Former AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan has joined the executives in residence program at the Columbia Business School.

Sapan, now executive vice chairman at the programming company, will be among the 28 C-level executives mentoring the school’s MBA students.

Also: View from the Top: AMC CEO Sapan’s Work-From-Home Watchword Is Overcommunicate

The Columbia program is led by Director Al Drewes, a former senior VP and CFO of Pepsi. The senior executives  come from a wide variety of industries—from technology to healthcare to real estate–and give of their time to advise students and help them thrive.

Sapan was president and CEO of AMC Networks for 26 years, transforming it from Rainbow Media, a programming subsidiary of Cablevision Systems, into a public company responsible for award-winning shows including Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul.

In addition to its cable networks, AMC Networks also now owns a stable of growing streaming services. ■

AMC Networks said that Josh Sapan, president and CEO of the company for 26 years, has decided to step down and become executive vice chairman.

As part of a transition plan, the company has brought in former Showtime head Matthew Blank as interim CEO while the company searches for a replacement.

Also Read: View from the Top: AMC CEO Sapan’s Work-From-Home Watchword Is Overcommunicate

“Over his long career, Josh’s leadership ensured AMC Networks became a force in entertainment, with far-reaching influence throughout the industry, and home to some of the most successful and innovative shows in the history of television. We are grateful for his vision, creativity and management expertise and look forward to his continued contributions as executive vice chairman,” said AMC Networks chairman James Dolan. 

“We are also delighted to have Matt help us through this transition. His wealth of media experience will prove valuable as he works with Josh and the AMC Networks team to support the company’s continued success,” Dolan said.

During his tenure, Sapan, 70, oversaw the transition of AMC Networks to a destination for award-winning original programming including Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, and is now in the process of getting the company into the streaming game with focused subscription services including AMC Plus, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and ALLBLK.

Also Read: AMC Net Income Rises to $35.9 Million in 2Q

Sapan became head of the company in 1995 when it was a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems known as Rainbow Media.

“This has been the greatest career I could have ever imagined, and I am enormously proud of all that we have accomplished. I am deeply grateful to Charles and Jim Dolan for allowing me this spectacular opportunity,” said Sapan. “There has perhaps been no more exciting time for the company than right now and, as executive vice chairman, I look forward to continuing to work with the outstanding team at AMC Networks, as well as Matt, my great colleague and friend, to focus on how we maximize our unique content to accelerate our streaming goals.”

Sapan's most recent contract with AMC had a provision that allowed him to transition to executive VP. The agreement calls for AMC to acquires at least three films submitted by Sapan for $900,000 each, with the company  getting the rights to exhibit, televise and stream the films.

He received total compensation of $11.8 million in 2020.

Blank, 71, was CEO at Showtime from 1995 to 2015. He continued as chairman and then adviser until 2018. Before that he was with HBO for 12 years.

According to a filing with the SEC, Blank's new one-year contract takes effect Sept. 8. Blank will get a base salary of $2 million, with a bonus targeted at 200% of his base salary. He also received stock units valued at $5 million.

AMC Networks said that total compensation for president and CEO Josh Sapan fell 41% to $11.8 million for 2020.

The company filed its annual proxy statement Friday with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

The proxy statement noted that 2020 compensation took into consideration the company’s “solid overall 2020 operational and financial performance despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic” as well as the shift in consumer behavior that is impacting the cable television business.

Sapan’s $2 million salary was unchanged. The biggest change was that he received $5.6 million in stock awards for 2020, down from $13.8 million in 2019. 

Sapan last year signed an extension of his employment contract that runs through the end of 2022.

Charles Dolan, who retired as executive chairman in September, and now serves as chairman emeritus, received $1.9 million, down from $2.8 million. 

Chief Operating Officer Ed Carroll’s compensation was $6.7 million, down from $8.2 million. 

AMC Networks said it has amended its employment agreement with president and CEO Josh Sapan that will keep him with the company through Dec. 31, 2022.

Also Read: View from the Top: AMC CEO Sapan’s Work-From-Home Watchword Is Overcommunicate

Sapan has been in charge of the company since 1995, when it was part of Cablevision Systems. The company was spun off in 2011.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sapan will have a minimum annual base salary of $2 million.

Also Read: AMC Networks CFO Sullivan to Leave Company

He will be eligible for a bonus that could be worth up to 200% of that base salary. He will also be able to participate in the company’s long-term equity and other incentive programs that could be worth not less than $14 million.

His title could change in 2022 to vice chairman, the filing said.

Last month, AMC said that it would incur severance costs of $20 million to $30 million during the fourth quarter as the result of reducing its staff by 10%, eliminating about 100 employees.

The company reported that third quarter net income fell 47% to $62 million, with revenue falling 9% to $954 million,

As president and CEO of AMC Networks, Josh Sapan has profited from a fictional zombie apocalypse. Now he must manage through a historic pandemic and he says his watchword is to “overcommunicate” with staffers during these tense times.

