nside The Mayor's Studio: NYC-TV's Secrets Of New York
By Tom Robbins
Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 3:41 pm
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This spring, a potential minor disaster loomed in the otherwise charmed life of Mike Bloomberg's administration. A top official at NYC-TV was arrested and charged with siphoning tens of thousands of dollars out of his agency's coffers and into his pocket.
The new city television network was created with much ado by Bloomberg, a media mogul and the station's leading champion. The mayor has hailed its hip new shows, like Secrets of New York, which stars a glamorous model in a form-fitting black vinyl trench coat darting about the city.
The agency has prospered under the mayor's watch, with an annual budget that has soared from less than $2 million to more than $10 million. It's unclear exactly why city taxpayers are funding these glossy entertainments, but this much is plain: A scam by a high-level insider at the station had the potential for a bit of embarrassment.
Bloomberg's City Hall team quickly went into damage control: Yes, there had been a bad apple, one Trevor Scotland, the network's former director of business development and operations. Yes, together with an outside confederate, he'd managed to loot some $60,000 in station revenues. And yes, he'd been nabbed by the city's own keen-eyed investigators. All else was well. Next story.
