The Cable Center said it has named six industry veterans to its 2022 Cable Hall of Fame class and they will be celebrated at a red carpet event at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York on September 15.

The event marks the first year the celebration will be held in person since the 2020-21 gala was held virtually.

The honorees, selected for their groundbreaking leadership and entrepreneurship in the connectivity, content and media industry, are:

• Patricia Jo Boyers – President/CEO & Co-Founder, BOYCOM Cablevision, Inc.; Chairman of the Board of Directors, ACA Connects

• Kevin Casey – President, Northeast Division of Comcast Cable

• Chris Lammers – COO Emeritus and Senior Executive Advisor, CableLabs

• Tina Perry – President, OWN TV Network & OTT Streaming

• John C. Porter II – CEO, Telenet Group Holding

• The Honorable Michael K. Powell – President & CEO, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association; Former Chairman of the FCC

"Our 2022 Cable Hall of Fame class represents the ‘best of the best’ of our industry. Each of these trailblazers has worked to shape the cable and video entertainment industry through their leadership and pioneering ideas," said chairman of The Cable Center board of directors and CEO of Penthera Partners Michael Willner in a press release. "We are also thrilled to welcome everyone back to the red carpet for our Cable Hall of Fame celebration this fall in New York."

Since 1998, 147 luminaries have been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame.

"The entrepreneurial spirit and dedication shown by this year’s inductees has had an immeasurable impact on our industry throughout the world. We can’t wait to gather in person again and honor them at our celebration at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 15," Cable Center CEO Diane Christman said in a press release. ■

More information on the event can be found here. ■  

David Zaslav, president and CEO of Discovery, Inc., is honorary chair of the 2021 Frank Stanton Award. The Center for Communication gives out the award, and Tina Perry, OWN president, gets it, Oct. 27.

The event happens at Bryant Park Grill in Manhattan. 

Zaslav was a Center for Communication board member. 

Event co-chairs include David J. Barrett, director, Hearst; Peter Bradbury, chief commercial officer, U.S., Nielsen; Rita Ferro, president, Disney Advertising Sales; Katherine Oliver, principal, Bloomberg Associates; Savalle Sims, general counsel, Discovery, Inc.; and Steven R. Swartz, president and CEO, Hearst.

The Center for Communication educates and inspires students seeking careers in media, with the goal to increase diversity throughout the industry. The Stanton Award honors individuals who not only achieve great success in the business, but who are also tireless advocates for a more equitable and representative industry. The award is named after the Center’s founder, broadcasting pioneer and former CBS president Dr. Frank Stanton.

Named president of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network in 2019, Tina Perry oversees all operations and creative areas of the network, reporting to chair and CEO Oprah Winfrey. Perry was instrumental in OWN’s launch into scripted programming. OWN originals include Queen Sugar, Cherish the Day, Greenleaf, The Haves and the Have Nots and David Makes Man. 

Perry also oversees the network’s unscripted shows, including Love & Marriage: Huntsville, Ready to Love, Family or Fiancé and Put a Ring on It. 

Due to the pandemic, the 2020 Stanton Award, honoring Soledad O’Brien, was presented in a virtual ceremony last December. This year, all guests will be required to show proof of vaccination.

Tina Perry, president of OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, will get the 2021 Frank Stanton Award for Excellence in Communication from the Center for Communication. The event happens Oct. 27. 

“Tina is extraordinarily accomplished and her tenure at OWN has been transformative,” said Center for Communication Chairman David J. Barrett. “Our Stanton Award seeks to honor those individuals who not only achieve great success in the business, but who are also tireless advocates for a more equitable and representative industry. Tina Perry is such a leader.”

The award is named after the Center’s founder, longtime CBS president Dr. Frank Stanton. Past recipients include Katharine Graham, Ted Turner, Debra Lee, Richard Parsons, John Landgraf, David Nevins, Cesar Conde, Rita Ferro and Soledad O’Brien.

Named president of OWN in 2019, Perry oversees all operations and creative areas of the network. She was instrumental in OWN’s launch into scripted programming with series such as Queen Sugar, Cherish the Day, Greenleaf, The Haves and the Have Nots and David Makes Man. Perry also oversees the network’s lineup of unscripted hits, including Iyanla: Fix My Life, Love & Marriage: Huntsville and Black Love. 

“I'm honored to be recognized by the Center for Communication with this award and humbled to be in the company of innovative media leaders who have created meaningful, visionary change in our industry," said Perry. "Representation on screen, behind the camera, and inside of OWN's offices has never been more important and we are working to ensure the best possible opportunities and access for the next generation."

