Latest from Next TV in Luncheon

Wonder Women Career Advice: Be Loyal and Carry a Big Stick

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 12:00:00 +0000

NEW YORK — “Stick with the people, always go with the people,” AMC Networks president of national advertising sales Arlene Manos said when it was her turn to share life lessons, career advice and a funny story or two as a Multichannel News Wonder Woman.

Manos, one of 13 executives in the current class of Wonder Women (as chosen by the editors of this magazine), followed her own advice 25 years ago in accepting a job officer as an account executive at A&E Network. She turned down a higher-paying position at a magazine she discreetly didn’t identify during her remarks at the celebratory luncheon last Thursday (March 10).

Manos got a promotion to management a year later. And she didn’t need to threaten violence, as fellow Wonder Woman Karen Grinthal, the Scripps Networks Interactive senior vice president of national ad sales, said she did in the late 1980s.

Grinthal told 700-plus attendees at the Hilton New York that she had been passed over for promotion to management three times when she started out at “male bastion” Turner Broadcasting System. When a fourth opportunity arose, she put aside the presentation she had prepared and got a baseball bat from the sports department. She held it over her boss’s head and told him, “This e_ ng job is mine — give it to me.”

“And that’s how I became a manager in the cable industry,” Grinthal said, in one of the day’s better punchlines.

Megan Clarken, president of global product leadership at Nielsen, and Cindi Hook, senior vice president, general auditor and global risk officer at Comcast, became business leaders after injuries short-circuited planned careers as, respectively, a track-and-field athlete and a dancer.

Clarken — who had left school at 16 and became “a broken-down athlete” in her late 20s — found in herself “a determination to be the very best there was at something, a resilience to never give up, a curiosity to listen, ask and learn — and an acknowledgement that you cannot do it on your own.”

Hook said that when it came time to choose a new path “shockingly, ‘general auditor’ and ‘global risk officer’ wasn’t on the menu of career choices.”

But it turns out the jobs require similar skills, she said. A mantra for ballerinas is, “If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right,” she said, adding, “When we are doing our work as auditors and risk evaluators, if getting to the right answer doesn’t sometimes hurt a bit, you’re not doing it right.”

Fox Group executive vice president of litigation Jill Ratner was a skilled soccer player whose love of sports led to a career in the law. While on the University of California at Los Angeles soccer team, she helped found a group that threatened to sue the school over failure to provide equal opportunities for men and women athletes. She learned about “teamwork, standing up for what I believe in, perseverance and the power of the law.”

Stephanie McMahon, chief brand officer of WWE and daughter of the wrestling entertainment firm’s chairman, Vince McMahon, and former, CEO Linda McMahon, told a story about learning that women shouldn’t feel they have to “do it all” all the time, and “it’s OK to let go a little bit and rely on our support systems to help care for our children.”

Her daughter, Murphy, was sad that McMahon was unable to be at school to see Murphy’s second-grade project about endangered sea turtles because of the Wonder Women luncheon. McMahon’s husband, wrestler Paul “Triple H” Levesque, filled in admirably, and father and daughter had a great bonding experience. “And now I get to go home and show them proof that Mommy really is a Wonder Woman.”

“All working women, mothers or not, are going to have to make personal sacrifices,” McMahon said. “It will never be an even balance. You do the best you can to prioritize and make it work.”

Pam Kaufman, the chief marketing officer and president of consumer products at Nickelodeon Group, recalled starting at Nick 18 years ago when she was “a young, naïve executive” who was eight months’ pregnant with her daughter, Amanda. She questioned whether or not she could handle a new job, a new company, leading a new team and still have “something left” for her family. It all worked out — and along the way she learned it’s important to always be nice to everyone, to stay curious and “don’t be afraid of what you don’t know.”

ESPN senior vice president of multimedia sales Patricia Betron said her mom, who returned to being a nurse to support her family after divorce, relied on babysitters, friends and relatives to help look after her four young kids. That was stressful on everyone, especially Betron and her siblings.

Then, in 2005, Betron served on an ESPN task force studying work-life balance issues — which, with support from key executives, led the company to build an on-site childcare center.

“I share this story with you today because, as we celebrate these Wonder Women, we celebrate how having women in high-ranking positions changes the conversation in our companies,” she said.