Like others in the media business, Sapan is away from the office, working from home and finding little tricks to help him do his job and keep the company on track.

The company recently reported a 52% decline in first-quarter earnings and said it expected ad revenue to be down about 30% in the second quarter. The upside was that AMC’s targeted streaming services are expected to get to between 3.5 million and 4 million subscribers by the end of the year, a milestone the company didn’t expect to reach until 2022.

Sapan sees some good coming from this catastrophe, including new ways of producing shows and new platforms for companion programming.

He sat down in his home office and did an interview over Windows Meet with B+C business editor Jon Lafayette. Here’s a recap of the conversation.

MCN: Where are you working from these days?

Josh Sapan: I’m working from a place called Shelter Island, New York. I’ve had a house here for 20-plus years and I’m in the attic-ish part of it, which is remote from the rest of the house.

MCN: Did you used to use that spot when you were working from home or is it a new office space?

JS: I didn’t spend much time here. It’s a little warm in the warm weather. But I’m up here now and I have three screens with three keyboards and two telephones, all charging simultaneously.

MCN: Is that stuff that was brought in in early March?

JS: Yes. I’ve always had two telephones. And I’ve always had an iPad, but I brought an iPad from work and I also got a laptop because we’re doing Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Our IT group was phenomenal. Not just for me, but for everybody.

MCN: What part of working remotely surprised you the most?

JS: I would say a couple of things. One is the work ethic and the hard work of everyone. People are perhaps working harder and longer than they did. I think that we have to be careful with it. There is no demarcation or not much between personal time and work time. And that’s quite something, especially for people with kids at home who are doing remote learning and need attention.

I’m surprised that this has actually increased everyone’s punctuality. People aren’t late and I think the economy or efficiency of time has perhaps improved.

MCN: What do you miss about working from an office?

JS: I miss the elements that caused us not to be very efficient. I miss the human, open-ended dialogue with people that I passed in the hallway. It’s a peculiar practice, but I try to arrive at different floors in our office on different days in order to see different people and just interact with them occasionally. So I work on the 18th floor, but I’ll go to the 19th floor, which is the main entrance to our office, and say hello to the woman who is at the front desk there, Jeanine [Holmes]. And I’ll go to other offices and say hello to people who are there. You develop patterns of conversation. They’re not intimate, but they’re fun and they’re human and they have a nice quality of walking down the street and living in a town and I do miss that sort of terribly.

MCN: Are you able to collaborate with your top executives?

JS: Yeah. I’d like to think very much. We have perhaps instituted a more vigorous and more regular sequence of meetings. So we have a senior leadership team twice a week, those are eight people. I have regular catch-ups with direct reports that are on a very regular basis. We have senior staff meetings, as we always did, with a group of 25. There’s a whole protocol of meeting, as anyone would have. We just last week did our first virtual check-in meeting with 1,500 participants across the globe. I had to move my laptop downstairs, by the way, because I didn’t want to be on wireless just because of the possibility of it being hinky, and so it was hard-wired into the router.

MCN: How do you maintain communication with the entire company?

JS: I think our watchword has been overcommunicate, and our talent and people have been leading that. So we really are trying to acknowledge that when people are at home and not receiving both social information and familiarity of being where they are. Also, it’s a peculiar time, of course, because as a pandemic and they’re undergoing in some cases challenging personal circumstances related to people near them who have health issues or, and not a small thing, the burden on people who normally rely on external resources to help with people who they are caring for, or children. When that’s gone, I think that they need and would like more communication from the company. So we’ve been attempting to make sure that we fill that with, I call it overcommunication. It may not be “over.” It is over compared to what we normally did in the past.

MCN: Has your style of leadership changed?

JS: I think by degree. Certainly for this circumstance. Yes, and at least my attempt has been to be more communicative, even if there’s not specificity in what will happen with returning to workplaces when it does. There’s ambiguity surrounding that, for very obvious reasons, and that creates concern on behalf of people with about where they will be when, what their kids will be doing, who they’ll be helping to educate, whether their kids will be at camp, et cetera, et cetera. So I would say that for this circumstance, I have been attempting to follow behaviors that are helpful. I think there’s a different set of behaviors that are better suited for this circumstance than for others.

MCN: What’s new in your daily routine?

JS: What’s new in my daily routine is that thermoses have overtaken my life. I think it’s because they stay hot, they stay cold and they don’t need refilling. It’s terribly sedentary. If I have individual calls, I try and do them outdoors and make that a part of work. I’m able to walk an average of at least 10 miles a day, usually on work calls. I’ve got this [he shows a notebook he carries in his back pocket] and I use wireless headphones. I bought a backup pair assuming I would at least lose one pair somewhere along the way. There’s good cell service here. It’s not that heavily populated an area. So it’s very accommodating but it allows at least for some ventilation.

MCN: Any other habits?

JS: I have found that my thumb hits Speedtest like an addict. I’ve done Speedtest on multiple devices and what I expect to get out of it, I don’t know. But when I hit 225 megabits, a feeling of plentitude comes over me. It’s a gateway drug to checking megabits up and down.

