ABOUT

THE
COMPANY
& SHOWS

WHERE

   While we're currently scouring the land for a few crack videographers and co-hosts for all of our new small town series that we have in development, you can watch the episodes from our most recent TV series, "Small Town WNY", right here on the site.
   You can also read the digital version of the series companion paper and listen to the three companion podcast series here too.
   Our two regional travel TV starter series entitled "Discovering WNY" are also on the site here as well. Warts and all.
   These series were the very first travel series we created and produced and as such there was a steep learning curve compared to working with puppets and people and visual effects in a deeply controlled, single green screen studio. Not harder, just different. The technical side of the kids series far exceeds anything that we've done for the travel series, but each have their very specific challenges.

MISSION

   Our mission with this show, series and entire company is to re-awaken our hard-wired need to live and work in small, authentic, accessible communities. We all feel it and know it's as big part of what's been missing in our communal lives for a long time now.
   A walk-able, tight-knit, caring community that's small enough to grasp and truly be a part of of is becoming harder and harder to find. A place where you actually feel like there's a there THERE. A place where you DO truly know your neighbors, shop keepers, teachers, doctors, police, firemen, local politicians and all manner of people who make any community... a community.
   Get in your car today and keep driving even farther out, into most any small town surrounding it, and you'll see exactly what I mean.
   We're collectively in trouble is what I see, and it's high-time to start reinvesting and resuscitating these once-they're-gone-they're-gone communities before it's too late.
   Even when these places seem to be doing well, just take a deeper look at the "false-fronted" shops and the failing infrastructure. These small communities are our heritage, and unique to this country and simply must be pulled back from the edge.
   Yes, there are some small towns that have it figured out and are doing pretty well. Mostly college towns, county seats or tourist destinations, but for every small town that's doing well, there are dozens that are on their knees or almost unsalvageable. And these are the places that need our attention, help and care. I believe we should (and can) do better to honor and care for these places that are such a vitally, intrinsically deep part of our American DNA and history.
   Our other peripheral mission here, is to of course, expand this into a team of a good two-dozen, like-minded folks who can join me on this mission over the next few years as this series and company gains momentum across the US and the world at large.

COLLECTIVE

   One of the principle cornerstones of our business model is to supply each of the episodes sponsors with social media shorts, interstitial and full shows, podcasts and digital versions of it's companion podcasts.
   In this way, everyone contributes to pushing the collective mission forward helping to spread the good word about their "Great Small Town" as well as their small businesses and it's direct involvement in promoting their "Great Small Town".
   We intentionally take the time and expense to distribute the companion papers in local "Mom & Pop" shops to drive valuable new foot traffic into these places, so please make sure to get out there and support these businesses and get 'em while you can.

​GRATITUDE

   As always, we deeply appreciate your continued support for our singular mission of celebrating small towns through the media we create.
   Thank you for your support and we'll see you around your "Great Small Town" sometime soon.

A.A.
AUGUSTINE
(FOUNDER)

Watching the playback during the last shoot for "Discovering WNY" 

​​TV/Web Episodes & Ads I've created:
(5 Pilot) 1:30-3:30 "Great Small Towns" Interstitial Episodes
(25) 5:00-8:00 "Small Town WNY" Shorts Episodes
(275) 28:30 "Discovering WNY" Full Episodes
(125) 28:30 Kids TV Series Episodes
(155) TV & Web Commercials
(75) Daily Blog Shorts
(175) AU Videos
835 TOTAL

MY
OWNER-OPERATOR'S
JOURNEY

    Established in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the heady-mix of the earliest days of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Google way back in 2004, the company was incubated for 3 years as a "retro-style", traditional and digital media company.
    The company officially launched in 2007 and since then, I have gone on to create and produce multiple children's, tween and teen book series as well as their accompanying hard and soft product lines, podcasts and gobs of music and comic strips and of course, my flagship, kids and regional small town travel series encompassing over 300 episodes which have been broadcast on PBS, My Network TV, COZI-TV, KOFY, AMG and RTV as well as hundreds of smaller, local stations all across the US.