More of these stories — and those of fellow Wonder Women Nicole Buie, vice president of marketing at Cox Media; Holly Jacobs, EVP of U.S. reality and syndicated programming at Sony Pictures Television; Michelle Rice, EVP of content distribution and marketing at TV One; Savalle Sims, EVP and deputy general counsel at Discovery Communications; and Ellen Stone, EVP of marketing at Bravo and Oxygen Media — will be available as videos soon on mcnwonderwomen.com. Click here for photos from the luncheon. For more Wonder Women coverage, visit multichannel.com/mcnww.

'MCN' Wonder Women to Be Honored Today

MCN Staff — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 14:30:00 +0000

The Multichannel News Wonder Women Class of 2016 will gather with the 2016 Women to Watch, their colleagues, friends and family, and the magazine's editors and publishers at the New York Hilton today to celebrate their selection as influential voices in cable.

The annual event, co-sponsored by WICT New York, begins at 11 a.m., with Shark Tank's Lori Greiner, HGTV's Egypt Sherrod (Property Virgins) and ESPN reporter Shelley Smith co-hosting the proceedings.

The editors of Multichannel News last December selected 2016's 13 Wonder Women and 13 Women to Watch. The Wonder Women being honored today are (in alphabetical order): Patricia Betron, ESPN; Nicole Buie, Cox Media; Megan Clarken, Nielsen; Karen Grinthal, Scripps Networks Interactive; Cindi Hook, Comcast; Holly Jacobs, Sony Pictures Television; Pam Kaufman, Nickelodeon; Arlene Manos, AMC Networks; Stephanie McMahon, WWE; Jill Ratner, Fox Group; Michelle Rice, TV One; Savalle Sims, Discovery Communications; Ellen Stone, Oxygen and Bravo Media.

The 2016 Women to Watch are (in alphabetical order): Margarita Black, Azteca America; Mary Campbell, QVC; Nina Facini, Time Warner Cable; Julie Fitzgerald, NCC Media; Jana Henthorn, The Cable Center; Alison Hoffman, Starz; Charisse Lillie, Comcast/Comcast Foundation; Kate O’Brian, Al Jazeera America; Stephanie Plasse, A+E Networks; Kristen Roberts, Crown Media Family Networks; Kristi Salmon, Mediacom Communications; Mona Scott-Young, Monami Entertainment; Christina Spade, Showtime Networks

Browse profiles of this year's Wonder Women and Women to Watch at the #mcnWW page, which features current and archival Wonder Women coverage, including the 2015 honoree profiles, reports from past luncheons and other stories. (Bookmark the page to check for updates as newly found archival material continues to be added.)

For details about the luncheon and to register, visit the Wonder Women event site, where you can also get bios of this year's honorees and hosts, watch videos of last year's event and view the honor roll of all Wonder Women dating back to 1999. Follow the event on Twitter via the hashtag #mcnWW2016 and by following @MultiNews, @MCNWonderWomen and @WICTNY.

MCNWW 2014: ‘Wonder Women’ Share Lessons, Life Stories and Advice

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 04:00:00 +0000

Beginning with a story about working in a steel mill and ending with lessons in “Wonder Woman-ness,” the 16th annual Wonder Women luncheon had more than its share of timeless and timely tales about the lives and careers of a dozen successful women in cable.

Comcast’s Kathryn Zachem (you can find everyone’s titles in our More Online link) told the steel mill anecdote, about being hired in 1977 as one of the first women to be a day laborer for U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh. The man assigned to train her to fix turbines chose not to speak to her for the first two weeks. The ice was finally broken after she fetched a tool the trainer, Mike, had forgotten to bring. When Zachem returned, he laughed and said, “Kathy, I needed a ratchet, not a hatchet,” she recalled, adding, “From that day on, we were inseparable.” Years later, Mike, the pipefitter, recognized Zachem at the airport and, with tears in his eyes, greeted and congratulated her on becoming a “woman lawyer.”

Cablevision’s Lisa Rosenblum joked that she was surprised to have been named a Wonder Woman for her years doing legal and regulatory work. “Cablevision, after all, is known for being such a quiet company, existing calmly on Long Island and shying away from disputes of any kind or public policy battles,” she said in deadpan fashion. She credited company founder Charles Dolan, current CEO Jim Dolan and several other executives, including Sheila Mahony, who Rosenblum met while still a member of the New York State Public Service Commission, when Cablevision first proposed offering phone service.

Univision’s Jessica Rodriguez spoke emotionally of growing up in the South Bronx and sharing with her family an emotional connection with programming on Univision. After an early foray onto Wall Street, she “practically begged” her way into a Univision job, and she’s very happy to be there some 13 years later. “Some people say that life is a novella,” she said. “Well, today I’m living my fairy tale. I have a dream job at my dream company.”