MCN: What part of the business has been most affected by this crisis?

JS: Production, obviously, is ceased and that’s meaningful for us. I think that’s had a couple of interesting consequences. The obvious is we don’t have new shows for when they’re planned. That affects our advertising.

It’s also breathed some oxygen into new forms and formats. Our Talking Dead shows are from home. So we’ve done other home shows that some of which have been surprisingly good. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is doing Friday Night In with the Morgans. His wife was on One Tree Hill. She was an MTV VJ. She’s charming. They live in upstate New York and they’ve had all sorts of people on their shows. 

Love After Lockup is a big hit. Those people really know what isolation’s like, so they’ve done material from home, which has been pretty interesting.

I actually think we’re going to find increasingly new flavors and forms and formats of adjacent content. I have a 24-year-old who’s home, so I observe her behavior and not surprisingly she’s on platforms, and so I’m spending more time on Twitch. I’m spending more time on TikTok. And we’re using those platforms as companions for our content, and I think they’re spectacular companions for our content. I think that’s something that will emerge as something that is much more common in the future. If you look at the followers, they’re monstrous numbers, and so talent going on TikTok is certainly something that’s on my mind because it creates very instant activity among a specific demo.

The other one that’s meaningful for us is our subscription services have grown dramatically on a percentage basis. That’s very good news for us. Not only have they grown, but engagement has grown, meaning people are using them a lot more. That’s a function of the circumstance, but it’s quite encouraging.

MCN: How will content change? Will we stop seeing shaking hands, hugging and crowded offices in shows?

JS: When there are meaningful chaotic world events, from 9/11 to the Vietnam War to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., it always seems to me like it takes a period of time for them to be digested and understood and reflected upon. It does seem like there’s a gestation period for understanding and almost one needs a distance to reflect it well. The other odd thing is that there’s so much on the screen that has a dystopian narrative that’s become sort of prescient. I find people trying to explain to me how they feel using movie and TV references and they say, ‘It’s like an episode of blank.’

MCN: Is there anything you’re doing now that you’ll continue to do once offices reopen?

JS: I do think there have been some cues about the efficiency of remote communications that are undeniable. They can be highly, highly efficient. I also think that the potential of production efficiencies, and the acceptability and interest in, to use an overused word, “authentic” expression from home where you’ll see your kid, you’ll see your dog accidentally, has a sort of relevance that we’ve seen in user-generated content. There will be new flavors and forms of communication that arise from it. They may be adjuncts to the central story, but they also may emerge more significantly as interesting things of their own. 

As president and CEO of AMC Networks, Josh Sapan has profited from a fictional zombie apocalypse. Now he must manage through a historic pandemic and he says his watchword is to “overcommunicate” with staffers during these tense times.

Like others in the media business, Sapan is away from the office, working from home and finding little tricks to help him do his job and keep the company on track.

The company recently reported a 52% decline in first-quarter earnings and said it expected ad revenue to be down about 30% in the second quarter. The upside was that AMC’s targeted streaming services are expected to get to between 3.5 million and 4 million subscribers by the end of the year, a milestone the company didn’t expect to reach until 2022.

Sapan sees some good coming from this catastrophe, including new ways of producing shows and new platforms for companion programming.

He sat down in his home office and did an interview over Windows Meet with Multichannel News. Here’s a recap of the conversation.

MCN: Where are you working from these days?

Josh Sapan: I’m working from a place called Shelter Island, New York. I’ve had a house here for 20-plus years and I’m in the attic-ish part of it, which is remote from the rest of the house.

MCN: Did you used to use that spot when you were working from home or is it a new office space?

JS: I didn’t spend much time here. It’s a little warm
in the warm weather. But I’m up here now and I
have three screens with three keyboards and two telephones, all charging simultaneously.

“I miss the elements that caused us not to be very efficient. I miss the human, open-ended dialogue with people that I passed in the hallway.”

MCN: Is that stuff that was brought in in early March?

JS: Yes. I’ve always had two telephones. And I’ve always had an iPad, but I brought an iPad from work and I also got a laptop because we’re doing Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Our IT group was phenomenal. Not just for me, but for everybody.

MCN: What part of working remotely surprised you the most?

JS: I would say a couple of things. One is the work ethic and the hard work of everyone. People are perhaps working harder and longer than they did. I think that we have to be careful with it. There is no demarcation or not much between personal time and work time. And that’s quite something, especially for people with kids at home who are doing remote learning and need attention.

I’m surprised that this has actually increased everyone’s punctuality. People aren’t late and I think the economy or efficiency of time has perhaps improved.

MCN: What do you miss about working from
an office?

