The past year has presented unique challenges to the TV industry, to broadband providers — to the entire country. Even with vaccines coming to address the pandemic, the disruptions to TV production, the demands on broadband networks from at-home work, the impacts on live sports and other in-person events and the growth of direct-to-consumer streamed entertainment will continue into 2021 and perhaps beyond.

Broadband networks held up amid fears of the strains from new household demand, and underscored the need to continue enhancing networks to accommodate new applications. Entertainment companies have reorganized their operations around streaming, and emerging platforms have grown into important roles in distributing content. News, sports and entertainment providers have had to respond nimbly to the changes.

With all this in mind, the editors of Multichannel News have identified key individuals who will be leaders in executing on the new plans and new approaches facing the industry next year and beyond. We’ve numbered them 1–25 and assembled this list with those of our Future-owned sister publications — these will be people to watch. And we all will be watching. 

1. Kareem Daniel, Chairman, Media and Entertainment Distribution, The Walt Disney Co.

2. Dana Strong, President, Consumer Services, Comcast Cable

3. Julia Laulis, Chair, President and CEO, Cable One

4. Tedd Cittadine, Vice President of Content Distribution, Roku

5. Adam Silver, Commissioner, National Basketball Association

6. Stephanie Mitchko-Beale, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Charter Communications

7. Aryeh Bourkoff, Founder, Chairman and CEO, LionTree

8. Phil McKinney, CEO, CableLabs

9. Allison Page, President, Magnolia Network

10. Casey Bloys, President, HBO Programming, WarnerMedia

11. Chris Wallace

Anchor, ‘Fox News Sunday’

Wallace is the anchor of the Sunday morning public-affairs program, and moderated the stormy first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Sept. 29. The debate was the highest-rated in cable news history with nearly 18 million viewers and was his second time moderating for the Commission  on Presidential Debates. In July, Wallace’s wide-ranging interview with Trump was met with praise from both sides of the aisle.

12. Craig Moffett

Partner and Senior Research Analyst, Moffett Nathanson

The authoritative voice on U.S. cable and satellite broadcasting, Moffett has been elected to Institutional Investor magazine’s All-American Research Team in the U.S. Telecom and/or Cable & Satellite sectors on 18 occasions. Prior to founding MoffettNathanson, he spent more than 10 years at Sanford Bernstein & Co. as a senior research analyst. He was previously at Sotheby’s Holdings and The Boston Consulting Group.

13. James Pitaro

Chairman, ESPN and Sports Content

Pitaro was named to oversee ESPN and Sports Content on Oct. 12, as part of The Walt Disney Co.’s strategic reorganization of its media and entertainment businesses, focusing on ESPN’s live sports programming, as well as sports news and original and non-scripted sports-related content for Disney’s cable channels, ESPN+ and ABC. He was named ESPN president and co-chair, Disney Media Networks, in 2018, after eight years as a top Disney executive.

14. Charlie Ergen 

Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board, Dish and EchoStar

Ergen co-founded Dish, formerly EchoStar Communications, in 1980 and currently acts as chairman for both Dish and EchoStar. He oversees Dish’s business development and strategy as well as its emerging wireless division, the focus of much speculation. Recently, Ergen has focused on reaching new markets and expanding product and service offerings including Sling TV and acquisition of wireless spectrum. 

15. Jon E. Kirchner

Chief Executive Officer, Xperi

Kirchner’s Xperi, parent company of TiVo, recently resolved TiVo’s four-year battle with Comcast over alleged patent infringement, signing a retroactive licensing pact. The settlement removes an expense and opens opportunities in other pay-TV markets, including Canada. Previously Kirchner was president of Xperi following the completion of the acquisition of DTS in December 2016. Before that, he worked for the consulting and audit groups at what is now  PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

16. Kevin Keefe

Senior VP and Segment Leader, Broadband Networks, CommScope

Keefe oversees development and delivery of CommScope’s end-to-end product portfolio of CCAP, PON, video systems, access technologies and fiber, coaxial and copper connectivity solutions serving the telco and cable provider broadband market. He joined CommScope through its acquisition of Arris, and he joined Arris after the acquisition of Motorola Mobility’s Home business. CommScope pioneered many of the technologies and specifications that define today’s networking landscape.