NBCUniversal’s Patricia Fili-Krushel was unable to attend due to knee surgery. Co-host Hoda Kotb, of NBC’s Today, took a podium photo for her “so she knows what you look like.” Kotb read some remarks from Fili-Krushel, who advised attendees to “find the people you believe in and pull them along with you.”

ESPN’s Jodi Markley said she had learned a lot during 18 years in ESPN’s international operations, introducing the brand in places that had never heard of ESPN and adapting to changes in countries, languages and teams on a regular basis. She said she learned people everywhere respond to integrity, courage, clarity of purpose and respect. And she said mentoring makes companies like ESPN a better place.

Kimberly Maki, of Bright House Networks, spoke of growing up in Michigan to parents who adopted her, adding her to a home that already had three boys in it. “That day, I got a home because my parents chose me,” she said, and the love and security she felt gave her “rock solid confidence.” Hard work led her through college into journalism and corporate communications. She credited much to having heard these four words: “I believe in you.”

TiVo’s Tara Maitra attended the 2004 Wonder Women luncheon, was impressed and emailed Comcast’s Amy Banse, a Wonder Woman in 2003, to say she hoped to take part in one some day. Maitra credited her longtime boss, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers, and called him a man who saw things others didn’t. “I’m proof of that,” she said. “Ten years ago, you never would have seen someone from TiVo receiving a cable award.” She also said the humanresources oversight in her job had drilled home the old adage that “everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about, so please be kind.”

Crown Media’s Laura Lee was inspired by her mom, who drove her to elementary school every day. Most days her mom left the house with big rollers in her hair and, while driving, quizzed young Laura on school subjects, using flash cards she had prepared in advance. “She was incredibly smart and pushed me to work hard, think big and laugh a lot along the way.” She taught her daughter to be prepared, how to do several things at once while being dedicated to each moment and that women could do anything they set their minds to.

Turner’s Brenda Freeman said media audiences are changing, “becoming more diverse, demanding that our industry step up, stay relevant, and hire talent and develop content that reflects the face of this new general market.” To play a part in encouraging that next generation of decision makers, she works closely with the Girl Scouts organization and the Savannah College of Arts and Design. Quoting Pharrell, she declared, “I’m happy.”

Janet Nova, of 21st Century Fox, was named as News Corp.’s interim general counsel in June 2011. “Three weeks later, I was sitting behind Rupert Murdoch in London, facing a parliamentary committee conducting an inquiry into phone hacking,” she said. “While Google thinks my attempt to protect Rupert from the shaving-cream pie was my career highlight, the real highlight of that period was the experience I gained in advising the company for a year throughout that crisis.”

Jennifer Chun of Time Warner Cable provided a timely highlight, saying the impending merger with Comcast had “caused us to think about where we might be in a year or so.”

“Probably a little early to tell, but I think we all know that there will be change and things will be different,” Chun said. “So if you’ll indulge me, I’d actually like to eulogize our content acquisition deal team for a second.” Invoking what colleague Susan Weinstein called “our senior year,” Chun then assigned “yearbook predictions” to team members, such as most likely to form a garage band, open a gastro pub or broker world peace.

SundanceTV’s Sarah Barnett passed along eight “top lessons in Wonder Womanness.” The first (No. 8), from Sundance founder Robert Redford, was: When they zig, you zag. Meaning, resist group-think and easy-consensus decisions, and strive for the remarkable. The last, No. 1, was to make your own way. “Decide for yourself what’s important to you, craft your own Wonder Woman Rules, make it fun and true, and make it matter for you in your own, brilliant way.”

The March 26 event at the New York Hilton, co-sponsored by Multichannel News and the New York chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications, was attended by about 750 people.

MCNWW 2013: Wonder Women Reflect on Their Paths to Career Success

kent.gibbons@futurenet.com (Kent Gibbons) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Irene Esteves is now closer to her goal of being “a cable guy.” Nancy Kanter is even farther away from a childhood home in a drab cul de sac. And TamaraFranklin is even more grateful that, after a brush with death as a child, she’s where she shouldn’t have been.

Those women and nine others in the 2013 class of Wonder Women — selected by Multichannel News and honored in part by the New York chapter of Women in Cable Telecommunications — charmed a collection of about 810 people gathered to recognize them last Tuesday (March 19) at the Hilton New York.

