Kevin Wall: Live 8, Live Earth, and the first internet Emmy

Born Fort Wayne, March 1952 — producer of the largest music events ever staged

The Embassy's kid: Kevin Wall was born in Fort Wayne in March 1952 — most published biographies give the day as the 15th; an Indiana Music Makers profile gives the 5th, and the difference stands in the record unresolved. He grew up in the city as one of twelve children in a family that lived in and worked at the Roller Dome, a roller-skating rink. He graduated from North Side High School, and his first work as a producer was presenting music events at Fort Wayne's own Embassy Theatre.

At eighteen he left for Ann Arbor, promoted concerts at the University of Michigan and other Midwest colleges, and — asked to supply a portable stage for a George Harrison show — founded Stage One, Inc., which within a few years was providing staging and lighting for stadium tours by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the Who. In 1984 he founded Radio Vision International, the company that pioneered the international licensing of music television; through it he produced or distributed the defining benefit concerts of the decade — USA for Africa in 1985, and in 1988 Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! tour and the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute — together with the television of Live Aid. A 1990s detour into the internet business (BoxTop, folded into iXL) interrupted nothing for long.

The Fort Wayne teenager from the Embassy became, in 2005, the executive producer of Live 8: more than 250 acts performing in a simultaneous series of concerts around the world on 2 July 2005 to press the G8 on African poverty. Its live multi-feed webcast set the era's record for online viewing, and in 2006 that internet delivery won the first Emmy Award ever given for content delivered over the internet — an award that rests on the executive producer, and that made Wall, in the standard phrasing of his biographies, the first person to receive an Emmy for interactive content. The same year he took sole control of his joint venture Network LIVE and renamed it Control Room. With former Vice President Al Gore he then co-created Live Earth — 150 acts at eleven sites on 7 July 2007, carried by television, radio, and streaming to a total audience estimated at nearly a billion and a half people, and setting live-streaming records as it went.

Control Room's executive-producer credits ran on: the Green Inaugural Ball of 2009 (the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel marked it under the headline "City native is producer of Green Inaugural Ball"), the FIFA World Cup Kick-Off Celebration Concert in Soweto in 2010, the Clinton Foundation's Decade of Difference concert in 2011, and Gucci's Chime for Change in 2013 — more than 150 events in the company's own count by 2015. Wall's second career as an investor — co-founding the virtual-reality company Dreamscape Immersive with the film producer Walter Parkes in 2016, and his PTK Capital fund — belongs to the business record. The hometown tie was renewed in the city's own room: on 6 May 2016 he came back to Fort Wayne to give Ivy Tech Northeast's commencement address at the Memorial Coliseum.

Sources:

1. Ivy Tech Community College Northeast, news release, 7 April 2016 (via Around Fort Wayne) — Wall a Fort Wayne native and North Side High School graduate who "began producing music events at the Embassy Theatre"; the Emmy for Live 8; the 6 May 2016 commencement address at the Memorial Coliseum.
2. Biographical summaries of Kevin Wall (Wikipedia and its derivatives, including Alchetron) — born 15 March 1952 in Fort Wayne; one of twelve children, the family living and working at the Roller Dome; Stage One at Ann Arbor; Radio Vision International founded 1984; the Live 8 and Live Earth accounts; the selected executive-producer credits; Dreamscape Immersive (2016) and PTK Capital (2015).
3. Indiana Music Makers (Indiana Music Makers project) — "Born and raised in Fort Wayne," with the birth date given as 5 March 1952; produced or distributed over 300 concerts, including Live Aid, the concerts to free Nelson Mandela, Roger Waters at the Berlin Wall, Live 8, the 2010 FIFA World Cup kick-off concert, and Live Earth; the Emmy for Live 8.
4. "'Live 8 on AOL' wins first broadband Emmy," National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (emmyonline) — the first Emmy honoring programs delivered by internet, 2006.
5. The News-Sentinel, January 2009 (archived headline) — "City native is producer of Green Inaugural Ball."
6. Billboard, 2006 — Wall acquires Network LIVE and renames it Control Room.