 Ms. Julie Mennon is an extraordinary person who was a part of our 2013 event as a candidate for Manhattanboro president and we are so proud to have endorsed her in that race. She has been a leading figure of the city's economic development sector, first as the founder of Wall Street Rising in the wake of 9-11 and then as the longest serving chair of Community Board 1. She has also served as the commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs and currently the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment which is the composite of the Office of Film, Theater, Broadcast and NYC Media and where her portfolio includes for the first time music, advertising, publishing, digital media, real estate as it results to creative content. So basically everything. Please join me in welcoming to the stage Commissioner Mennon. Thank you. I know the controller is left but if you have not read this report on the NEA I encourage everyone to do so because it really is very stark in terms of what we need to do to fight back. So I was asked tonight to make a presentation on what do we do with the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. So I'm going to walk you through what the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment does and how we have in many senses tried to reimagine a lot of the functions of it and get involved in some new areas. So I've been commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment for the past year and I just want to briefly tell you what the Office of Commerce is. So as Katie mentioned, I want to first of all thank the lead Canadian guys for inviting me. We cover the Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting so we issue about 12,000 permits per year and we focus on all of the work within the TV, film and theater sectors as well and then we also run NYC Media, which I'll talk about. So NYC Media is actually the largest municipally owned broadcast entity in the country. We run five TV stations and a radio station. Our flagship station is one that you hopefully know NYC Life, also known as Channel 25 and that has a reach of 18 million households in a 50 mile radius and we produce the content, 20% of the content we actually are shows. We produce ourselves, we just one step in the enemies on content that we produce this past year. We also, and this is I think what the Office definitely is known for, is the work that we do around film. So we just celebrated our 50th anniversary. The Office was created by Mayor John Lindsay in 1966 to really provide a one-stop shopping in terms of production in New York City. Now as Katie mentioned, our portfolio expander, when the Mayor asked me to take on this new role last year, our portfolio expanded to the first time to include now music, advertising, publishing, digital content and real estate as it relates to the creative industry. And that's incredibly important because finally, for example, with music, we have a city agency that is charged to deal with the music industry and I'll talk about some of the work that we're doing there. So on film and TV side, it's close to a $9 billion industry for the city employing 130,000 New Yorkers. We've seen huge increase in production just in the past year alone. So we have now 52 TV episodics and 336 movies that were shot in New York this past year. So we're doing really strong development there. In terms of Broadway, because we cover theater as well, that's a $12.5 billion industry for the city of New York, creating 89,000 jobs for the city. And then music employs 50,000 New Yorkers. And I'm happy to say we have over 120 record labels in New York. So this concept that they're leaving for LA is not true. They are being housed here in New York and we're keeping them here, which we're really excited about. And then the advertising industry employs approximately 80,000 New Yorkers. So I want to talk briefly about some of the new initiatives that we launched just this past year. So I mentioned production is an all-time high. So as the long-time Cherokee V1, and I've Cherokee V1 for seven years, an area that certainly saw a lot of production, we want to make sure that we're productions happening, but it's sensitive to our communities. So I'm happy to say that we are the first government entity in the country to launch a green initiative around film production. Basically what we're doing is we release sustainability guidelines, and if the productions meet our guidelines, we allow them to use our green certification program, all of their advertising and marketing. So we have a lot of new TV shows and movies that are now filming green in New York City. We also, just last month, launched a new program called One Book, One New York to encourage all of New Yorkers to read one particular book. We had a short list of five books. They are truly incredible books. I won't spend a lot of time talking about it, but that's a lot to say. But I do want to say that we are announcing the winner tomorrow. We put it out to a public vote. We have thousands of New Yorkers, so 15,000 people voted on this one book, and so you will read tomorrow which book won, and we're going to be doing events for the next three months all around that book. We ran a program this past summer, which we're going to run again, called Movies Under the Stars. We did 303 filming in parks around the city of New York, so really trying to encourage people to go to one of these movies under the stars. And then we also run the Made in New York marketing credit. So this is a film of production. 