By Gary Nager,

Although there are a lot of successful local business people who are members of the Wesley Chapel Rotary Club (which meets Wednesdays at noon at Ciao! Italian Bistro in the Shops at Wiregrass mall), we’re pretty sure that no local Rotarian had ever had his or her business featured on the hit ABC-TV show “Shark Tank” before club member Ben Alexander and his company Balloon Distractions’ appearance on the program, which actually is being shown tonight — Friday, January 17, 9 p.m.

But, even though I told Ben I would agree to not reveal whether or not the show’s “sharks” agreed to invest in his balloon entertainment franchising company and national talent agency that sends entertainers out to restaurants and other venues in 30 cities across the U.S., all I can say is that the promo for the show, which had billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner and media superstar Mark Cuban yelling at Ben to “Shut up!,” is reason enough to watch.

And, plenty of Ben’s fellow Rotarians and other friends are expected to be in attendance to actually watch the “Shark Tank” episode together at 8 p.m. at PrimeBar in the Shops at Wiregrass. It should be a packed house for this unprecedented event.

Even though he obviously already knew whether or not the group of sharks were going to invest in his company after the taping of the episode, Alexander himself, always the pragmatist, has worked hard to ensure that his website would have enough capacity to handle all the hits — an average of about 500,000 — every “Shark Tank”-featured business’ website receives, whether the sharks invested in them or not.

For additional information, visit BalloonDistractions.com or ABC.Go.com/shows/shark-tank.