Mortensen’s Commercial Technology Group
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Most people know that Nortek Inc. owns Magenta Research (though it’s probably less well known that they also own Gefen) and following Nortek’s acquisition of Kentucky-based TV One Broadcast Sales Corporation it was recently announced that TV One and Connecticut-based Magenta would become cornerstones of a newly formed ‘Magenta Commercial Technology Group‘.
Who's the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?
In a kind of “these are not the droids you’re looking for” way Obi-Wan Mortensen seems to have convinced the Nortek folks since taking back control of the company in November 2010 that he has somehow been doing a good job although everything we see and hear seems to point to the contrary.
We are told by various Magenta ‘reps’ that Magenta sales continue to decline and that they don’t get callbacks from the company. That’s actually not surprising as Magenta’s entire North American sales staff seems to have either left or been let go (we understand that TV One sales people were told from July 1st that they would now be responsible for selling Magenta products).
Magenta’s MultiView DVI product launched earlier this year and shown for the first time at ISE in Amsterdam has we believe been quietly killed off – either because no-one wanted it or it simply didn’t work as planned – we couldn’t get official confirmation of this as when we rang the Mortensen Death Star in Connecticut the operator politely told us she was instructed not to take calls from the DailyDOOH 🙁
The likes of Kramer, Hall Research and even Extron and Crestron must be loving this situation as it unfolds.
Anyway back to the ‘deal’. We fail to see how TV One gets anything out of this arrangement – there is simply no synergy here and we fail to understand why Nortek don’t see that as well (oh wait, the Force)…
- Magenta specializes in providing large-scale switching, extension and distribution projects to the pro AV and digital signage markets
- TV One dedicates itself to providing video, audio and multimedia processing solutions in the broadcast world
Obi-Wan Mortensen’s statement “The ability for TV One and Magenta technology to be cross-integrated into broadcast and commercial AV projects offers integrators and consultants exciting new alternatives to approaching projects, while streamlining the overall process,” is surely a pipe dream whilst his other statement “Given the multiple ways TV One and Magenta products complement each other, the two companies were a natural fit to be the first two companies positioned under the Commercial Technology Group umbrella.” is plainly wrong (there is no natural fit).
Mind you, if Mortensen’s management style is true to form then all of this will be a moot point as there won’t be any TV One people hanging around to sell even their own products let alone Magenta’s.
July 6th, 2011 at 10:02 @459
If the leadership is so inspirational and visionary, how did Mr. Mortensen manage to loose truly talented people like Bob Michaels and Kamran Ahmad? He should stick to Lego.