Turner named Jennifer Dorian executive vice president of Turner Portfolio 360 Brand Strategy, a newly created position she will assume in addition to her current role as general manager of Turner Classic Movies and FilmStruck.

Dorian will now have a dual reporting structure into Coleman Breland, president of Turner Content Distribution and Turner Classic Movies, and Doug Shapiro, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Turner.

In this newly created position, Dorian will lead a company-wide initiative to identify new opportunities for revenue growth from 360-degree brand extensions across Turner networks, franchises, talent and characters.  She will oversee a strategic planning process to formulate the strategy, vision and approach to launching new businesses in a coordinated effort across the portfolio, while providing support to the individual business units.

“Jennifer is a branding expert with a great track record of turning creative ideas into real businesses and she has broad and deep relationships within Turner.” Shapiro said in a statement. “She’s perfectly positioned to work with brand managers across the Turner portfolio to develop innovative monetization opportunities and enhance the value of our key franchises.”

Dorian will continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of TCM including all strategy, business development, marketing, branding, digital initiatives, programming and on-air campaigns for both brands, as well as the strategic planning, marketing and operations for subscriber growth and retention at FilmStruck. 

“Jennifer’s many accomplishments since assuming the role of general manager of TCM speaks volumes, and she has expertly navigated the rapidly changing industry to set TCM on a path for substantial growth,” Breland said in a statement. “As the leader who led the ideation, planning and execution of Turner’s first SVOD service in the U.S., her strategic thinking and expertise are invaluable to our company, and I’m confident in her ability to advance these businesses in 2017 and beyond.”

Dorian previously served as chief strategy officer for Turner Entertainment Networks, overseeing strategic business planning and brand identity development and image marketing for TBS, TNT, truTV and TCM.

Prior to joining Turner, she held leadership positions in marketing at The Coca-Cola Co., and Pizza Hut, Inc.

Turner’s first-ever digital streaming service, FilmStruck, will debut Oct. 19, offering more than 900 classic, independent and foreign films to consumers on a subscription video-on-demand basis. A major component of the service will be exclusive access to the Criterion Collection studio library, which will launch on the service sometime in November.

UPDATE, 10-18-2016:Turner Delays Launch of FilmStruck

FilmStruck and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) general manager Jennifer Dorian recently spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the appeal of the service as well as FilmStruck’s potential subscriber base. Here’s an edited excerpt of their conversation.

NTV:What was the thinking behind creating the FilmStruck brand?

Jennifer Dorian: We have researched that a lot of fans are having a hard time with critically acclaimed, hard-to-find films and they are looking for them in multiple places, whether its streaming, on cable or on DVD and Blu-ray collections. We felt like this was the promise of the Internet: to put everything together in one place and really curate to a niche audience.

The economics work for streaming to niche audiences, so we were thinking that art house, independent cinema is a niche that’s underserved and we could be the home for it.

NTV:Why not launch the service in the linear cable space, similar to TCM?

JD: TCM is doing well and thriving in its environment on linear cable and with its TV everywhere authenticated app, so let that service do its thing. This is a new way for us to experiment and maybe take some risks that I wouldn’t want to take with a gem of a treasured brand such as TCM.

NTV:Will most of the content for FilmStruck come from the TCM library?

JD: We’ve worked with 30 distributors — mostly independent distributors and some major studios, like Miramax and Sony Pictures Classics — and we’ve cultivated a new library that is different than TCM. This is a departure from classic Hollywood. There are major film industries in Japan, Sweden, France, Italy, Mexico and Bollywood, so we’re going to have some fun with different storytellers from around the world. The first release of the service [includes] 23 movies from 23 countries and 15 languages. It’s a very different library than TCM.

NTV:How important is the Criterion Collection library acquisition for the service?

JD: It’s really huge that we are the exclusive streaming home for the Criterion library because they are a very respected and acclaimed name, they are a great brand and they have supplemental materials that are incredible for over 1,200 titles.

NTV:What specific audience demo do you expect to sign up for FilmStruck?

JD: Our research and our gut are both matching — we think it’s younger, 25-to-44-year-olds who are already streaming on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. They also all have pay TV cable as well; it’s not about cord-cutting, but rather loving entertainment so much that that’s where you spend a lot of your money. We’re also going after art-house film lovers who are streamers, and presumably they are easy to target and find through digital advertising as well as through community events and gatherings.

NTV:What platforms will FilmStruck be available on?

JD: We will initially launch on the Web via desktop, iOS and mobile devices and Android mobile devices. We’ll be exclusive on Amazon Fire TV for 30 days and then in late November we’ll be added to Apple TV OS fourth-generation generation [player]. December through March [2017] we’ll be adding Chromecast, Roku and PlayStation 4.