The Center for Communication educates and inspires students seeking careers in media, with the goal to increase diversity throughout the industry. 

“Tina Perry was the keynote interview at our third annual Women + Media Career Summit, and after her session was over, she was surrounded by young women eager to meet her,” said J. Max Robins, the Center’s president and executive director. “She undoubtedly had a busy day ahead of her, still she stayed for a long time to speak with them. That was an incredibly valuable and meaningful moment for those students. We are ever grateful for her dedication to our mission, and thrilled to present her with our 2021 Stanton Award.”

Last year’s event, saluting Soledad O’Brien, was a virtual one amid the pandemic. The Center will continue to monitor CDC, state and local guidance to assess the viability of returning to an in-person format in the fall. 

With degrees from Stanford, Oxford and Harvard, Tina Perry is one of those people who was already incredibly accomplished before she ever entered the workforce.

While she always knew she wanted to work in the entertainment industry, Perry took a practical approach to it. “I knew, long-term, the business of entertainment was where my passion was, but the law was a great path for me to learn about the business,” she said. “Before I went to law school, I was torn between going into law and business school. I met some people who worked in the entertainment industry and they gave me some great advice: the truth about the entertainment industry is that it’s one big negotiation.”

Perry took that advice to heart and got her JD from Harvard Law School. From there, she went straight to a law firm, New York-based Cravath, Swaine & Moore. While working there, she represented public companies in connection with public offerings, private placements and general corporate governance matters.

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“Choosing to practice corporate law paid off 100%,” Perry said. “I really started to understand big business and how to read balance sheets. The exposure to business helped me. It gave me a great foundation for how the whole ecosystem of how the entertainment industry works.”

It was after Cravath that she made her move into entertainment. She was hired to work in business and legal affairs for Viacom-owned MTV and VH1, and she relocated from New York to Los Angeles.

“It took four or five years for me to find my tribe in L.A.,” Perry said. “In the early years, instead of being lonely, I immersed myself in experiences and hobbies that have really paid off for me. I missed New York, but it has been great for my career to be in Los Angeles.”

In 2009, she joined Oprah Winfrey’s nascent basic cable network, OWN, as VP of business and legal affairs.

“I knew I wanted to be more entrepreneurial in my career, to be an integral part of a business that was growing and evolving,” Perry said. “The chance to work with Oprah and her brand was so enticing. I don’t think I ever thought I would have an opportunity to work with Oprah or her brand, just because it was such a rarified experience. There are not many people who have a brand like hers that’s so clean, so defined and that has touched so many. Working for and with Oprah has been bigger than a dream come true for me.”

Even then, though, Perry knew that she had bigger goals in mind than leading negotiations for OWN. “I knew that I wanted to be the general manager of some sort of entertainment business, to run a P&L and help a larger business generate revenue and be successful,” she recalled.

After about six years at OWN, Perry joined its board of directors, which allowed her to get even closer to the business of running the network. “The scope of my work running business and legal affairs broadened and I started overseeing standards and practices and risk assessment. I also started working with peers and partners on other parts of the business,” she said.

Connecting With the C-Suite

Making those connections and getting that exposure paid off and, in January 2019, Perry was named president of OWN. In the past year, OWN has had five series land in the top 10 among African-American viewers, had the top four original scripted cable series among African-American women aged 18 and over and had five of the top 30 original scripted series on ad-supported cable among women 25-54. Those include such shows as Greenleaf and Queen Sugar and, in the past year, the network has begun airing original holiday movies also targeting its core female African- American audience.

“OWN is core for us at Discovery,” said David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Inc., which co-founded the network with Winfrey. “We’re about quality brands that tell great stories. Most of last year, we were the No. 1 media company in America for women with such networks as HGTV, ID, TLC, Food Network and OWN. A big piece of that was the success Oprah and Tina had at OWN. It’s a huge source of pride for us that we are creating content at OWN that is really having an impact in the African-American community.”

OWN specifically seeks out African-American creators such as Ava DuVernay (Cherish the Day), Tyler Perry (The Haves and the Have Nots) and Tarell Alvin McCraney (David Makes Man). “Working with Tina Perry is like working with a generous and beautiful mind,” McCraney said. “I can’t think of a better person who deserves this recognition.”

McCraney et al. are part of OWN’s overall vision for itself, which has evolved since the network first launched in 2011.

