Neil A. Carousso produces and co-hosts WCBS Newsradio 880’s Small Business Spotlight series with Joe Connolly. Click here to watch the weekly video segments featuring advice for business owners on survival, recovery and growth opportunities.
Anthony Scaramucci is all about his wife possibly starring on “The Real Housewives of New York City.”
“I’m totally fine with it. Whatever you want to do. I think you’d have a lot of fun,” the former White House Director of Communications told his wife Deidre during the latest episode of their RADIO.COM podcast, “Mooch and the Mrs.”
“I just hope that my Trump affiliation, to be totally candid — because I know a lot of people in Hollywood dislike the Orange Man — I hope the Cheetos stains on my hands are not on your hands,” he quipped.
Deidre said, “Somebody told me I’m not interesting. The only reason they want me is that I’m married to you. There’s probably 80 percent truth to that. The person told me, there’s so many attractive, smart, funny women in New York.”
Anthony said, “But you have something different. You have a translucency to your personality. You’re totally comfortable and you don’t try to hide sh*t. I think that’s really impressive. It’s a perverse sign of wacko major security,” he said.
Deidre also told RADIO.COM separately about some of the racier comments about her possibly joining the show, saying that one online commenter wrote, “No one watches Bravo TV to be reminded of Trump rubbish outcast looking like Kim Zolciak circa 2009. No Andy [Cohen], don’t do it.”
Speaking of Zolciak, who was formerly on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” she said, “Everyone always says, especially when I go to the airport, and I go through TSA, they always tell me that I look like Kim Zolciak.”
Anthony said, “That’s a compliment to Kim Zolciak. Shout-out to Kim. If you look like my wife, you’re definitely hot stuff.”
Maria Menounos has been through quite a roller coaster of trauma, between being diagnosed with brain cancer and undergoing surgery, and coping with her mother’s own brain cancer diagnosis and treatments. In an exclusive interview with “Mooch and the Mrs.,“ Menounos opens up about how her friend, Sylvester Stallone, helped her to cope.
“Going into surgery, I was playing ‘Rocky’ music as my theme song,” the former “E! News” host told Anthony Scaramucci and his wife, Deidre, for their RADIO.COM podcast. “Rocky’s quote gets me through so much: ‘It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward,'” Menounous revealed she would say to herself through her struggles.
“He’s a dear friend, and then when I came out of surgery, I was quoting ‘Rocky,’” Menounos said of her 2017 procedure.
Menounos said that a quote Scaramucci once told her about fear — “Everything you want is on the other side of fear” — also stuck with her through her 2017 procedure.
On top of coping with her own diagnoses, had her mother’s illness to think about, too. After various treatment methods left her mom weakened and ill, Menounos got her involved in alternative therapies. The therapies had their side effects, though, and when Menounos went under the knife to get her own brain tumor taken care of, her mother admitted some time later that she really didn’t remember it much.
“Between the cognitive deficits, the radiation, inflammation, she doesn’t remember anything,” she said. However, that’s really not such a bad thing. “To me, that was another silver lining because she didn’t have to feel that. To someone who has cancer, the last thing they need is stress,” she said.
Despite the gravity of her struggles, Menounos has been able to gain a new sense of hope and understanding. “My life had to change, and it has, drastically. Anybody else would be kind of freaking out … and I’m really loving the moments of uncomfortableness,” she said. “I feel like if I’m gonna go to the next dimension, this is kind of that place where I’m really working on [the] next level.”
LAS VEGAS (WCBS 880) — With more than 20 Democrats vying for the White House, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says there’s one candidate in particular President Donald Trump should be careful of in 2020: Joe Biden.
In an exclusive interview on RADIO.COM’s “Mooch and the Mrs.” podcast, Christie says the former vice president is the only person who could potentially give Trump a hard time.
“Biden can appeal to those blue-collar white workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin where the president won the presidency by tens of thousands of votes in those four states,” Christie said. “If he were to peel those voters off, the president would lose. But I don’t think anybody else like Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris – they’re too far left. And I think middle America will just say, ‘Yea, we’re not thrilled with Trump but we’re not moving to this’ and that’s why I think Biden’s the only chance they have.”
But Christie, who was a GOP contender in the 2016 presidential election and later removed from Trump’s transitional team following his upset victory, says he believes Trump will be re-elected.
“I really think since the Bush v. Gore election I think it has been building towards what’s happening now in the country for the last 20 years. The one thing I’ve said to people is if the president is reelected, which if you ask me today to guess I’d say he’s going to be, that the one good thing about it amongst other things will be that after eight years of Donald Trump the country will be exhausted,” the former governor said. “Those who aren’t will be by the end of eight years of him and it’s going to force us to reassess it. It’s going to be a time to hit a reset button because no one can take it to the level that he’s taken it to.”
Christie says that while President Trump has created significant changes to the Republican Party, he doesn’t believe those changes are permanent.
“I don’t think he’s changed the Republican Party forever and I don’t think he’s changed the Republic forever,” he said. “And he would love that, that it’s unique to him. Most people would want to change it forever and want a legacy, I don’t think he’s the least bit interested in that. He wants to look back and say he’s the only one that could’ve done that.”
The former governor reflected on the currently political climate and notes that the tension between the Democratic and Republican parties have grown significantly because of President Trump. However, when looking back on the 2016 Presidential Election, he says there was no way to stop the momentum that have built up, simply because no candidate had the funding to push back against Trump.
“It was very hard to run against him because, except for Jeb, none of us had the money to go after him. I had all kinds of things that I wanted to use that were factually hits on Donald Trump that I knew from my time in New Jersey because his business career in New Jersey was checkered. But, who had the money to do it? Only Jeb did, and Jeb wasted all that money,” Christie says. “If people really look back on that race, the candidates in particular, if you want to quote-unquote blame someone for Donald Trump, it’s Jeb Bush because he had $150 million and he never laid a glove on Donald Trump, ever. In fact, became a punching bag for him.”