NTV:What makes you so confident that people will want to purchase a subscription to watch classic and art-house films in an ultra-crowded digital content environment?

JD: I think that the big players in the U.S. have already taken over the role of being all things to everybody, which leaves room for the independent niche services that appeal to fandoms and hobbyists, and I think the film community and film culture is a great community that needs to be served.

It’s less about streaming movies and more about celebrating film culture and film as art. Yes, we’re streaming movies, but we’re also streaming thematic curation and supplements that make you have a deeper, more immersive experience.

SAN FRANCISCO — With topics spanning over-the-top video, virtual and augmented reality, next-generation interfaces and emerging business models that tie into all of them, this week’s Next TV Summit here will offer an informed view of what’s on the horizon for video and pay TV.

A keynote discussion with Ben Smith will get the conference underway on Wednesday (June 15). The head of experience at Hulu will discuss adoption trends and the OTT provider’s journey into a more personalized experience, and offer some fresh insight into the early results of Hulu’s new VR application.

Also on tap is a keynote with Matthew Anderson, chief marketing officer of Roku, which is also making hay with advanced advertising models that use agile streaming platforms.

Bookmark This:MCN's complete coverage of the Next TV Summit & Expo San Francisco

Offering a view of how traditional programmers are shifting their strategies to take advantage of online viewership trends will be Nick Grad and Eric Schrier, presidents of original programming at FX Networks and FX Productions.

Individual panels will focus on new OTT business models, including the unique approaches being taken by a new class of “virtual” MVPDs, AR/ VR, and how to seek out and keep top talent in the digital age. They include the following:

• The Winning OTT Models, with Celiena Adcock of Facebook, Jennifer Dorian of TCM, Ed Lee of Roku, Michael Tribolet of YipTV and Martijn van Horssen of 24i Media;

• Essentials to Launching an OTT Service, with Dallas Middaugh of Crunchyroll, Stefan Van Engen of Xumo, Christopher Ruddy of Newsmax Media and Ted Malone of Ericsson;

• Transforming TV: Reshaping Business Models, with Rob Gabel of Tubular Labs, Ann Sarnoff of BBC Worldwide North America and Brent Smith of Evolution Digital;

• Transforming TV: The New Viewing Experience, with Matthew Chiavelli of Syfy Digital, Howard Cooperstein of Ericsson, Joshua Danovitz of TiVo, Jenny Ramaswamy of Vrse and Steve Reynolds of Imagine Communications; and

• Talent and Content in the Digital Age, with Bill Bost of Skydance Media, Michael Gaston of Cut.com, Bonnie Pan of Endemol Shine Beyond USA and Daniel Tibbets of El Rey Network.

The day will wrap with an editor’s roundtable on the State of Streaming Video, led by Mark Robichaux, editorial director of Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable, with Jeff Baumgartner, editor of Next TV, and Chris Tribbey, contributing editor, technology, B&C.

Watch for coverage from the event online at multichannel.com/nextTVsummitSFand broadcastingcable.com, and in the June 20 issues of Multichannel News and B&C.

Turner Classic Movies is going after younger viewers who like to socialize around movies with a new branding campaign — above the tagline “Let’s Movie” — the first such outreach in about a decade for the Turner Broadcasting System-owned channel.

New on-air and online spots show groups gathering to watch, for example, The Wizard of Oz projected onto the side of a Kansas barn, John Wayne in The Searchers played off a butte in Monument Valley and Ben Hur on the outside walls of The Colosseum in Rome. (Click to view a :30 spot and a :60 spot.)

“We want to appeal to broader movie lovers, not just classic movie lovers,” Jennifer Dorian, TCM’s general manager, told The Wire.

The message: "These iconic films should be enjoyed by everyone and they’re timeless, so if you love movies, check them out. It’s about getting people together and everybody making an event out of seeing an iconic film.”

Here’s where the clever spots will be seen, starting Sept. 1: on TCM’s air; on TCM.com; cross-promoted on CNN.com; on TBS, TNT and CNN Airport Network and on electronic billboards in New York and Atlanta and on-screen ads in some 750 movie theatres across the country.

There also will be a social-media campaign — #LetsMovie — building toward a “Let's Movie” holiday on Sept. 19, when TCM will encourage fans to watch films with family and friends and share their experiences socially.

Dorian also hopes to stage live events in iconic locations, possibly including a Rocky screening on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“We feel like we’re the movie place, so let’s movie,” she said.

During Monday Night Football’s preseason game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Cincinnati Bengals on Aug. 24, the Bucs scored a first-quarter touchdown when quarterback Jameis Winston dove straight toward the pylon on the right corner of the goal line. Providing an outstanding replay opportunity for ESPN’s still-evolving Pylon Cam experiment.

