TransMedia Group Celebrates 40 Years In Public Relations Starting With America's Largest Company At The Time As Its First Client

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Jan 25, 2021, 09:05 ET

BOCA RATON, Fla., Jan. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The international PR firm, TransMedia Group, announced on Feb 1 it will celebrate its 40^th year in business serving clients worldwide, including "Ma Bell," which once was its client during one of the most tumultuous restructurings in U.S. corporate history.

"Our first client was AT&T Corp then headed by Charles L. (Charlie) Brown, while the huge telephone company was fighting the antitrust lawsuit before agreeing to the historic breakup," said TransMedia Group's CEO and founder Tom Madden. "Since then, we've represented many of the largest organizations in America, including The City of New York for a campaign that won a Bronze Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America."

Before launching TransMedia in New York City, Madden was #2-ranked executive at NBC reporting directly to then CEO Fred Silverman. Prior, Madden was director of PR and top speechwriter at American Broadcasting Companies. Before that he was a newspaper reporter at The Press of Atlantic City, NJ and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In 1986, TransMedia relocated to Florida buying a building in Boca Raton, which became its world headquarters.

The 1984 breakup of AT&T Corp; then known as American Telephone & Telegraph Co., was one of the largest restructurings in U.S. corporate history whose rippling effects touched everyone whoever dialed a phone, said Madden, who coached Charlie Brown on national television appearances.

At the time, AT&T had a million employees and a monopoly over most phone service. Its breakup unleashed a wave of competition in markets for telephone service and telecommunications equipment, he said.

TransMedia did publicity for the first cell phone developed by AT&T and for other divisions of the sprawling company including Picturephone Meeting Service, a predecessor to virtual meetings so common today.

TransMedia arranged and publicized the first coast-to-coast video conference for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

AT&T was then battling a costly antitrust suit brought by the U.S. government, contending AT&T was too large, thus detrimental to consumers. Congress was weighing legislation to splinter it. Technology gains were enabling rivals to eat into AT&T's long-distance business. So Brown decided best outcome was to settle and help craft the company's dismemberment.

"It was the lesser of evils," said Madden.

TransMedia's president today is Madden's enterprising daughter Adrienne Mazzone.

SOURCE TransMedia Group