The question that remained was whether or not Christie himself would ever consider facing off against the president again, to which he says, “There would be no way I would do it unless I thought I had a legitimate chance to win.”
Neil A. Carousso produces the “Mooch and the Mrs.” podcast for RADIO.COM. Follow @MoochandtheMrs on Twitter and Instagram for EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes content via RADIO.COM from the SALT Conference in Las Vegas.
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The Radio Television Digital News Association announced Tuesday that WCBS Newsradio 880 is the winner of three regional Edward R. Murrow Awards.
WCBS Newsradio 880 was awarded Best Newscast for our coverage of the Flatiron Steam Pipe Explosion during the 5:30 p.m. broadcast on July 19, 2018.
The station also earned the prize for Breaking News Coverage for our reporting on a series of pipe bombs that were sent to prominent Democrats and media outlets last fall.
The RTDNA has been honoring outstanding achievements in broadcast and digital journalism with the annual Edward R. Murrow Awards since 1971. Murrow was a journalism pioneer who set the standards for the highest quality of broadcast journalism.
“Public trust in journalism is threatened by a lack of understanding about the reporting process,” said RTDNA Chairman Jerry Walsh. “The Edward R. Murrow Awards are an opportunity for our industry to showcase what well trained, ethical local journalists are doing to better our communities on behalf of the public. We invite viewers and readers to learn more about the reporting process behind each of these stories, and to know this same process is happening every single day in preparation for every single newscast.”
“The journalists behind this year’s awards have a deep connection to the communities where they live,” said Dan Shelley, RTDNA’s Executive Director. “Their reporting demonstrated a level of care for and awareness of their communities that isn’t always popular to highlight when we talk about journalism. The stories they told go deeper than the surface of problems and celebrations, and gave viewers insight into topics and places they may not encounter in their daily lives. The Edward R. Murrow Awards demonstrate how journalists help us break out of our echo chambers, and contribute to productive public dialogue that brings communities together for positive change.”
For a full list of winners, CLICK HERE. All regional winners will advance to the National Murrow Award competition.
National winners will be announced in June.
Neil A. Carousso contributed to each of these stories as a WCBS Newsradio 880 producer and video editor.
STAMFORD, Conn. (WCBS 880) — For the first time in years, some Connecticut business owners revealed to Joe Connolly at the WCBS Small Business Breakfast that they see signs that growth is slowing. As a result, hiring skilled employees has become even more important in a tight labor market because employees are the representatives of your brand.
Many business owners remain optimistic, but retailers face challenges as Amazon is the one-stop shop for consumers. Several owners emphasized their relationship with their local communities and the positive influence they have while helping those in need, as a valued proposition to consumers who lean towards the convenience of shopping on Amazon.
Dori DeCarlo, founder of StadiumBags.com, beamed with pride over the quality of her products. “Cheap is expensive,” said DeCarlo, a mom who started designing a line of clear bags and backpacks to deal with security issues at schools, offices, airports, public venues and sports arenas.
Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) spoke at the beginning of the Small Business Breakfast program, which was held at the Stamford Hilton. The newly-elected governor touted the state’s history of innovation and promised to enact policies that will “champion small businesses.”
Lamont’s own entrepreneurial background goes back to his cable television days. After graduating from Harvard and Yale, he worked for Cablevision when the cable network entered Connecticut. One day he got a tip from someone at MTV: Trek up to Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire because they’re very unhappy with their cable system. The college told Lamont its students were paying high prices and the cable system wasn’t delivering what it wanted: educational and international programming.
So, Lamont developed a network, Campus Televideo, to distribute cable TV from satellites to the college dorms. It expanded to over 100 colleges by 2006, including the University of Hartford.
“I started a business about 40 years ago and I remember that first check coming in, I remember at the end of the month when you had a little bit left over you knew what that meant,” Lamont said. “I remember the frustrations but I really remember the joy of being my own boss and watching a company happen and we need a lot more of that in the state of Connecticut.”
McGovern and Kelly were asked how they got their products to go mainstream.
McGovern started his cold brew coffee brand a few years ago out of an East Village apartment and now has several high-end clients.
“What we first started doing was we self distributed. We built up our own client list… we built up a list of about 100 clients and the distributors started calling us,” McGovern said. “We didn’t wait for the time to be right, we didn’t wait for the distributor to call us, we just attacked and started selling the products.”
Kelly started her granola business in her New Canaan kitchen. The product was hit among her son’s rowing students and their parents so that’s when they decided to take it to the next level. After selling at a few farmers markets, they soon found themselves on store shelves.
“We literally built this market by market and then Whole Foods at the time you could go in and solicit at Whole Foods directly. Greenwich took us in, then Darien and from there we went regional with them and we’re in two different regions,” Kelly said. “It’s been a long, laborious process obviously but we work with three or four distributors now also who get us into the 350 markets we’re in currently.”
Among nearly 300 small and mid-size business owners in attendance were a group of students from Blind Brook High School in Rye with an interest in business. After the 90-minute business pow-wow, they told Connolly what they gleaned from the event and the business news veteran gave them valuable advice as they pursue their career goals.
At the Small Business Breakfast, Connolly announced that WCBS Newsradio 880 will kick-off the NXT Events Media Group’s BRANDXCELERATOR with the next WCBS Business Breakfast on June 12 at the Metropolitan Pavilion in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
The event will focus on transcending your company’s brand and vision to generate rapid growth. You can register for our next premiere business event, with promo code 880, HERE.
Neil A. Carousso is the producer of the WCBS Small Business Spotlight and Small Business Breakfast programs with Joe Connolly.
