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Local TV Show Promoting Harlem Hopes to Boost Business in its Second Season

By Gustavo Solis | April 9, 2015 8:50am
 The show promotes positive stories about people and businesses in Harlem.
What's Eating Harlem
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HARLEM — A local television program that showcases Harlem's new businesses is trying to get people off their couch and into the neighborhood.

What’s Eating Harlem” is a lifestyle show that airs four times a week on channel 25, NYC Life — a city-owned TV channel. It started as a website in 2011, got on air in 2014, and now has 150,000 viewers a week, according to the show's founder and producer Paul Phillips, a former engineer at WPIX-TV.

“It started as a way of showing people new places to eat and it evolved from there,” he said.

Each week the 25-minute show has three to four feature stories about Harlem. They include new restaurants, a style segment, Harlem history, and profiles of local celebrities like R&B singers and a Grammy-winning sound producer.

What's Eating Harlem
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What's Eating Harlem

The show is a month into its second season and is trying to keep its audience growing by connecting its viewers with some of the businesses it covers.

This year they will launch a membership program that gives people discounts to local restaurants and shops, and access to exclusive members-only events, Phillips said.

“We have been focusing a lot on small businesses because they really don’t get a lot of recognition,” the show's host Vanessa Tyler said.

The show makes money from local sponsors. Businesses pay $300 per episode with a five-episode commitment and Phillips shoots their commercial. Their commercials appear on each of the show's three reruns in the tri-state area, Phillips said. 

Although some of the sponsors have been featured in the program, “What’s Eating Harlem” doesn’t charge businesses to be a part of the show, he added.

“The show works so well because there are so many stories in Harlem,” Tyler said. “There is so much talent and so many personalities here in Harlem but nobody tells their stories. We have been focusing a lot on small businesses because they really don’t get a lot of recognition.”

Tyler, a former reporter and fill-in anchor at WPIX-TV, joined the “What’s Eating Harlem” project in February 2014. She was drawn to the program because of its focus on positive stories about the neighborhood. While working in broadcast news, she loved producing upbeat features but they would often get dropped to make room for breaking news, she said.

Both Phillips and Tyler were born and raised in Harlem — Phillips in Sugar Hill and Tyler in the Grant Houses.

They think it is especially important to tell Harlem’s stories now because of all the change that’s happening in the neighborhood, Tyler said.

Although the demographics of the neighborhood are changing, the close-knit culture will remain, because locals tend to embrace newcomers, she said.

“I feel that Harlem will always be Harlem even though we will have new people living here,” she said.

The show airs new episodes every Thursday at 9:30 p.m., and airs reruns on Tuesdays at 3 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Sundays.