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The Innovators Issue-December, 2022

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C T I N N O V A T O R S , 2 0 2 2 9 >> BY JOEL BERG Brent Montgomery made a name for himself bringing reality TV shows like "Pawn Stars," "Queer Eye" and "Fixer Upper" to the small screen. Now, he wants to make a name for Stamford — and build a different kind of media company, one with an unlikely home in a 133,000-square-foot former wire factory. "Smart people thought we were absolute lunatics," Montgom- ery said of the early reaction to his vision for what is now e Village. But aer a $75 million investment and three years of construction, e Village opened in 2021 as a melting pot for arts, busi- ness, culture, entertainment and fine dining. It also is home to Wheelhouse, the TV pro- duction company founded by Montgomery and comedian and late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. "e idea is, simply, if you bring in great people from different industries, and you in- troduce them, basically people who wouldn't meet otherwise, you see great things happen," Montgomery said. The career Montgomery graduated in 1997 from Tex- as A&M University with a degree in jour- nalism. But he quickly gravitated toward a then-novel form of nonfiction: reality television. Aer moving to Brooklyn in 1998, he found work on the sets of "e Bachelor," "Wife Swap" and "Blind Date." To make ends meet, he also filmed weddings and bat mitzvahs. In 2002, he started his own production company, Lefield, to develop concepts he could pitch to TV networks. A baseball-card collector and former high school baseball player, Montgomery favors names that connote America's pastime. He was at a bachelor party in Las Vegas when he came across the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, which rocketed to fame as the sub- ject of "Pawn Stars." Montgomery realized he had produced more than a hit TV show. He had helped fuel spectacular growth at a small business simply by training a camera on it. Before "Pawn Stars" began airing on the History Channel, the shop attracted about 75 people per day, Montgomery said. Aer- ward, it was drawing 5,000 people who stood in line in the Las Vegas heat. Other reality TV subjects, such as Chip and Joanna Gaines of "Fixer Upper," followed similar trajectories — small-screen fame followed by big-time business opportunities. Another example he points to — one not produced by Mont- gomery — is "Drive to Survive," a Netflix series that follows Formula 1 drivers, a cast of characters who had been largely un- known to U.S. audiences. "at has changed Formula 1 in America forever," Montgom- ery said. Traditional media companies, however, are not set up to take advantage of their subjects' success, Montgomery said. Wheel- house is designed to be that company. It launched in early 2018 aer British media giant ITV bought Lefield for $360 million. Instead of simply producing reality TV shows, Wheelhouse in- vests in the people and companies that are the shows' focal points. "Being able to pull that off is a lot harder than it sounds but that's the thesis," Montgomery said. One test of that thesis involves Goldin Auctions, a New Jer- sey-based company that is riding the boom in sports cards, col- lectibles and other memorabilia. How big is the boom? A Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card from 1952 sold for a record $12.6 million in August. In addition to producing a show on Goldin — and selling it to Netflix — Montgomery and Wheelhouse have invested in his company. Co-investors include basketball star Kevin Durant, baseball star Alex Ro- driguez, hedge fund titan Steven Cohen and others, Montgomery said. Wheelhouse hopes to find and tell simi- lar stories in Connecticut. It has sold a show based in Bridgeport to the History Channel, Montgomery said, declining to divulge de- tails. e company also is developing a con- cept around a mother-daughter interior de- sign team in Connecticut. He hopes the ability to produce shows here could keep stars in the state. Montgomery cited the example of Charli D'Amelio, a danc- er and Norwalk native who has become one of the biggest draws on TikTok. She and her family moved to Los Angeles in 2020. "We want to make sure that the next one of those folks feels like there is enough action here to not leave," Montgomery said. Wheelhouse has also invested in companies that are not nec- essarily destined for reality TV. ey include Stamford-based Rhone, which makes men's clothing, and Stratford-based Athletic Brewing Co., which brews nonalcoholic beer. Coming home Before they started a company and tackled a major construc- tion project in Connecticut, Brent and his wife, Courtney Mont- gomery, decided to become homeowners in the state. Courtney grew up in Trumbull. But Brent, a self-described military brat, never lived in one place for more than three years. While he values the lessons he learned about being adaptable, he did not want the same experience for his children. So the Montgomerys, who met at MTV in 2005 and married in 2008, purchased a home in Old Greenwich in 2014. ey now have three children: two daughters, 9 and 4; and a son, 7. ey quickly fell in love with the community, a feeling that grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brent said. "For a lot of my colleagues who live in Los Angeles or New York, it was such a darker time." When he first moved to Connecticut, Brent was working for ITV, a British free-to-air broadcast television network. But he quickly grew tired of the daily commute to Manhattan. "Every day was a grind," he said. Along with his wife, he began exploring ways to bring his busi- ness interests closer to home. e vision for e Village began to come together in 2017 when the Montgomerys purchased the former factory in Stamford. BRENT MONTGOMERY Brent Montgomery Founder Wheelhouse Education: Journalism, Texas A&M Age: 47 Reality TV entrepreneur Montgomery's e Village aims to make Stamford a melting pot for arts, business, culture, entertainment Continued on next page e Storyteller

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