JS: I miss the elements that caused us not to be very efficient. I miss the human, open-ended dialogue with people that I passed in the hallway. It’s a peculiar practice, but I try to arrive at different floors in our office on different days in order to see different people and just interact with them occasionally. So I work on the 18th floor, but I’ll go to the 19th floor, which is the main entrance to our office, and say hello to the woman who is at the front desk there, Jeanine [Holmes]. And I’ll go to other offices and say hello to people who are there. You develop patterns of conversation. They’re not intimate, but they’re fun and they’re human and they have a nice quality of walking down the street and living in a town and I do miss that sort of terribly.

MCN: Are you able to collaborate with your top executives?

JS: Yeah. I’d like to think very much. We have perhaps instituted a more vigorous and more regular sequence of meetings. So we have a senior leadership team twice a week, those are eight people. I have regular catch-ups with direct reports that are on a very regular basis. We have senior staff meetings, as we always did, with a group of 25. There’s a whole protocol of meeting, as anyone would have. We just last week did our first virtuaI check-in meeting with 1,500 participants across the globe. I had to move my laptop downstairs, by the way, because I didn’t want to be on wireless just because of the possibility of it being hinky, and so it was hard-wired into the router.

MCN: How do you maintain communication with the entire company?

JS: I think our watchword has been overcommunicate, and our talent and people have been leading that. So we really are trying to acknowledge that when people are at home and not receiving both social information and familiarity of being where they are. Also, it’s a peculiar time, of course, because as a pandemic and they’re undergoing in some cases challenging personal circumstances related to people near them who have health issues or, and not a small thing, the burden on people who normally rely on external resources to help with people who they are caring for, or children. When that’s gone, I think that they need and would like more communication from the company. So we’ve been attempting to make sure that we fill that with, I call it overcommunication. It may not be “over.” It is over compared to what we normally did in the past.

MCN: Has your style of leadership changed?

JS: I think by degree. Certainly for this circumstance. Yes, and at least my attempt has been to be more communicative, even if there’s not specificity in what will happen with returning to workplaces when it does. There’s ambiguity surrounding that, for very obvious reasons, and that creates concern on behalf of people with about where they will be when, what their kids will be doing, who they’ll be helping to educate, whether their kids will be at camp, et cetera, et cetera. So I would say that for this circumstance, I have been attempting to follow behaviors that are helpful. I think there’s a different set of behaviors that are better suited for this circumstance than for others.

MCN: What’s new in your daily routine?

JS: What’s new in my daily routine is that thermoses have overtaken my life. I think it’s because they stay hot, they stay cold and they don’t need refilling. It’s terribly sedentary. If I have individual calls, I try and do them outdoors and make that a part of work. I’m able to walk an average of at least 10 miles a day, usually on work calls. I’ve got this [he shows a notebook he carries in his back pocket] and I use wireless headphones. I bought a backup pair assuming I would at least lose one pair somewhere along the way. There’s good cell service here. It’s not that heavily populated an area. So it’s very accommodating but it allows at least for some ventilation.

MCN: Any other habits?

JS: I have found that my thumb hits Speedtest like an addict. I’ve done Speedtest on multiple devices and what I expect to get out of it, I don’t know. But when I hit 225 megabits, a feeling of plentitude comes over me. It’s a gateway drug to checking megabits up and down.

MCN: What part of the business has been most affected by this crisis?

JS: Production, obviously, is ceased and that’s meaningful for us. I think that’s had a couple of interesting consequences. The obvious is we don’t have new shows for when they’re planned. That affects our advertising.

It’s also breathed some oxygen into new forms and formats. Our Talking Dead shows are from home. So we’ve done other home shows that some of which have been surprisingly good. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is doing Friday Night In with the Morgans. His wife was on One Tree Hill. She was an MTV VJ. She’s charming. They live in upstate New York and they’ve had all sorts of people on their shows.

Love After Lockup is a big hit. Those people really know what isolation’s like, so they’ve done material from home, which has been pretty interesting.

I actually think we’re going to find increasingly new flavors and forms and formats of adjacent content. I have a 24-year-old who’s home, so I observe her behavior and not surprisingly she’s on platforms, and so I’m spending more time on Twitch. I’m spending more time on TikTok. And we’re using those platforms as companions for our content, and I think they’re spectacular companions for our content. I think that’s something that will emerge as something that is much more common in the future. If you look at the followers, they’re monstrous numbers, and so talent going on TikTok is certainly something that’s on my mind because it creates very instant activity among a specific demo.

The other one that’s meaningful for us is our subscription services have grown dramatically on a percentage basis. That’s very good news for us. Not only have they grown, but engagement has grown, meaning people are using them a lot more. That’s a function of the circumstance, but it’s quite encouraging.

MCN: How will content change? Will we stop seeing shaking hands, hugging and crowded offices in shows?

JS: When there are meaningful chaotic world events, from 9/11 to the Vietnam War to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., it always seems to me like it takes a period of time for them to be digested and understood and reflected upon. It does seem like there’s a gestation period for understanding and almost one needs a distance to reflect it well. The other odd thing is that there’s so much on the screen that has a dystopian narrative that’s become sort of prescient. I find people trying to explain to me how they feel using movie and TV references and they say, ‘It’s like an episode of blank.’

