Wallstrip in Business Week

Last week we spent the day with Aaron Pressman of Business Week over in New York. He watched the gang create a show and interact. Today his piece on Wallstrip hits the newstands. Pretty cool stuff.

JANUARY 29, 2007

INFO TECH

Stock Tips For Generation YouTubeA sassy new investment Web show, Wallstrip, is quickly luring viewers–andfinancial backing

For years, the only way investors could get their stock advice rolled up ina fast-paced, entertaining video show was by tuning in to the likes of CNBCand Bloomberg. There was nothing on the Net resembling the quick, catchytech news shows and comedy series fans flock to online. But now, videoproducers and wannabe stars are pooling their talents and cheap digitalcameras to create Wallstrip, a daily show examining top-performing stocks.

The timing seems perfect, with pioneering online video series such asRocketboom and Ask a Ninja drawing hundreds of thousands of viewers andGoogle Inc. (GOOG ) snapping up YouTube for $1.65 billion. Many people arenow betting that 2007 will be the year money starts flowing to top indievideo creators. In many ways, Wallstrip fits the formula for a populardigital series. The three-minute show features Lindsay Campbell, a fetching29-year-old actor, as host. And its audience is growing fast, hitting 10,000daily viewers within three months.

But what really sets Wallstrip apart is its ambition in the business newsarena. Wallstrip creator Howard Lindzon, a small-time hedge fund managerwith an eye for Internet startups, is betting that a short, savvy,tongue-in-cheek approach will create a highly profitable niche among twenty-and thirtysomethings turned off by old-school business news. To furtherentice this hard-to-reach demographic, Lindzon enlisted a group of 10financial and venture-capital bloggers to contribute regularly to the site.And he raised more than $500,000 in angel funding to create a slate ofshows.

Lindzon and his merry band are a radical departure from run-of-the-millfinancial market coverage. The show takes a humorous slant toward most ofits subjects and even runs parodies. A sketch featuring actor Khris Lewinwildly spoofing CNBC talk show host Jim Cramer garnered over 30,000 viewers,making it Wallstrip’s most popular episode.

SPOOF IN THE CITYInstead of focusing on price-earnings ratios and the opinions of Wall Streetanalysts, most episodes of Wallstrip zero in on a single stock that hasrecently hit its 52-week high. A recent episode filmed in New York’s TimesSquare, for instance, spotlights Aaron Rents Inc. (RNT ), which leasesappliances and electronics to a mainly low-income clientele. The stock hasjumped 25% in the past three months to an all-time high.

Amid teeming New York crowds, the crew preps for this episode, a spoof ofthe game show The Price is Right. Campbell, who sports a beehive do and60s-style black overcoat, enlists passersby to guess the price of objectsfrom Aaron Rents. To demonstrate why the company makes so much money,Campbell shows each bystander a flash card with an item from Aaron Rents andthe item’s price at a regular store. Co-star Andrew Leeds, meantime, quizzesthem: “So you can buy this computer from Dell for $688. How much would itcost to rent to own from Aaron’s?” Few come close to the real answer:$1,319.87. Wallstrip’s team isn’t trying to ridicule its contestants orcriticize Aaron Rents. They’re trying to show viewers why the company hassuch high margins.

Street theater is just one offbeat element that sets Wallstrip apart fromtraditional financial news shows. In place of the typical hands-off approachof most professional reporters, Lindzon, who picks every company featured onthe show, doesn’t hesitate to recommend stocks he has stakes in. When thathappens, Campbell simply discloses the fact.

The crew heads downtown to start editing, only to discover that Wallstrip isbeing featured at the top of Yahoo!’s video site. Although coveted, eventhis appearance only underscores the quirkiness of the new digital world.There, on Yahoo, Wallstrip sits between a video of a chimp that does karateand conjoined twins arguing over a hat.

By Aaron Pressman