17. Gil Katz 

Senior Vice President, Cable Access Business Operations, Harmonic

Katz oversees sales and sales strategy of cable access solutions at Harmonic, the worldwide leader in virtualized cable access and video delivery solutions. He accelerates deployments of the company’s CableOS solution and ensures technical support for new deployments. He is also responsible for managing and developing the global CableOS lab integration and field trial team. Earlier, he led the development and implementation of next-generation architectures for Harmonic’s cable edge and access markets.

18. Michelle Sneed

President of Production and Development, Tyler Perry Studios

Sneed oversees all film, television and digital media projects for the prolific Tyler Perry Studios  and serves as executive producer on several TV series, including “The Oval,” “Sistas” and “Ruthless.” Earlier she was a director of physical production for BET Networks. She has been affiliated with Tyler Perry Studios for more than 10 years. As a member of the studio’s original team (at Greenbriar), she produced more than 400 episodes of television content.

19. Chris McCarthy

Pres., MTV Entertainment, ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks

McCarthy, who has steadily risen in responsibility at ViacomCBS, is in the position of overseeing franchises MTV, Comedy Central, Paramount Network, Smithsonian Channel, Pop TV, CMT, VH1, TV Land and Logo Media and their respective content studios. He assumed his current title in November 2019 shortly after the ViacomCBS merger. Known for a successful track record in transforming businesses and creating content that shapes pop culture, McCarthy had been president of MTV since October 2017.

20. Suzanne Scott

CEO, Fox News Media

Scott’s purview encompasses Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network (FBN), Fox News Digital, Fox News Audio, Fox News Books and the direct-to-consumer subscription streaming services Fox Nation and Fox News International. She became the company’s first female CEO in May 2018. Since then she has added four new platforms to the brand (two of which launched just this year), which expects to continue growing under a Biden-Harris administration: FNC’s highest percent share of the ratings came during the Obama-Biden years.

21. Jake Tapper

Anchor and Host, State of the Union, CNN

Tapper guided viewers through the presidential election, just as he’s done throughout the many bizarre events in recent times. His commentary at the end of “State of the Union” has been vital in helping political insiders and viewers make sense of these times. On Nov. 15, he blasted the GOP for not admitting Biden won. “How long is the Republican Party going to continue to defer to unhinged mendacious desperation, led by the gang that couldn’t sue straight?” Tapper said.

 22. Wonya Lucas 

President and CEO, Crown Media Family Networks 

Lucas took the helm at Crown Media Family Networks in August, overseeing linear networks Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries and Hallmark Drama; subscription video-on-demand service Hallmark Movies Now; and publishing division Hallmark Publishing. The former Discovery and The Weather Channel executive had been president and CEO of Public Broadcasting Atlanta, and before that was president and CEO of TV One, where she became the second African-American woman to hold those titles at a cable network. 

23. Jessica Rosenworcel

Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission

Rosenworcel, whether it is as senior Democratic commissioner, acting FCC chair or chair, will be a big player in regulatory policy in an upcoming Biden Administration. She is likely to lead an effort to reimpose net neutrality rules unless Congress beats her to it, and could expand broadband subsidies to more pandemic-sequestered students. She first joined the FCC in May 2012, exited due to political infighting unrelated to her service, then, was reinstalled in 2017.

24. Stephen Espinoza

Pres., Sports & Event Programming, Showtime Networks Inc.

Espinoza was promoted to his current role in January 2018. Under his leadership, Showtime has become the leading outlet for live boxing. He helped orchestrate one of the biggest deals in boxing history when Showtime secured the exclusive TV rights to Floyd Mayweather in 2013. He’s responsible for developing and executing overall strategy, including acquiring all sports and event programming for Showtime and Showtime PPV. The original lineup includes “All Access” and “Inside The NFL” and sports documentaries.

25. Lena Waithe

Actor, Producer

Emmy Award-winning writer, creator, producer and actor Lena Waithe has proven herself a talent to be reckoned with. In 2019, she signed a new overall deal with Amazon Studios and will work to create and produce original series, which will premiere exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. She had previously been under a first-look deal at Showtime to produce projects through her company, Hillman Grad Productions.

After an unprecedented 2020, the television industry has much to do, and Broadcasting+Cable has put together this Watch List of the people leading the efforts to redefine television. The list focuses not so much on the corner-office denizens who have long called the shots, but more on the next generation of trendsetters and game-changers.

