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
Radio
In addition to Masterpeace, I was producing radio programming for a number of ministries. These shows included:
- Power Radio in Saarbrücken, Germany
- Tell Them, for the FGBMF
- HarvesTime, for Harvest Church in Greenwich, CT
- Promotional spots for Bethany Church, NJ
Masterpeace ended at WYNY around the time the station changed format to Country Music. A new door opened up 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 did go on the air, went through 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
Long before I ever got into the business, I was designing posters for local rock concerts, church bulletins, and a few newspaper ads. All of that experience came to my benefit when I was 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. This gave me lots of hands on knowledge of the industry. Major agencies such as Grey Advertising and Ogilvy & Mather where 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—free lancing and consulting for some of my former cable television clients in the States. The business then started to transition to local clients in Luxembourg, and Planata Advertising & Design was the result.
Voice Acting
Apple Geek
Once the Mac Plus came out, it was game over. I was a certified Apple fan not only because the Mac was amazing, but because it was revolutionising my workflow at the cable company. Just owning the Mac may have actually been another reason why I moved up so swiftly at the company. In any event, I’ve owned quite a few Apple products in my life, and I’ve had little disappointment from any of them. Unboxing a new Apple device is always a treat. The day the iPhone was introduced—words can’t describe the wonder!
Jesus Movement
I still love Jesus, but today’s evangelical church troubles my heart. I truly 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 appears to be demanding conformity to a conservative lifestyle in order to belong. The music is becoming less relevant again, and hymns are coming back to scare the politically correct public away. The marketing of the church to the outsider is becoming harmed by conservative politics that are being raised up as a barrier to belief. I actually saw a quote from a well known evangelical leader who said that it is not possible for a liberal to 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.