75% of the production is done in New York City. They have the right to use our iconic Made in New York logo, which we own and created, and we give them free bus and subway advertising, so I want to mention that as well. So Music Industry. I cannot tell you how happy I am that music is in our portfolio. So we in June held the first ever Music Industry convening for 75 music companies and organizations that we brought to City Hall. We just last week released the first Music Industry Economic Impact Statement that shows music is a 21 billion dollar industry for New York City, and it shows that wages and jobs are going faster in the music sector than in general in the city economy. And then, and we've been talking about this, we are working to bring the Grammy Award back to New York, and to not make the official announcement and just say that we are making very good progress on that. You might have read a couple weeks ago during the mayor to announce the Made in New York campus terminal. This is going to be the Bush terminal. We're really excited about it. It is a 200,000 square foot facility for fashion and a 100,000 square foot state-of-the-art filming. And the reason we're building these new studios is because production is at an all-time high, so we want to make sure that we keep this job growth and an upward trajectory for the city, which is why the city is investing dollars into this new facility. We also are the first city government in the country to put dollars behind a new virtual reality and augmented reality lab. This is a huge field for New York City, so we are going to be the first government-sponsored VR and AR lab in the country. So we are really thrilled about this. And then let me briefly talk about workforce, diversity, and inclusion. So earlier this year, we announced a slate of initiatives to promote women and to address gender inequity in the film and TV and theater world. We, for example, created a $5 million fund to support women filmmakers and women playwrights. We are giving out direct cash grants to women in this regard. And again, we are the first government agency in the country who's doing this. So I'm really excited about this. We also organized pitch workshops and a film financing conference for women filmmakers. We're doing, and I talked to someone here who I know applied for that, a screenwriting contest for New York City screenwriters for content that is either written by women or about women. And then we launched a couple of new shows, one called The Vanguard and one called Her Big Idea, which is actually our highest rated new show. And then we're also doing a gender inequity report on film industry. We also brought a program called the Made in New York PA program, where we've trained close to 700 New Yorkers into how to get careers in the film and TV industry. These are mainly under-employed and low-income New Yorkers, and we give them five weeks of free training and then careers in industry. We launched with the Writers Guild and Made in New York Writers Room program earlier this year, where we're training 500 diverse writers for careers in the TV business as writers. And then we just partnered a couple weeks ago with Roundabout Theater to launch our Made in New York Stagecraft booth camp, which is one of the first city-funded diversity initiatives in the theater industry. We also gave a million dollars to CUNY's journalism school, and we did this because, and this is just, I think, a really interesting statistic, 50% of New Yorkers derive their views on community and ethnic newspapers. They're under assault. I think we all, hopefully, read our neighborhood papers, and you see oftentimes that that reporter is literally not only the reporter, they're the editor, they're the photographer, they're the social media director. They can't do it all. And so with this million-dollar grant, we are actually training them in new media techniques, and we're going to train over 1,200 journalists. And then we also brought a number of different Made in New York talks as well. So, very briefly, I wanted to mention we helped to fund the Thierstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College. It's actually the first graduate film school on a working film lot in New York City, so we provided funding and scholarships for that. We also helped to create the Made in New York Media Center, which is really a terrific groundbreaking collaborative space. And then this year, we funded Ladders for Leaders, where we are creating internships for 200 high school and college students who are careers in these various fields. And then lastly, I'm going to end on with a theater industry. A very appropriate topic. Okay, so we have a lot within the theater industry. We're really excited about that. We're very focused on inclusion and increasing access as a top priority of the administration. And so a number of different things which we're highlighting here that we have done. So I'll briefly walk through these. I mentioned that we just partnered with Rag About Fander. We gave a $500,000 grant to create this boot camp that I mentioned, and here are some of the students that are in our boot camp, which is a 10-month workforce readiness program. We created this year Broadway in the boroughs, so we launched that this past summer where we did three Broadway performances in the out of boroughs. It's really about increasing access to underserved communities. We know Broadway is extremely expensive, and so we want to make sure that we're really reaching all communities, and so we were thrilled to be able to bring these shows to parks throughout the out of boroughs. And we're running that program again this year. We also provided 1,000 free tickets to Broadway shows for residents of NYCHA. So that's something that we did this past year, including shows like Something Rotten, Jersey Boy, Spindler, and many other shows listed here, as well as off-Broadway shows as well. And then we ran a program called Access Broadway, which I just mentioned, and we also are doing off-Broadway in the boroughs, where we're funding evening and daytime off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway as well. So we're really thrilled about this. And then I also wanted to mention the other work that we do around theater is we provide a lot of different support to festivals and programs. So for those of you that are interested, please do contact us. Carla from our office is here as well. Okay? And so please contact us to talk about any festivals that you're participating in and that you feel could be a good partnership. So Tiatra NYC, the OBE Awards, BRIC, and a number of others that we have supported this past year. So that is it. There's so much more I can say, but I just wanted to briefly give you a quick overview of some of the work that we're doing. And I'm so thrilled to be here and excited that all of you are going to be presenting your visions for the arts in NYCHA. Thank you.