MCN: Is there anything you’re doing now that you’ll continue to do once offices reopen?

JS: I do think there have been some cues about the efficiency of remote communications that are undeniable. They can be highly, highly efficient. I also think that the potential of production efficiencies, and the acceptability and interest in, to use an overused word, “authentic” expression from home where you’ll see your kid, you’ll see your dog accidentally, has a sort of relevance that we’ve seen in user-generated content. There will be new flavors and forms of communication that arise from it. They may be adjuncts to the central story, but they also may emerge more significantly as interesting things of their own. λ

As the streaming wars heat up, AMC Networks is keeping one of its big guns--the upcoming third series in the Walking Dead franchise--for itself and its own direct-to-consumer platforms.

Speaking on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Thursday, CEO Josh Sapan noted that the company had done a lucrative deal with Amazon to distribute the series overseas, outside of territories where AMC owns networks.

“However, in the U.S. we are holding back rights that we’ve traditionally sold to third parties,” Sapan said. “So domestically we will not sell the SVOD rights to this third Walking Dead series, but rather the series will be used to fuel our own platforms, both streaming as well as linear, as we window it and take full advantage of the opportunities that it presents for us.”

Related: AMC Networks Reports Higher Third-Quarter Net

The new Walking Dead series, set to have its linear premiere in the second quarter, could be a good fit for AMC Premiere, the company’s ad-free services, or Shudder, it’s horror-based SVOD service, Sapan suggested.

But Sapan noted that AMC would be looking at the best way to monetize its shows on a case-by-case basis.

He noted that the series Nos4a2 premiered on the AMC channel in the U.S. and then went to two of AMC’s streaming platforms, Shudder and AMC Premiere.

Related: AMC Orders Season 10 of ‘The Walking Dead’

A Discovery of Witches, on the other hand, debuted earlier this year on Shudder and Sundance Now, driving record usage and subscriber acquisition. Then it appeared on AMC channel, where it delivered strong ratings, he said.

“These examples illustrate how our multiple platforms are creating increasingly varied past to monetization and significant and different opportunities for our intellectual property, content engine,” he said.

Sapan also noted that AMC’s streaming services don’t really compete with the heavyweights from Comcast, AT&T, Disney and Apple that will be duking it out.

Instead AMC’s streaming services are hyper targeted and focused and “are thriving and we believe will continue to thrive, alongside what some may call the Something for Everyone SVOD category that is becoming more crowded and competitive by the day,” he said.

“The economic fundamentals around these targeted services have great attributes and are, in some cases, particularly for a company like ours, superior to the general entertainment SVOD category as there’s not the same pressure on retail price and there is not the same share battle,” Sapan said, noting that Acorn TV, AMC’s streaming service specializing in British shows, increased its price by $1 a month yet continued to grow.

Acorn TV recently passed the 1 million subscriber threshold, he noted, and AMC has been telling analysts it expects to have more than 2 million subscribers among all its services. “We are in fact now pacing to be ahead of that stated target,” Sapan said.

The company expects its streaming businesses to cross 3.5 million to 4 million cumulative subs by 2022 and by 2024 its said it plans to be in the 5 million to 7 million subscriber range. At that point, those services will be generating $500 million, the company forecasts.

“AMC Networks is well on its way to strategically transforming itself from a cable channels company into a premier content company with a suite of focused and targeted video entertainment products that are delivered to viewers on an ever expanding array of platforms,” Sapan said.

“And as our TV series come off their exhibition windows on main stream streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, they will then come back to us, AMC Networks, for the first time, representing a new business opportunity as we make determinations around the optimal utilization of that content,” he said.

AMC Networks reported higher profit in the second quarter as lower losses in its international operation offset declines at its U.S. networks.

Net income rose 3% to $106 million, or $1.82 a share, from $103 million, or $1.54, a year ago.

Revenue rose 7.2% to $761 million.

At the company’s national networks in the U.S., including AMC, We TV, Sundance TV, IFC and BBC America, operating income was down 0.8% to $210 million. Programming expenses rose including a $4 million write-off of programming assets.

Related: AMC Networks Sets Senior Programming Leadership Team

Revenue rose 3.7% to $627 million. Distribution revenue increased 5.8% to $380 million. Advertising revenue edged up 0.6% to $247 million despite lower ratings.

The company cut the operating losses at its international and other segment by 673.7% to $11.3 million. International revenue rose 32.4% to $146.7 million.

Other revenue was up by $30 million because of the acquisition of Levity Entertainment Group.

“We continued to deliver solid financial and operating results in the second quarter, growing revenue and adjusted operating income; generating strong free cash flow; and using our capital to position the business for the long-term,” said CEO Josh Sapan. 

“Our recent transactions related to RLJ Entertainment and Levity are strategically consistent with several of our larger goals, including furthering our interests in ad-free direct-to-consumer businesses that we own and control, through RLJ Entertainment’s growing Acorn TV and UMC SVOD services, and content ownership," he added.