As the pandemic took hold, stay-at-home orders ramped up the shift to streaming and set off a scramble to be more efficient, with many businesses shut down, conferences canceled and executives working from home conducting meetings over Zoom.

Giant companies reorganized, small businesses adjusted and startups formed to take advantage of new opportunities. In some cases, that means developing programming for multiple platforms; in others, it means chasing consumers as they form new viewing habits. In some cases, new technology is causing disruption. In other, technology is the solution. Sometimes it’s both.

Within each organization CEOs tasked people with finding better ways to get things done and to make that happen — or else. These key individuals and their teams will be doing the work and how successful they are will tell the story of 2021. And that’s why we’ll be watching.

1. Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer, National Football League

2. Jason Kilar, Chief Executive Officer, WarnerMedia

3. Tom Ryan, President and CEO, ViacomCBS Streaming

4. Bela Bajaria, Vice President, Global TV, Netflix

5. Pearlena Igbokwe, Chairman, Universal Studio Group, Comcast NBCUniversal

6. Brett Jenkins, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, Nexstar Media Group

7. Matt Sweeney, Chief Investment Officer, GroupM

8. Trevor Noah, Host, ‘The Daily Show with Trevor Noah,’ Comedy Central

9. Peter Rice, Chairman of Disney General Entertainment Content, The Walt Disney Co.

10. Steve Rosenberg, President, Local Sports, Sinclair Broadcast Group

11. Jennifer Salke

Head of Amazon Studios

Salke oversees all television and film development as well as production for Amazon’s global entertainment division. Hits at Amazon under her aegis include the TV series The Boys and the movie Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. She joined in 2018, after a sexual harassment scandal forced out Roy Price, and is credited in leading Amazon to become a “storytelling powerhouse,” as Elle magazine put it. At NBC and at 20th Century Fox Television, she was a major force behind some of television’s most successful comedy and drama series, including This Is Us and The Blacklist.

12. Scott N. Brown

General Manager, Audience Measurement, Nielsen

Brown is responsible for innovating Nielsen’s measurement products and driving the unification of its linear TV, advanced TV and digital solutions. Nielsen said it would be adding data from 55 million set-top boxes and smart TVs to its national TV currency, allowing it to measure addressable advertising. Under Brown’s leadership, Nielsen is overhauling its digital measurement methodology enabling the company to create an independent platform that can adapt to privacy and policy changes.

13. Lisa Knutson

Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer, The E.W. Scripps Co.

When Scripps completes its acquisition of Ion Media in 2021, Knutson will lead the company’s new national television networks business, overseeing operations of the combined businesses of Ion Media, the five Katz networks and Newsy. As CFO, she has led the company’s financial operations, corporate development and strategic planning and manages functions including IT and risk management. She played a key role in the merger-and-spinoff deal between Scripps and Journal Communications in 2015.

14. Wade C. Davis

Incoming CEO, Univision Communications Inc.

In February 2020, Davis’s investment firm, ForgeLight, and partners agreed to acquire a majority stake in Spanish-language media giant Univision. Davis will be CEO when the deal closes. He has talked up Univision’s potential with the Spanish-language U.S. population. Before founding ForgeLight, Davis was EVP and CFO of Viacom, helping to drive a turnaround of the business and pave the way for the $50 billion merger of Viacom and CBS.

15. Susan Zirinsky

President and Senior Executive Producer, CBS News

Zirinsky was named to oversee CBS News in March 2019 and, within her first nine months, overhauled the news division, including launching the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.” She also named new leadership and new executive producers of several flagship programs including “CBS This Morning” and “60 Minutes.” She began her career in the CBS News Washington bureau two weeks after the Watergate break-in.

16. Marianne Gambelli

President of Advertising Sales, Fox

Gambelli, a leading figure on Madison Ave., oversees all linear and nonlinear sales across Fox’s portfolio of brands, including Fox Broadcasting, Fox Sports, FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and the latest acquisition, ad-supported streaming service Tubi. Earlier, Fox News experienced record years in ad sales when Gambelli was advertising sales president for Fox News and Fox Business Network. Before Fox, she was at Horizon Media and spent 22 years at NBC.