The MNF contest was only the third televised tryout for ESPN’s new on-field addition, following another National Football League exhibition game, between the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns, on Aug. 20 and the Pylon Cam debut during the College Football Playoff National Championship game in Dallas on Jan. 15.

It’s evolved from an initial four pylons with four cameras each to two pylons with eight higher-quality cameras each, according to ESPN.

Marc Rowley, director of production enhancements at ESPN, told The Wire that the pylon cameras that were placed along the line at the back of the end zone didn’t contribute that many great shots, so it made more sense to double down on the pylons that form a touchdown target for players like Winston.

Now, the pylons have 16 cameras in position to capture images of scoring plays at “angles that have never existed before,” capable of digitally zooming in at up to 200% enhancement, Jed Drake, senior vice president, product innovation at ESPN, said.

Eventually, the signature image from the Pylon Cam could be a replay that provides definitive proof of a touchdown that was or wasn’t, at a key moment in a championship game. Until then, as far as Rowley is concerned, “I’ll take Jameis taking a shot at the pylon; that was pretty good.”

After evaluating the results so far and in consultation with the NFL, Pylon Cams might make regular appearances during the Monday Night Football regular season, which kicks off with a Sept. 14 doubleheader — Philadelphia Eagles vs. Atlanta Falcons (6:55 p.m.) and Minnesota Vikings vs. San Francisco 49ers (10:20 p.m.) — ESPN said. It might also be used during some college-football games this season.

Social-media responses certainly seemed positive during the Bengals-Buccaneers game. “Finally technology catches up to common sense. #PylonCam #NFL” (Coach Bryan, @DrB365). “Can someone explain why it took until 2015 to have a #pyloncam? #NFL” (ReLando Calrissian, @Reondompls). “In other sports broadcasting news, the @ESPN #PylonCam on Monday Night Football is pretty cool” (Russ Maloney, @russmaloney). Etc.

“We are very optimistic about the future of Pylon Cam,” Drake said, counting it potentially among the First and 10 virtual first-down marker and the Spidercam in ESPN’s pantheon of innovations.

What a Drag … MavTV Speeds to Canada for Subs

MAVTV, the independently owned (by Lucas Oil) motorsports network, is hoping distribution roads lead to Canada soon, as the network builds its way back from a May drop by Dish Network, mostly via launches on smaller distributors in the National Cable Television Cooperative. Today (Aug. 31) it plans to announce recent additions by the likes of Harlan Municipal Utilities, Windstream and Walnut Telephone Co., along with the previously disclosed pickup by Suddenlink Communications on that operator’s sports tier.

“We’re up there this week trying to ink some distribution deals, so I think realistically MAVTV will be available in Canada first quarter of next year the way things are shaping up,” network president Bob Patison told The Wire.

The purveyor of such “adrenaline” racing events as motocross, drag boats and sprint cars has also expanded with Frontier Communications systems and Google Fiber, Patison said, downplaying the impact of being dropped from tier placement on Dish and saying there’s still hope of reinstatement. The loss was of about 1.7 million subscribers, he said. MAVTV has 28 million subscribers and is on such big distributors as DirecTV, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications and Cablevision Systems.

MAVTV also plans to up its quotient of live events, Patison said, beyond such current mainstays as pro motocross events, “King of the Cage” mixed martial arts and the annual Chili Bowl midget-car racing extravaganza in Tulsa, Okla. This January’s Chili Bowl will be the 30th anniversary, so plans are set for a one-hour pre-event show, hosted by Dave Despain, Patison said.

TCM Campaign Puts ‘Oz’ on the Broad Side of a Barn

Turner Classic Movies is going after younger viewers who like to socialize around movies with a new branding campaign — above the tagline “Let’s Movie” — the first such outreach in about a decade for the Turner Broadcasting System-owned channel.

New on-air and online spots show groups gathering to watch, for example, The Wizard of Oz projected onto the side of a Kansas barn, John Wayne in The Searchers played off a butte in Monument Valley and Ben Hur on the outside walls of The Colosseum in Rome.

“We want to appeal to broader movie lovers, not just classic movie lovers,” Jennifer Dorian, TCM’s general manager, told The Wire.

The message: ‘These iconic films should be enjoyed by everyone and they’re timeless, so if you love movies, check them out. It’s about getting people together and everybody making an event out of seeing an iconic film.”

Here’s where the clever spots will be seen, starting Sept. 1: on TCM’s air; on TCM.com; cross-promoted on CNN.com; on TBS, TNT and CNN Airport Network and on electronic billboards in New York and Atlanta and on-screen ads in some 750 movie theatres across the country.

There also will be a social-media campaign — #LetsMovie — building toward a “LetsMovie” holiday on Sept. 19, when TCM will encourage fans to watch films with family and friends and share their experiences socially.