THE ROAD FROM
WNY TO SONOMA

    Prior to my career in the broadcast television industry, I worked as a guitarist/singer-songwriter, engineer & producer eventually founding an independent record company and recording studio out of Boston, Massachusetts and Buffalo, New York.
     From 1994 through 2004, I engineered and produced over 75 bands and solo artists throughout the New England and Western New York regions, releasing and distributing over two dozen albums on my indie
record label.
    Through a series of twists and turns through the fall and winter of 2004, I decided to take an opportunity to move out west to the San Francisco Bay Area of California in August of that year, smack in the middle of the heady-mix of the earliest days of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Google, to head-up a start-up "retro-style" kids media company that eventually became my namesake and life's work.
    The company was incubated for 3 years and officially launched in 2007 as a "retro-style", traditional and digital media company.
    Since then, this little, but fierce, "one-man-band" media production company  has gone on to create and produce multiple children's, tween and teen book series as well as their accompanying hard and soft product lines, podcasts and gobs of music and comic strips and of course, its flagship, kids and travel TV series encompassing over 300 episodes which have been broadcast on PBS, My Network TV, COZI-TV, KOFY, AMG and RTV as well as hundreds of smaller, local stations all across the U.S. .

THE ROAD BACK
FROM SONOMA
& BEYOND

    After a mind-numbing five years producing multiple children's television shows as well as all of it's companion books and soft and hard-line products, the company was finally, firmly established throughout the Northern California region by the summer of 2012 and a true change of pace to a town with a far less hectic environment was desperately needed.
    The gorgeous town of Sonoma, right in the heart of the Northern California wine country, was chosen for the move.
    This transition soon found me taking a little time off for the first time in almost a decade exploring my newfound home on some pretty epic, but still relaxing and meditative Sunday drives throughout Sonoma county.
    Within a few months, these weekly adventures exploring the Redwood forests, rivers and coastal areas of this transcendentally beautiful place became too great a call to arms to resist and I knew he had to share what I was seeing and experiencing with the world at large and the core concept for the companies first regional travel show was born.
    Appropriately titled "Exploring Sonoma", the show was quietly developed over the winter of 2012-2013 and immediately green-lit during the very first pitch meeting with the program manager for Northern California PBS.
    But life still happens to you even while you're busy making other plans (as the song goes), and within a few months of that initial "green-lit" pitch-meeting with Northern California PBS, a family emergency brought me all the way across the country again, back home, to WNY in April of 2014 just as "Exploring Sonoma" was starting production on its pilot episode, putting it on indefinite hold.
    Undaunted by the sudden, unexpected turn of events and determined to not let any of it hold me down or back, I soldiered on in WNY going with what I was most familiar and comfortable with, creating and producing not one, but two regionally based "retro-style" kids TV shows.
    Any ideas of a travel show at this point would have to wait.
    The two kids' shows would premier on two stations in both the Rochester and Buffalo markets a few months apart through the summer of 2015 with the initial premiere of the first show in Rochester on July 4th, 2015.
    After all, I had been through that year, it was independence day, indeed.
   The two regional kids shows would eventually be followed up with the companies first, finally official, regional travel show entitled "Discovering WNY" in 2017 and "Small Town WNY" and its companion show "Small Town NY" in 2022.
   Currently, the companies going through an expansion through multiple states and working on the continuation of "Small Town WNY". 
    Through the years, I have also written hundreds of reviews on regional WNY restaurants and entertainment venues for the Buffalo News, relocated and operated my families 32-year-old Italian restaurant for a decade after the sudden, tragic death of my father, toured throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes region of the US with my bands, created and produced over 175 TV commercials, written 12 novellas, several short stories and penned hundreds of comic strips and songs as well as taking the obligatory summers-long tramp through Europe in a rental car (with no phone and no map) through the summer of 1999.
   As one of my west coast television industry mentors puts it, "He'd rather work than play, because his work IS his play!".
   After 15 years in New England and Northern California, I'm. is currently living back in my hometown of West Seneca, NY with my "too-cool-for-school" cat Rumbles, a turtle named Herbert H. Hebert the II and two large and way too gregarious goldfish named Stan & Ollie.

MORE
TO COME

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