It was a good year to take the “under” on how many honorees would cry on stage, and maybe the “over” on invisible plane and magic lasso references.

Still, the 15th annual class of high-powered cable executives packed memorable moments into a relatively rapid luncheon that ended 45 minutes before the 2 p.m. curfew.

Esteves, Time Warner Cable’s chief financial officer, had probably the best topical reference, at least for New Yorkers familiar with a controversial proposal to rebrand the company’s local New York 1 News channel into something else.

It came while thanking company EVP Peter Stern for patiently explaining to this cable-industry newcomer about the hybrid fi - ber coaxial network that delivered her NY1 in the morning.

“I mean Time Warner Cable News, I mean Pat Kiernan’s New York 1, whatever,” she joked, invoking the daytime anchor and Twitter star, who was also at the event.

Esteves talked about how chairman and CEO Glenn Britt showed her around the Cable Show floor in Chicago in 2011, before she joined the company, and introduced her to about 4,000 people. From that she learned, in cable, “everybody knew everybody else.” And she decided she wanted to be a cable guy.

Being a Wonder Woman, she said, moved her a bit closer to that goal.

Kanter, the Disney Junior Worldwide general manager, said she became a storyteller in response to growing up in a Long Island community that was “for me, as a kid and especially as a teenager, the single most uninteresting place in the world to live.”

“For as early as I can remember, books provided the place where I could go beyond the cul de sac and imagine a more exciting and adventurous life,” she said.

She grew up to become a film editor, and now, at Disney Channel, she tries to make children’s TV that will matter, with stories that will help them “move out of that cul de sac.”

Franklin had probably the best opening line: “I should not be here.”

Crossing a road in rural New Jersey as a child, she said, she found herself frozen, staring into the eyes of a driver in an oncoming car. Fortunately he swerved away. “So I learned early on that every moment was absolutely a gift.”

She said she also benefited from sacrifi ces by her parents and older siblings that enabled her to get the education she needed to start a career that led her to TVindustry jobs including, now, a role as an SVP at Scripps Networks Interactive. To younger women in the audience, she said, “please make sure that you reach out to us, and let us return that gift to you.”

The other Wonder Women honored were:

Jamia Bigalow, SVP of distribution marketing at Fox Networks, who said she was proud to have realized her dream, at Fox, of working in both entertainment and sports;

Denise Denson, EVP of content distribution and marketing at Viacom Media Networks, who spoke of starting out in a finance job at a health-care company whose “narrow world views” included barring women from playing at a company golf tournament;

Viviane Eisenberg, the chief counsel of programming, global marketing and global licensing at HBO, who said it’s important to be passionate about jobs you tackle and to strive for balance between work and everything else in life;

Jacqueline Hernandez, chief operating officer at Telemundo Media, who called “multicultural the new mainstream” and said, “You don’t have to like what you do — you have to love it, to be successful”;

Ava Jordhamo, the New York president of media agency Zenith, who cited an early mentor, Zenith’s Peggy Green, and confessed she wasn’t sorry that pregnancy sidelined her during the 2007-08 upfront, when the C3 ratings system took effect;

Cathy Kilstrom, SVP of customer care for Comcast’s West division, who praised her division’s chief, Steve White, as a transformative leader who had helped to change company’s culture of customer care;

Kim Norris, EVP of emerging businesses and data analytics, Cablevision Media Sales, who learned early on from business talk she heard as the daughter of an IBM executive, often around a poker table amid cigar smoke;

Donna Speciale, president of Turner Entertainment & Young Adults Ad Sales, who said executives must “adjust and be comfortable with constant change,” an attribute that helped her thrive at ad agencies before moving to the network side of the business a little over a year ago;

And Marjorie Kaplan, president of Animal Planet and Science & Velocity Networks at Discovery, who addressed the audience via an Internet connection from Chicago, where she was presenting at an upfront gathering. She said she wished she had super powers that would have allowed her to be in both cities at the same time but, “as all of you in the room know all too well, sometimes the priorities of professional and personal don’t align.”

MCNWW 2012: With Praise for a Witch and a Toast to Great Women, Wondrous Event Turns 10

Kent Gibbons, John Eggerton — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 04:00:00 +0000

New York — From lighthearted praise by Univision’s Jennifer Ball for a role model, “the wicked witch of the West,” to a warm closing toast to “great women” by NBCUniversal’s Dana Zimmer, the 10th annual “Wonder Women” luncheon last week treated 875 attendees to a generous serving of good advice — and one notable confession.

