their time and are only becoming possible today.
• It's also a story of technology. It touches on many of the technological leaps and incremental steps in technology that defined the industry.
• It's an important story about the media and would appeal to casual followers of the business. There's a lot of behind the scenes on how the media works. Importantly it looks at how the weakest of the original three U.S. television networks possibly saved a company, and the resulting tech eco-system, by adopting the engineering prowess of the Group to innovate how ABC, and others, to a great extent produced television, especially sports.

These segments of potential audience would translate into a global audience. Thus, there is a clear demand for the book, from the professionals in the business, and others who are generally interested in media. Additional demand for the book would be generated by many in the industry who feel that the Grass Valley story, a story that shows the impact that the company and the area had on media, needs to be told.

Why am I the one to write this book?
First a bit of an anecdote. When I first proposed one of my previous books, "TV on Wheels: The story of remote television production," co-authored with George Hoover, before he came on board, many in that industry questioned why I should be writing the book. While I literally grew up in that business and had been involved in the engineering, construction, and operations of that business, from the Olympics, Indy 500, hundreds of other remote productions, and even was the engineer-in-charge of a fleet of satellite uplink trucks, I wasn't anywhere near being a central player in the business.

I had met dozens of people over the years in the business who talked about writing a book on the industry. They didn't. I had one main advantage, I had done the research over the years, and I was the one willing to put the work into writing it. It became the book you'd find on tables in lobbies and conference rooms around the world who were in that business. It is still used as a textbook in a few schools. I still get royalty checks from it.

I've dealt with the "Group" most of my career. Know many people who worked there and in the area. Have talked to most of the central players in the story.

Link to see my writing background

I hope you notice that I have not only researched the subject at hand, but there are a couple additional links to sites that hopefully demonstrate that I have also researched around the topic also.
Brief history of broadcasting webpage
From Mining camp to high tech center website

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