Related | broadcastingcable.com: AMC Acquiring Johnson’s RLJ Entertainment for $65M

Sapan noted that as an independent programmer, the company’s content and networks were carried by the most virtual MVPDs, including AT&T’s Watch. AMC Networks's total number of subscribers is up 2% from a year ago at a time when cord-cutting is reducing pay-TV customers.

“In an environment that is rapidly changing, our strong track record, along with our size and our attractive price to distributors, will enable us to continue operating from a strong competitive position, take advantage of growth opportunities, and create value for shareholders," Sapan said.

AMC Networks reported higher fourth-quarter earnings as benefits from the new tax law helped offset lower income and revenue at its U.S. cable networks.

Net income was $146 million, or $2.33 per share, up from $14 million, or 20 cents a share. The earnings included a $67.9 million benefit from the new corporate tax law. The programmer also gained $11 million by repatriating foreign earnings.

Related: AMC Networks Offers to Buy RLJ Entertainment for $60M

Revenue fell 0.4% to $727 million.

At AMC’s national networks, including AMC, WE tv, Sundance, IFC and BBC America, operating income was down 6.5% to $176 million.

Revenue fell 1.3% to $606 million at the national networks. Distribution revenue was up 6.8% but advertising revenue was down 9.9% to $269 million because of lower delivery of viewers.

Programming and other expenses were up, including a $38 million writeoff for programming assets.

"AMC Networks delivered record financial results in 2017, increasing net revenues and adjusted operating income for the seventh consecutive year since becoming a public company, and generating significant free cash flow that we are using to invest in key strategic initiatives and our networks," said CEO Josh Sapan.

Related: BritBox Crosses 250K Sub Mark

"Our recent distribution deals with the streaming services fuboTV and Philo make AMC Networks available on more virtual MVPDS than any other independent programmer, proving the value of our discrete brands and our desirable, high-quality content,” Sapan said.

“Our owned streaming services Sundance Now and Shudder are seeing healthy subscriber growth and their momentum, coupled with the growth of the other streaming services we have invested in, including Acorn TV, Urban Movie Channel, and the BBC and ITV's Britbox, highlights consumer demand for subscription streaming services with specialized content," he added. "As we continue to evolve and adapt in a world of changing viewer consumption habits, we believe AMC Networks occupies a position of unique strength and are confident that our size, our focus, and our portfolio of assets will enable us to continue to deliver strong financial results to our shareholders."

AMC Networks reported higher third-quarter profits as programming costs fell and domestic ad revenue increased.

Net income rose 33% to $87 million, or $1.35 per share, from $65 million, or 91 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 2.1% to $648 million.

Adjusted operating income for AMC’s domestic networks rose 22.9% to $199.7 billion as they incurred lower programming and marketing expenses.

Revenue at the domestic networks increased 4% to $541.4 million.

Domestic advertising revenue was up 4.5% to $198 million because of higher prices.

“We delivered strong financial performance in the third quarter, and we are on track to meet our 2017 full-year financial targets of total company revenue and adjusted operating income growth,” said CEO Josh Sapan.

“Our results reflect the consistent execution of our long-term strategy of investing in high-quality, immersive content that is resulting in growing demand among traditional distributors, virtual MVPDs, advertisers and consumers; and, importantly, is giving us the ability to monetize the demand for our content through new revenue streams,” Sapan said. “In an evolving media and entertainment marketplace, AMC Networks is well positioned based on our size, our pricing and our content, which includes four of the highest-rated dramas on all of basic cable, giving us the ability to continue to further invest in our content, our brands and new businesses."

AMC Networks reported higher profits in the second quarter as revenue rose at its domestic cable networks.

Second-quarter net income rose 34% to $103 million, or $1.54 a share, from $77 million, or $1.05 a share. Revenue rose 3.8% to $711 million.

While revenue was lower than expected, the earnings topped Wall Street forecasts.

“Our financial and operating performance in the second quarter and for the year, thus far, has been strong, and we remain on track to deliver on our full-year total company outlook,” CEO Josh Sapan said.

“The success of our long-term focus on investing in marquee content and in distinctive, vibrant brands that attract passionate and engaged fans is reinforced by our wide distribution on new virtual MVPDs, including most recently YouTube TV,” Sapan said. “We continue to partner with our traditional distributors on innovative initiatives that support the cable ecosystem, including our new AMC Premiere offering to Comcast Xfinity TV customers and our AMC Studios co-production partnership with Charter.”

Operating income at the company’s national networks, including AMC, SundanceTV, IFC and BBC America, was up 11.9% to $211.6 million. Revenue rose 5.6% to $605 million. Distribution revenue rose 7.8% to $359 million. Advertising revenue was up 2.6% to $245 million.

Losses at the company’ s international operations grew to $31 million from $8 million a year ago.

The second-quarter results include the impact of impairment charges of $17 million related to AMCNI-DMC, the company’s Amsterdam-based media-logistics facility.

AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan received $17.7 million in total compensation last year, down from $40.3 million a year ago, according to the company.