“Oprah absolutely loves working with storytellers who have a strong voice and a specific point of view,” Perry said. “We have had the ability to attract some of today’s best talent, people who are interested in telling stories to our audience in new and engaging manners. The chance to work with Oprah and collaborate with her on creating series that are going to reach large audiences is a huge attractive element of who we are. It’s becoming part of our ethos.

“Our brand promise is ‘see yourself’ and whether she’s watching scripted, unscripted or Super Soul, our viewer comes to watch our programming and to see herself, her life and her history reflected in our storytelling,” Perry said.

Looking ahead, OWN is working toward what’s next in terms of streaming: “We’re part of the Discovery family,” Perry said. “Discovery has really great plans to go over the top, and we’ll be part of those plans. We know from our numbers and our engagement metrics that viewers want to receive our content that way, and we want to reach younger viewers. We are looking forward to a day soon when we will be offered that way.”

Career Highlights: Joining OWN as one of its first employees in 2009 before the network even launched in 2011 and then rising to become president of the network in January 2019.

Quotable: “Working for and with Oprah has been bigger than a dream come true for me.”

OWN president Tina Perry has Oprah Winfrey’s cable network aggressively rolling out high-profile, original content since she took the reins seven months ago. The network, targeted to African-American women and co-owned by Discovery Inc. and Winfrey’s Harpo, last month launched arguably its most ambitious series of the year in David Makes Man, produced by Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight).

In June, OWN bowed the drama series Ambitions, from prolific TV writer Will Packer and starring Robin Givens. Those two shows, along with the Ava DuVernay-produced Queen Sugar, carried OWN to the top spot in viewership among African-American women 18 and older in August, according to Nielsen.

On deck for the network is DuVernay’s anthology series Cherish the Day, set to debut in 2020.

Multichannel News spoke with Perry about OWN’s upcoming slate of originals, as well as whether the network currently reflects Winfrey’s original vision for the network. Here’s an edited transcript of that interview.

MCN: Does the network now reflect the image and the message that Oprah Winfrey wants to convey to the marketplace?
Tina Perry: Absolutely. It’s very important to her heart that our viewers see authentic representations of their lives in everything that they do. It is part of her mantra and it’s something that she takes into consideration, as she is curating and thinking creatively about what she wants to share with the audience.

MCN: OWN has created a number of successful, long-running scripted series such as Greenleaf and Queen Sugar. What has been the secret to success in that genre?
TP: We’re a little unusual compared to other networks that have a strategic or thematic approach. For us, we’re looking for the storyteller that has a special voice and a unique story that they want to tell that has intention and passion behind it. It’s one of the reasons we can make a show about a black church and then go to a family on a sugar cane farm, followed by the life of a 13-yearold- boy in David Makes Man. There’s really not a thematic connection between the stories, but rather it’s about the auteur and working with creators and writers who are just compelled in a passionately unique way in their storytelling. That’s more the criteria versus thematic or any type of specific strategy.

MCN: With six months now under your belt, how would you define OWN’s brand?
TP: At OWN, our mission is to provide our audience the best reflection of themselves through the best programming that we can produce with regards to premium, scripted and unscripted programming. We’re exploring African-American relationship themes that reflect the lives of our audience.

MCN: A number of networks are also targeting African-American female viewer. Why is that demographic so coveted by networks, and what gives OWN a leg up on the competition?
TP: Advertisers now know her buying power and everybody is aware that she consumes content on all platforms, including traditional cable TV. For us, we were there first. We were among the very first places to acknowledge her and to present programming that she responded to. The African-American viewer has been an overlooked viewer for so long, and I think the success that we’ve had — the ratings growth, the advertisers that we work with — has caught people’s attention. You see a lot of people chasing her now, and they’re finding out that she has high standards and special tastes — you can’t tell any story to her — and she’s very sensitive to seeing authentic reflections of African-American life and experiences. I think we’re in such a great place, and it’s exciting to see that everyone is chasing her. It’s flattering that people have watched what we’re doing and have decided to do it as well.

MCN: What should viewers expect to see from OWN in the near future?
TP: We [recently] launched David Makes Man from Oscar-winning writer Tarell Alvin McCraney. We also recently launched Ambitions with Will Packer and will bring the series back in the fourth quarter. At the top of first quarter (of 2020), we’ll have Cherish the Day, our second series with Ava DuVernay, and it’s an anthology series that follows a couple in love, and each episode is one day in the couple’s life. This fall, we’re bringing back two unscripted series that did incredibly well for us last year: Love & Marriage: Huntsville and Ready to Love from Will Packer. We have another unscripted series that we’ll be launching called Black Women OWN the Conversation, featuring 100 black women in a room talking about topical issues.

