Scott P. Kurnit (born March 25, 1954) is a serial

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

in media and technology.

Career

Early career

After graduating from

Hampshire College Hampshire College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was opened in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges ...

with a BA in Communications, Kurnit became a Program Director at

WGBY-TV WGBY-TV (channel 57) is a PBS member television station in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. Owned by the Boston-based WGBH Educational Foundation, it is a sister station to that organization's flagship and namesake, WGBH-TV (channel ...

(WGBH) He was the youngest program director in the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

system and served as program director for

QUBE QUBE was an experimental two-way, multi-programmed cable television system that played a significant role in the history of American interactive television. It was launched in Columbus, Ohio, on December 1, 1977. Highly publicized as a revolutio ...

, the world's first fully interactive

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

system.

Showtime

He started the first

pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guid ...

cable network and co-led the team that implemented the first use of national

caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is ...

. Subsequently, he was president of

Showtime Showtime or Show Time may refer to: Film * ''Showtime'' (film), a 2002 American action/comedy film * ''Showtime'' (video), a 1995 live concert video by Blur Television Networks and channels * Showtime Networks, a division of Paramount Global w ...

Event Television

Prodigy and MCI

Kurnit led the team that put the first

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

into an online service at the

Prodigy Prodigy, Prodigies or The Prodigy may refer to: * Child prodigy, a child who produces meaningful output to the level of an adult expert performer ** Chess prodigy, a child who can beat experienced adult players at chess Arts, entertainment, and ...

network. Following Prodigy, Kurnit joined MCI to oversee MCI's attempts to grow its business in the Internet market.

About.com

Kurnit founded

About.com Dotdash Meredith (formerly About.com) is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, ...

and served as its CEO during its growth to a public market value of $1.5 billion. About.com was acquired by PRIMEDIA in 2001, and later sold again to the New York Times Company in 2005. Kurnit left the CEO position in 2001 after the sale to Primedia. In 2002 a class action suit was brought against About.com, Primedia, (About's former owner) Kurnit and others. The court dismissed all claims against Kurnit from the suit in August 2007.

Keep Holdings

Kurnit founded AdKeeper.com in early 2010. He was the Chairman & CEO of Keep Holdings.com, the parent company of Keep.com (which allowed keeping, discussion and sharing of favorite products), TheSwizzle.com (a product for managing commercial offers in user email boxes), and AdKeeper.com (a means by which users could save online advertisements for viewing at a time of their choosing).

Investor and advisor

Kurnit is either an investor or Board Member of the following companies: Mashlogic, Brightcove, Goodmail, Dotomi, OpenSky.

Personal interests

Kurnit serves on the boards or is active with Paley Center for Media.

Awards and honors

Kurnit was inducted into the

American Advertising Federation The American Advertising Federation (AAF), headquartered in Washington, D.C., is the oldest national advertising trade association in the United States. The AAF also has 15 district operations, each located in and representing a different region o ...

's Hall of Achievement, received the Vanguard Award from the

National Cable Television Association NCTA – The Internet & Television Association (formerly the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and commonly known as the NCTA) is the principal trade association for the U.S. broadband and pay television industries. It represents ...

, and won an

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...

as producer of a weekly television news magazine. ''Upside'' magazine named him one of the “Elite 100” leading the digital revolution. He was listed as one of the Silicon Alley 100 by ''The Business Insider'' for 2008.

References

External links

Keep Holdings.comKeep.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurnit, Scott Living people 1954 births American businesspeople