Last year, Sapan received a stock award with $25 million as a retention award for signing a new employment agreement with the company.

Sapan’s base salary was unchanged at $2 million, and he received $10.1 million from the company’s non-equity incentive plan, AMC Networks said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

RELATED:Mediacom: 20 Years of Growth | Rocco Commisso: From Calabria to a Cable Chairmanship | Standing Up for Small Cable’s Interests | Viewpoint: Timing Was Right for Rocco

MICHAEL POWELL, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL CABLE & TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

“Mediacom and Rocco are true leaders in our industry. Born out of risk-taking and entrepreneurism, Mediacom has grown into one of our fi nest multiple-system operators, providing to Americans in mid- and smaller-size markets an unsurpassed level of excellence in broadband, video, voice and business services. Rocco has been a passionate and stalwart advocate for cable, demanding that customers should come first, and that public policy should provide the incentives and the means for cable operators to innovate and serve their customers with high value offerings. On a personal note, there is no beer friend to have than Rocco, with his warm and gregarious demeanor and his undying support.”

TOM RUTLEDGE, CEO, CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS

“I have known Rocco for many years. He is a good friend and someone whose personal story would make for must see programming on many networks … not just CNBC. He is also the best thing besides money to come from the banking industry. Rocco has more belief in himself and the cable industry than anybody and his sheer will and guts created Mediacom, a great American success story.”

DAVID ZASLAV, PRESIDENT AND CEO, DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS

“Rocco is a true entrepreneur and has really lived the ‘American Dream’ after arriving in America as a kid. He worked hard to earn everything he has built at Mediacom. He has been a strong partner to me for the past two decades and one of the champions who has made this industry what it is today. He is a tough and respected operator with terrific financial acumen, a fighter who believes in his company, a company that 20 years later, he still runs with the passion he had the day he founded it.”

PHILIPPE DAUMAN, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN AND CEO, VIACOM

“Rocco is one of the true entrepreneurs in the modern distribution landscape — tenacious, engaged and passionate about his system and the smaller markets it serves. He’s also a quintessential New Yorker, with a well-earned reputation for being a straight talker. Viacom and Mediacom have had great success working together to grow our businesses over the years, and I have a lot of respect for Rocco and his accomplishments.”

JERRY KENT, FORMER CEO, SUDDENLINK COMMUNCIATIONS

“Rocco is not only a friend, he is a hero to the industry. There has been no champion for midsized and smaller operators more relentless or passionate than him. I count myself fortunate to have served as a cable entrepreneur alongside him.”

PAT ESSER, PRESIDENT, COX COMMUNICATIONS

“Mediacom is a great example of the American Dream coming to life and the broadband cable industry it helped build will continue to create opportunities for future entrepreneurs and innovators. Congratulations to Rocco and his team.”

JOSH SAPAN, CEO, AMC NETWORKS

“Rocco embodies the best of what is entrepreneurial and original, qualities that have contributed to the fabric and success of cable TV. His iconoclastic nature and his path less well traveled embody the spirit that makes Mediacom a great company and makes cable a great industry.”

DENNIS WHARTON, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT MEDIA RELATIONS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS

“Congrats to Rocco Commisso on two decades at the Mediacom helm. In exchange for modest carriage fees, broadcasters are proud to provide Mediacom customers with marquee primetime entertainment, the most popular televised sporting events, local news and emergency weather warnings that save lives. We wish Mediacom continued success.”

AMC Networks said its policy of making its original series available to streaming video on demand a year after they appear on linear TV remains appropriate.

Subscription VOD services like Netflix and Hulu are being accused of being culprits as traditional television ratings decline. While they generate billions of dollars in revenue for programmers, they also are seen as encouraging cord-cutting and cord-shaving, reducing the distribution revenue for linear TV networks.

Analysts and industry executives have said networks and studios should review their SVOD policies to avoid killing TV's golden goose. Among them, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said during a conference call with analysts and investors Wednesday (Nov. 4) that the company is evaluating delaying when it makes its shows available to SVOD providers as a means of boosting the value of the pay TV bundle.

At AMC, “We’ve been fairly consistent in our thinking since we engaged in SVOD exploitation," CEO Josh Sapan said during AMC’s earnings call Thursday (Nov. 5). "We thought it was wise to balance time and money.”

AMC waits about a year to make its shows available to SVOD, in the case of shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Sapan said that gave AMC the value of increased exposure, which led to higher ratings for those series.

“Our view today is our approach was a measured one and an appropriate one,” Sapan said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

AMC Networks reported higher second-quarter profits, reflecting the acquisition of BBC America.

Net income rose 41% to $83 million, or $1.14 a share, from $58.7 million, or 83 cents a share, a year ago. Net revenue rose 15.1% to $601 million.

Cash flow at AMC’s national networks, which include AMC, SundanceTV, IFC, BBC America and WE tv, rose 33% to $182.6 million. Net revenue was up 22.8% to $488.6 million, due to the inclusion of BBC America. AMC acquired a 49.9% stake in BBC America last year.