MCN: What are the biggest challenges you face as a network executive in this very crowded and noisy environment?
TP: One challenge we have is the number of options in the non-TV space. The streamers have now become competitors as they serve up programming targeting our viewer. We’re fortunate to have Oprah and our scripted and unscripted teams serving up programming that is really hitting home for our viewers. Also, bringing younger viewers to the network is a focus. We’re targeting women 25 to 54, but there are more African-American women in their 20s and 30s watching TV, and I want to do everything I can to bring them to the network.

OWN is heading into the upfront season as a brand on a roll. The network, named for founder and CEO Oprah Winfrey, finished 2018 as one of the top-rated cable networks among African-American women with such scripted shows as Greenleaf, Queen Sugar and The Haves and The Have Nots.

The channel, owned by Discovery Inc. and Harpo Studios, is taking a two-pronged approach to the upfront market, building on its appeal to female African-Americans while looking to attract advertisers targeting adult women age 25-54. Discovery executive vice president of national ad sales Karen Grinthal and OWN president Tina Perry spoke with Multichannel News about OWN’s positioning heading into this year’s upfronts.

MCN:What is OWN’s strategy heading into the upfront?
Karen Grinthal: I think OWN has a wonderful position in this marketplace. It is a unique brand, we speak to our audience in a way that no one else does, and I think there’s a hunger and need for the kind of connection that we bring for advertisers. The relationships and conversations are very deep … we’re solving the problem of how to speak authentically to black women and make them feel like they are seen.

Tina Perry: We’re so proud of the success that we’ve had with African-American women — we are the number one destination for African-American women because we provide a place where this important audience can see themselves reflected in our programming. 2018 was a tremendous year for us. We had five of the top 20 original scripted series on ad-supported cable among all women 25-54 and African-American women, and our hit dramas like Greenleaf, Queen Sugar and The Haves and the Have Nots continue to resonate with our audiences.

MCN:How are you positioning OWN to advertisers within the Discovery portfolio?
KG: We have the clout of being within the Discovery networks and great quality brands, and OWN stands in a separate place within the portfolio because it’s the only network that has scripted drama. We have the clout of being part of Discovery and the ability to really dig in with advertisers for all of their needs. We’re playing in two different marketplaces — we’re in the general marketplace with women 25-54 and with African-American [female] viewers. I think every category needs to reach this audience, and what’s happening is that we’re speaking to advertisers in everything from insurance to retail to auto to [pharmaceuticals] to beauty and health. Every single category knows that if you can speak authentically to and trust an audience, that’s the basis of success for them.

MCN:How will OWN look to build on the success of its scripted lineup in 2019?
TP: We are going to keep building on our successes with Greenleaf, Queen Sugar, Iyanla: Fix My Life, by just expanding the roster of storytellers we work with. I’m excited about two new dramas ahead of us, including Ambitions from Will Packer, which is a juicy, sexy nighttime soap opera drama that stars Robin Givens and will premiere in June. The next series I’m really excited about is a prestige drama that will be on our air in August, David Makes Man. [Moonlight co-writer] Tarell Alvin McCraney is the producer on that as well as Michael B. Jordan and Oprah Winfrey. On the unscripted side are two new seasons of Will Packer’s dating series Ready to Love, as well as Love & Marriage: Huntsville.

OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network Monday named Tina Perry general manager of the network, replacing departing network president Erik Logan.

Perry, promoted from executive VP of business and legal affairs, will oversee all business and creative areas of OWN beginning January 2019. Perry will report directly to network chairman and CEO Oprah Winfrey.

Logan will leave OWN after seven years serving as the network's president to take a position with the World Surf League. Under Logan’s tutelage, the network has become the leading cable network with African American women through a slate of original scripted programming such as Queen Sugar, Greenleaf and Love Is …, according to OWN.

“Erik has been a great leader and was the driving force in the network’s turn around. Everyone who knows Erik knows he has a passion for surfing and this is a perfect opportunity for him,” said Winfrey in a statement. “Tina has been an important and valued member of the executive team at OWN since before launch and played a vital role in shaping the network as a member of the board. I am confident in taking the reins at OWN she will guide the network to continued success.”

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