BusinessTN

Though many Tennesseans probably still don't know it, Knoxville is among the largest cable television production markets in the United States after Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Thriving in that cottage industry is accountant Jenny Hines.

The former tax manager at KPMG Peat Marwick first stepped out on her own in 1990, sharing overhead with two former audit managers at KPMG, but it was in 1998 that she formed Hines & Company. Today, Hines and her partner Janna Hubbs boast a client base comprised of at least 30 businesses, large and small, in the Knoxville production industry, not to mention dozens of individual producers and related professionals working in the sector. Corporate clients include companies marketing their products to entities like Scripps and HGTV--such as Dick Broadcasting and Jupiter Entertainment (creators of the cable channel Oxygen's Snapped, among others), as well as Bonnaroo producers AC Entertainment, Tantrum Pictures, Flip Film & Design, Cable Spots and Smoky Mountain Grip & Lighting Co., to name a few.

Hines got involved in the industry through her husband, himself a producer. "Nobody had ever specialized in this area, so everybody started coming here," Hines explains modestly.

In addition, Hines is also a specialist in tax and financial accounting work for a number of real estate developers, real estate management companies and builders. Her first client in that area, initiated 18 years ago, was Iraqi immigrant Sam Mischu, whose well-known Knoxville-based company M&M Development is a prolific developer of Walgreens stores throughout the South.

Including herself, Hines boasts 11 employees, at press time including five CPAs. The company has long been the apple of the eye of bigger firms trying to buy Hines out in order to capture her client base--as well as the CEO herself. "We've had a few interesting calls," Hines says. "But we have come to the point where there's such a great team work approach that we're happy with the way things are right now."