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About PA&D

Planata Advertising & Design

Once a full service advertising agency and web hosting service, I’ve now retired from PA&D.

I started my career in cable television, working alongside cable pioneers as the Advertising & Marketing Director of Vision Cable in New York and New Jersey. On weekends I was the “Jesus People” air personality, Steven Joseph, on NBC’s WYNY-97FM. As the cable industry consolidated, I then moved into radio sales at New York’s 970-DJ. But it was falling in love and starting a new family in Luxembourg that brought Planata Advertising & Design to the Grand Duchy. It’s been an incredible journey that wouldn’t have been possible without the great people and organisations I was privaledged to work with. – Steve Planata

Cable Television

I love television. It was only natural for me to be in cable television. I did everything from door-door sales up to being a system-level Advertising & Marketing Director. I got to be on the ground level of cable advertising sales. I orchestrated land rights to build cable plant through the backyards of wealthy homeowners. I was privileged to participate in the launch of pioneer cable channels such as CNN, MTV, ESPN, and so many more!  TV Guide interviewed me concerning the first simultaneous release of a film on cable and in theaters. I helped put together the 1-800-OK-CABLE marketing cooperative in New York, which later spread nationwide. I loved being a part of creating the technology for being able to deliver targeted advertising simultaneously across New York metropolitan cable systems. I never wanted that career to end, but the consolidation of the industry during the Reagan deregulation era unfortunately happened to a lot of people.

Radio

I began my radio career working at my university radio station. I decided to cut a demo for a radio show featuring the new music emerging from the Jesus Movement of the 70s. I had heard New York’s NBC FM station was flipping their format from news to music, so I sent the demo to them. Within a few days, I got a phone call from the PD of the station asking me if I could start that weekend! Masterpeace aired on WYNY-97FM for ten years.

In addition to Masterpeace, I produced radio programming for several ministries. These shows included:

  1. Power Radio in Saarbrücken, Germany
  2. Tell Them for the FGBMF
  3. HarvesTime, for Harvest Church in Greenwich, CT
  4. Promotional spots for Bethany Church, NJ

Masterpeace ended at WYNY when the station changed the format to Country Music. A new door opened at the CTN Cable Network, where I VJ’d Contemporary Christian Music videos for another ten years on the television show PoweRock.

I joined with some good friends to start a new Contemporary Christian Music radio station in Burlington, Vermont. After a few false starts, the station went on air, underwent several ownership changes, and flipped to a popular music format.

After a long absence, I briefly returned to radio at New York’s WWDJ 97, where I served as an account executive.

Advertising & Design

My first piece was designing a mock record album cover in a fourth-grade art class from packs of fancy papers, foils, and transfer lettering. The excellent result blew the mind of the art teacher, and it was then that I learned I had an eye for this sort of thing.

Long before I got into the business, I designed posters for local rock concerts, church bulletins, and a few newspaper ads. All that experience came to my benefit when working at Vision Cable. The sales manager had me do the weekly ads in the local papers, and soon after, upper management moved me up to the Advertising and Marketing position I held for a decade. The job gave me lots of hands-on knowledge of the industry. Major agencies such as Grey Advertising and Ogilvy & Mather were trying to learn all they could about the new medium of Cable TV. The flow of knowledge went both ways, as I learned the business from some of the best advertising minds in the industry. I honestly learned more from these associations than I ever learned from my books at university!

Upon relocating to Luxembourg to be married, I continued the work—freelancing and consulting for some of my former cable television clients in the States. The business then transitioned to local clients in Luxembourg, and Planata Advertising & Design was the result.

 

Voice Acting

A profitable “sideline” during my cable days, I recorded many a voiceover on radio and television ads. Most of the ads were for a production studio in NJ, but I was also called on at the radio station and voiced some of my projects as well. I probably would have liked to continue doing voice work in Luxembourg, but unfortunately I do not speak any of the local languages well enough.

Apple Geek

My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It taught me what I needed to know about personal computers. I had already learned Cobol and Fortran from college, so it was a real treat to experiment with this.

I was a certified Apple fan not only because the Mac was excellent but because it revolutionized my workflow at the cable company. Owning the Mac may have been another reason I moved up so swiftly at the company. In any event, I’ve owned quite a few Apple products in my life. Unboxing a new Apple device is always a treat. The day the iPhone was introduced—words can’t describe the wonder! Once the Mac Plus came out, it was game over.

Jesus Movement

Raised in a church family, I knew what church was. And I knew that church wasn’t exactly relating to the world we were living in at the time. I was saved at ten, and I loved Jesus—but the church—not so much. When the Jesus Movement began in the ’70s, I was drawn right into it. I went to Christian coffee houses, attended street rallies, promoted local Jesus Music concerts, and began the Masterpeace radio show on Y-97. The church was turned upside down, and the world was paying attention to it for a time. What had been a primarily exclusionary place suddenly started to break down the barriers to belief. Everyone started to feel more welcome at church. Choruses, contemporary music, and Woodstock-like events replaced the hymns. It was one of the most extraordinary periods of growth for the modern evangelical church. Long hairs, short hairs, and shirts & ties were all coming together at church. It was all about a change of heart. It was beautiful.

I still love Jesus, but today’s evangelical church troubles my heart. I don’t understand what it is trying to do to itself now. The barriers appear to be going up again. (There are, of course, wonderful exceptions.) The evangelical church seems to be demanding conformity to a conservative lifestyle to belong. The music is becoming less relevant again, and hymns are returning to scare the politically correct public away. Conservative politics have become a barrier to belief. I saw a quote from an evangelical leader who said that a liberal couldn’t be a Christian. To him, I say, yes, it is. The outsiders and believers are liberals and conservatives, and independents. To position the church as a bastion of conservatism is to remove more than half the potential reach from any effort to bring the good news of Jesus to the world.

“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.” ― Frank Lloyd Wright