Ad revenue across the networks, including BBC America, increased 13.4% to $186 million. Growth was strong at WE tv, IFC and SundanceTV, the company said.

"AMC Networks had a strong second quarter, with double-digit growth in revenues, AOCF and operating income driven by our continued focus on investing in high-quality programming," CEO Josh Sapan said in a statement. "In addition to maintaining our core content strategy, we have become more of an owner of content; we have closely aligned ourselves with a premier producer of content through our BBC American joint venture.”

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

Who needs the upfronts, with their professional comedians and fancy clips and trailers? For the finance set, there was plenty of funny going on at what is becoming one of the hottest tickets among people who generally have to search for humor deep within EBITDA and OIBDA results, the MoffettNathanson Media & Communications Summit in New York.

Although not open to the media, presentations at the standing room only conference were streamed live on the Internet by most of the companies – at least the publicly traded ones – and sprinkled among the boiler plate were a few comic gems from the likes of Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge, Time Warner Cable chairman and CEO Rob Marcus, and AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan.

While nobody is suggesting any of this group quit their day jobs, here’s a sampling of some of their more humorous asides.

• Josh Sapan on his first encounter with streaming live video service Meerkat:

“I downloaded Meerkat and was pressing buttons like the old guy I am, and I kept looking up at my phone and it kept saying, ‘Stiletto Supermom is live now.’ I kid you not. Finally my wife looked at my phone and said ‘What’s with you?’ Stiletto Supermom turned out to be a mother with her daughter cooking dinner. We actually decided to push the button and check out the transmission on Meerkat and it was very benign. It was, frankly, ferociously boring.”

• Brian Roberts on the first time he and now-NBC Universal chief Steve Burke called on former Viacom CEO Mel Karmazin to discuss a deal for the fledgling technology of On Demand:

“We were there to get 60 Minutes and Mel said, ‘I’m going to put my head down on my desk and cover my eyes and count to 10 and when I’m done, I want you two guys gone.’”

• Rob Marcus on whether, in light of the termination of the Comcast merger and consolidation speculation, he had any news to share:

“What did Rutledge say?”

• Brian Roberts on being told by Bill Gates in 1997, just before the Microsoft founder invested $1 billion in Comcast, that one day Internet customers would exceed video customers.

“I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I was happy to take the $1 billion.”

• Tom Rutledge on the notion that FCC chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t too enamored with cable’s broadband success:

“What are you going to do? You’re selling stuff and people are buying it. You should keep doing that.”

With fewer original shows airing during the third quarter, AMC Networks reported a drop in earnings that was slightly smaller than expected.

Citing an increasingly digital world, the company also said it is reducing staff and eliminating positions. By tightening its belt, AMC joins Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, HBO and Warner Brothers, as well as Scripps Networks in cutting payroll costs in order to invest in  contest creation while maintaining profit growth.

"We are very mindful of expenses and are continually focused on refining our organization and the way we do business in order to operate as efficiently as possible," CEO Josh Sapan said on the company's earning call with analysts. "As part of this ongoing effort, we have taken steps in recent month to reorient and reorganize our staffing. This is an area we continue to examine carefully and constantly calibrate."

AMC has been ramping up original programming, causing worries on Wall Street about rising costs.

The company declined to say how many positions have been eliminated, but on the call, CFO Sean Sullivan said that third-quarter earnings included $6 million in restricting charges related to the elimination of certain positions across the company."

He added that there would be further charges in the fourth quarter and possible more beyond that.

In the third quarter, AMC Networks' net income dipped to $54 million, or 74 cents per share, from $58 million, or 80 cents a share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 31.4% to $520 million because of the acquisition of Cellomedia, now called AMC Networks International. Revenue at AMC's national networks was up 4.3%.

Both figures exceeded analyst expectations of 73 cents a share in earnings and revenue of $511 million.

Distribution revenue was up 10.5% to $259 million.

Domestic advertising revenues dropped 5.8% to $138 million because AMC's cable networks aired fewer original programs during the quarter. Last year, the high-rated final episodes of Breaking Bad aired and those attracted premium prices from advertisers. The company said that while ad revenue was down at AMC, it was up at its other, smaller networks.

Sullivan said that the company expected results to improve and that the fourth quarter would be the strongest quarter of the year. "Advertising continues to be a growth driver for the company and will benefit from the return of The Walking Dead, is forecast to grow double digits at our national networks."

"AMC Networks continued its strong financial and operating performance in the third quarter with a double digit increase in revenue and growth in AOCF," Sapan said. "We are particularly pleased that for the broadcast season, which ended in the third quarter, AMC Networks in aggregate was the only cable media group to have experienced double-digit growth in viewership among key demos adults 18-49 and adults 25-54. Our year over year growth is significant and speaks to the success of our core content investment strategy."

Sapan added that AMC's recently announced BBC America partnership "meets many of our core strategic objectives for our business and provides a platform for long-term growth and success."

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