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The FUSE music-television network, based in New York City, plays rock, alternative, punk, hardcore, emo and indie music. Owned by Rainbow Media Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp., the network claims a tech-savvy audience ready to interact with the network via the Internet, cellphones and other wireless devices.
Fuse recognized its product’s popularity, said Fuse VP of Operations Dave Alworth, but needed an equally effective “public” profile to contend as a new, New York City icon.
So, Fuse used extensive and unique LED signage to increase visibility at its television-production studio, at 11 Penn Plaza in Manhattan. (Its headquarters are on the 34th St. and Seventh Ave. corridor, a neighborhood that’s becoming a sign district in its own right [see ST, July 2005, page 84]).
“Fuse wanted to be more than just a linear, television channel on cable and satellite,” Alworth said. “We’ve already built a strong presence on the web, mobile and VOD, and, from that, we were ready to take our latest programming-strategy push to directly contact the public through another platform, interactive signage. Our audience is young and hip, and we were looking for a sign design that was the same. The guideline for our sign design was that it had to be an eye-popping destination and a ‘place to be.’”
The solution became a unique enhancement of LED signage, said Bob Sawler, MultiMedia Electronic Displays’s VP of engineering. Fuse, Fitch (formerly the Walker Group, New York City), and MultimediaLED (Rancho Cordova, CA) collaborated to create a design/build sign system that allows viewers to watch Fuse produce its live shows, which include a daily musical show and interviews, and chat with the stars.
Fitch, an established, global, retail-design agency, saw LED signage’s dynamic potential to give the cable television studio a physical street presence.
“Ultimately, the challenge we faced was how to use the signage to bring the Fuse television studio onto the sidewalk,” said Fitch’s studio director, George Kewin, AIA. “Vice versa, we also wanted to bring the viewing pedestrians ‘into’ the studio to have a more personal contact with the brand.”
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