Dorian also hopes to stage live events in iconic locations, possibly including a Rocky screening on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“We feel like we’re the movie place, so let’s movie,” she said.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Television Critics Association tour is known for its unusual and often memorable moments as network executives and talent face the firing line of questions from often-cranky critics. While the cable portion of the TCA was relatively tame with regards to a war of words between critics and on-stage personnel, a few notable exchanges occured over the four-day period.

• Starz CEO Chris Albrecht during his July 31 session took writers to task for perpetuating a perceived war of words between his network and HBO regarding their respective sports-related series, Survivor’s Remorse and Ballers. The day before, HBO president of programming Michael Lombardo had said he wasn’t familiar with Survivor’s Remorse when a writer asked him about a Starz press release that claimed TV critics were more enamored with the basketball-themed series than HBO’s football-focused comedy Ballers, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

After being asked if he had heard of Ballers, Albrecht quickly shot down any beef between the two networks and chided the writer who initially framed the question to HBO. While admitting that “one of our people was out there pitching shows maybe a little bit too ardently” he warned writers to “behave themselves” when asking questions to the stars of Survivor’s Remorse when then came to the stage later that morning, a request that writers honored.

• During network sessions, series producers, directors and stars often look to the press to help promote their projects. But during Discovery Channel’s session on Racing Extinction, a critic asked the documentary’s showrunners what journalists could do to further get out the show’s message that without a serious focus on conservation, the world faces the potential global extinction of numerous species of animals over the next few decades.

Director Louie Psihoyos (The Cove) wasted no time in urging writers to “join the team” by signing up at racingextinction.com for alerts regarding the film, which will air in December.

“Everybody in this room can reach tens of millions of people. That’s huge. That’s a big advantage,” Psihoyos said. “You can magnify [the message] by getting journalists to write about it, getting it on Discovery. It’s all about scaling up.”

• Most cable and broadcast network series showrunners who address the TCA are excited about their projects and openly thank the networks for supporting them. But some critics were taken aback about the almost giddy enthusiasm several producers and showrunners had about working for over-the-top service Netflix, saying that its liberating to have creative freedom and to not to have to worry about ratings or advertiser and network concerns about content.

Reacting to a question about whether it would be hard to go back to working with a network after her Netflix experience, Grace & Frankie showrunner Marta Kauffman said it would be “difficult” working under the more restrictive parameters of traditional television — parameters that the co-creator of NBC’s 1990s mega-hit Friends is familiar with.

“There is this thing about not having to structure a half an hour in six parts … you can’t tell a story in 21 minutes,” Kauffman said. “So I think going back to that kind of difficult, shortened storytelling would be impossible now that I’ve gotten the opportunity to have almost 10 minutes more and let the story tell us how long it should be.”

— R. Thomas Umstead

TCM: Passionate Film-Noir Fans Won’t Cut Class

Zombie shows draw fans in bunches, but film-noir aficionados have more stamina.

That’s one conclusion The Wire drew after hearing the results from a Turner Classic Movies stunt this summer that invited viewers to take an eight-week online course pegged to the channel’s “Summer of Darkness” programming event.

It was the first online course tie-in TCM had tried, general manager Jennifer Dorian explained, and it was a natural one because it fit with an existing Ball State University free course called “Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir.” Enrollees on a weekly basis would watch 45-minute videos and educational lectures, read long articles and take quizzes in order to ace the course, administered by Canvas Network. That’s a fair amount of work to obtain a certificate.

The norm for completing what are called massive online open courses is a rate of around 4% or 5%, Dorian said. The “Summer of Darkness” completion rate stands at 14.4% with results still being tallied.

As for zombies: The biggest- ever MOOC was tied in with The Walking Dead, and drew 65,000 enrollees — but only 3% completed it, according to statistics provided by TCM.

Dorian, over iced teas in New York City last week, said she wasn’t very surprised that a relatively high percentage completed the June and July program. “Our fans go deep; they’re committed to their passion for classic cinema,” she said, adding, “I liked the 20,000 people — that impressed me.” Dorian said the TCM programming formula — uncut, commercial-free movies, primarily from the 1900s to 1979, with some “peppering” of more recent films — still worked and won’t be tinkered with or massively modernized. She does want to do more interactive projects like this online course and create “on-ramps” to draw in younger viewers and more casual movie fans.

The “Summer of Darkness” stunt also struck a social-media chord as TCM sent fans a daily dose of two-minute film noir clips and sought their responses on Twitter (#noirsummer). The clips drew TCM’s highest-ever activity Twitter rate, Dorian said, even surpassing the awards-season staple “31 Days of Oscar.”
— Kent Gibbons