“If you operate with generosity in all aspects of business then your focus becomes about making lives better.. for our readers, our customers, our advertisers, our suppliers and our team members.” – Eric Rhoads
Eric Rhoads is a career entrepreneur, with 30 years of launching companies and media brands, creating startups, and building businesses, including over 40 years’ experience in the radio broadcasting field, 25 years in the publishing business, and a decade in the art industry. Rhoads serves as chairman of the board of Streamline Publishing, Inc., a company he founded in 1986. He also serves as a consultant and adviser to companies in media, technology, digital media, and art.
Rhoads has hands-on experience in all functions of business turnarounds as a serial entrepreneur, building companies in radio broadcasting; radio syndication and programming; promotional products; publishing of magazines, books, videos, and websites; media brands and conferences; and launching of consumer products.
Rhoads was a pioneer in the online radio space, with RadioCentral Networks, Inc., where he led the $18 million venture-funded startup. He was the founder of Equivox Broadcasting, Inc., which acquired radio stations in New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Provo, Utah. He also founded New World Communications, a radio programming firm, and was a founding investor in SuperRadio Networks, Inc.
In 1986 Rhoads launched Streamline Publishing, Inc., which acquired a floundering trade publication that was renamed Radio Ink and is now a market leader serving the radio industry. Radio Ink has spawned products including books, DVDs/videos, the RadioInk.com website, and the Radio Ink Daily Headlines e-newsletter, as well as four important conferences in the radio broadcasting field: Radio Forecast, an annual event held at the Harvard Club in New York and involving most major radio group heads; Convergence, a digital interactive conference for the radio broadcasting industry; the Sports Radio Conference, for sports radio broadcasters; and the Hispanic Radio Conference, serving the booming Hispanic radio sector.
Streamline also broadened its interest in the area of digital media with the first publication devoted to that subject, Streaming, and another publication, called Digital Media.
Streamline launched its first art magazine in 2006 and today publishes Fine Art Connoisseur and PleinAir magazines and multiple websites and e-newsletters. The company also previously published Artist Advocate. Additionally, Streamline produces the annual Plein Air Convention, a gathering of outdoor artists; the Publisher’s Invitational and Paint Russia!, both events for painters; the annual Art Cruise; and the PleinAir Salon art competition. It also publishes the OutdoorPainter.com website and the PleinAir Today and Fine Art Today newsletters. The company also has a video division, Streamline Art Video, which creates “how to” artist videos and recently released the best-selling Eric Rhoads’ Art Marketing Boot Camp video.
Rhoads’ board positions have included the Bayliss Broadcast Foundation, WAY-FM Media Group, and the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Additionally, Rhoads does private consulting for tech companies, online radio businesses, radio companies, and art dealers. He has been featured on CBS Tomorrow and in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur magazine, Parade magazine, and over 400 newspapers nationwide.
Rhoads is a columnist in Radio Ink, Fine Art Connoisseur, and PleinAir, and is an active blogger on media for Media Biz Bloggers (media), as well as Ink Tank (radio broadcasting), Blue Chip Gallery Marketing (gallery marketing), and Artist Marketing. He is an active lecturer and speaker on the subjects of innovation, radio broadcasting, marketing, and art.
In 1995 Rhoads published the book “Blast From the Past: A Pictorial History of Radio’s First 75 Years” which is a photo history of radio broadcasting. Rhoads has also authored “Radio The Forgotten Medium” for the Media Studies Journal. He has been honored by the Broadcasters Foundation and inducted into the “Broadcast Pioneers” along with other awards . Rhoads is also a painter whose artworks appear in two art galleries. He is one of the most painted men in America and has been painted by over 25 of the topArtists in America and Russia including Richard Schmid, Nelson Shanks, Daniel Green, David Leffel, Jeff Legg and many others, which he blogs about in The Portrait Project.
Rhoads resides in Austin, Texas with his wife and triplet children.