Sherry Brennan, senior vice president of distribution strategy and development at Fox Networks, said she was on the board of Women in Cable Telecommunications’ New York chapter when the idea was first raised to single out Wonder Women in the cable industry.

“I was against the idea,” she said, to much laughter. “I said something like, ‘We have enough awards in this industry.’” (WICT New York cohosts the event, with Multichannel News, which selects the honorees.)

Brennan said she was outvoted. “And I just want to take this opportunity to publicly acknowledge that I was wrong. We need this award.”

Lessons learned: Two heads are better than one, and it’s important to lose gracefully.

Ball invoked the wicked witch because she played that part in a fourth-grade production of “The Wizard of Oz.”

But a teacher first cast her as a munchkin, because she was a small kid. Her mother complained and got young Jennifer the dual role of munchkin and witch. Ball said she’s also learned in her career that “you don’t have to play that role to be here.”

Suddenlink chief financial officer Mary Meduski originally wanted to be a doctor before becoming a banker and then a cable executive. That taught her “you have to love what you do and make a change if you don’t, even if that makes you the oldest Wonder Woman on the stage — just sayin’.”

Marissa Freeman, senior vice president of brand strategy and marketing communications at Time Warner Cable, observed: “There is a Wonder Woman inside all of you, even the men.”

Michelle Vicary, executive vice president of programming at Crown Media Family Networks, enthused: “I’m so lucky to be in an industry where women have some of the best jobs in the world.”

And Zimmer — who went last, alphabetically — acknowledged a shouted- out happy birthday and then ended her remarks with a toast: “Great women: may we know them, may we be them, may we hire them and may we raise them.”

Videos of all 12 Wonder Women speeches will be available on multichannel. com on Thursday (March 23).

Comcast EVP Cohen Ranks Among Top Obama ‘Bundlers’

There are some familiar media industry names in the latest list of “bundlers” for President Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Bundlers are contributors who go that extra mile, or in this case dollar, to, as OpenSecrets.org puts it, “turn to friends, associates, and, well, anyone who’s willing to give, and deliver the checks to the candidate in one big “bundle.” Though not required to report bundling by anyone but a registered lobbyist, President Obama agreed to report all bundlers who raised more than $50,000.

According to OpenSecrets, no Republican challengers have agreed to provide that data beyond the lobbyist reporting required by the Federal Elections Commission.

As of March 5, Comcast executive vice president David Cohen is high on the leader board, having bundled at least $500,000 in checks. Because of the way the bundled donations are reported, it is not clear how much above that level he went, other than it is north of a half million.

The Comcast exec — called out as a “wonder man” by Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe at last week’s Wonder Women luncheon — ranked third on the OpenSecrets list of top Obama bundlers, behind DreamWorks SKG’s Jeffrey Katzenberg and Chicagoan Fred Eychaner, on the basis of having given more than $1 million (individually and through family members) to federal candidates, parties and PACs in all election cycles since 1990.

A former chief of staff to Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, Cohen hosted a fall fund-raiser for the president and the DNC at his home, and also hosted a fundraiser for Obama the first time around in 2008.

Also in the $500,000 club is Tom Wheeler, the former National Cable Television Association president and managing director of Core Capital Partners. He advised the Obama transition team and later was instrumental in advising the president to move back the DTV transition date.

Tennis Channel chief Ken Solomon also has served up the green at $500,000-plus. In 2008, he bundled in the $100,000-$200,000 range for Obama.

In the $200,000- $500,000 category you fi nd former Democratic FCC commissioner (a Clinton appointee) Susan Ness. She left the agency in 2001 and is currently a consultant. All in, folks from the TV/movie/ music spheres bundled at least $4.75 million, in fi fth place as a category behind lawyers, bankers, business services and real estate.

‘Lost Girl’ Chatter

Anna Silk: “That sex scene that Kris is talking about was almost like doing a stunt. I mean it was exhausting and I remember it was my birthday that day, do you remember that, Kris?

Kris Holden-Ried: “That’s right.”

Anna Silk: “I spent it nude covered in blood on top of you. It was a great way to spend my birthday.”

— Overheard during a call with bloggers last week were Lost Girl’s Anna Silk and Kris Holden- Ried. The Canadian supernatural drama stars Silk as Bo, a succubus who feeds off sexual energy, and Holden-Ried as her love interest. Season 1 on Syfy ends tonight (March 19) at 10 p.m.