17. Robin Roberts

Co-Anchor, Good Morning America, ABC

With big interviews like the first sit-down with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris after they announced their historic ticket this summer, Roberts helped keep GMA the number one morning show for the ninth consecutive year. In October, she sat down for an exclusive interview with Judge Esther Salas, whose 20-year-old son was killed and her husband wounded in a racially motivated assault. Her production company, Rock’n Robin Productions, creates original programming for ABC and other networks.

18. David Sambur

Co-Lead Partner, Private Equity, Apollo Global Management

Sambur set his sights on the TV business in 2019 acquiring Cox Media Group and Northwest Broadcasting. With Apollo’s resources and the benefits of scale in broadcasting, that’s seen as a good start. COVID-19 slowed dealmaking in 2020, but Apollo will have its checkbook open in 2021. It likes the growing revenue from retransmission and sees political advertising as a business it can cultivate, in addition to stations. Apollo is reportedly talking to AT&T about DirecTV. We’ll be watching.

19. Ann Sarnoff

Chair and CEO, WarnerMedia Studios and Network Group

Sarnoff was named to her position in August and brings 30 years of industry experience to bear in overseeing all of WarnerMedia’s content-focused teams, uniting the Warner Bros. Pictures Group, HBO and HBO Max, the Warner Bros. Television Group, DC, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang, TCM, Cartoon Network Studios, WB Animation, TBS, TNT, truTV, Wizarding World, consumer products and gaming. She was chair and CEO of Warner Bros., the industry’s first female studio head.

20. Miguel Penella

President of SVOD, AMC Networks

Penella’s record of building successful subscription video-on-demand products and brands for AMC Networks was rewarded in September with an expanded role. He added the AMC Plus premium service to his purview, which included Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and UMC. Shudder has passed the 1-million-subscriber mark, as Acorn TV had a year earlier. AMC acquired Acorn TV and UMC in 2018 as part of RLJ Entertainment, where he was CEO.

21. Michael Barrett

President and Chief Executive Officer, Magnite Inc.

Riding a wave of consolidation, Magnite was created in 2020 as Rubicon Project bought Telaria, combining ad-selling platforms in hopes of grabbing more of the connected TV ad market. President and CEO Barrett had held that position at Rubicon Project. Prior to that, he was president and CEO at Millennial Media. A former Google and Yahoo executive, Barrett also was president and founder of Ichabod Farm Ventures LLC.

22. Jordan Peele

Founder and CEO, Monkey Paw Productions

Peele gained big screen accolades from his 2017 Academy Award-winning directorial debut “Get Out,” followed by the 2019 box office hit “Us.” On the small screen Peele — through his production company Monkeypaw Productions — put his stamp on Netflix’s 2019 reboot of The Twilight Zone, as both executive producer and narrator. In 2020 he collaborated on Amazon Prime Video’s Nazi-targeting vigilante drama series “Hunters” before drawing raves for his company’s HBO series Lovecraft Country.

23. Beau Ferrari

Chairman, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises

Chairman Ferrari succeeded Cesar Conde in the job in May. He oversees the company’s multiplatform portfolio, including the Telemundo broadcast network, which is now the No. 1 Spanish-language network. Reporting directly to Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, Ferrari had been EVP of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises since 2017. He joined NBCU from Univision Communications.

24. Kenya Barris

Producer

Barris is an award-winning writer, producer and director known for his Peabody Award-winning sitcom, Black-ish, at ABC. With a focus on socially conscious storytelling that reflects our culture and tackles contemporary issues, his work has earned him praise for telling stories that make audiences more aware of the world around them while making them laugh. Current projects include Black-ish and spinoffs, Grown-ish and Mixed-ish, with a third spinoff, Old-ish, in the works. 

25. John Landgraf

Chairman, FX, Disney General Entertainment Content

Along with Landgraf’s official title, he’s unofficially known by critics as the mayor of television for his astute observations on the industry. He positioned FX for the future when FX on Hulu was launched earlier this year. FX’s streaming hub offers its own originals, including Mrs. America and A Teacher. FX shows have long played like indie films, despite the basic cable limitations. In the streaming world, those strictures don’t exist.

As the media, telecom and entertainment sectors re-foundation their businesses on video streaming, there are hundreds of executives with hands-on roles in the transformation, shaping the content, technology and business strategies for new and emerging platforms that driving the change and following along with the shifting habits of video consumers. 

In this special issue, Next TV has selected a cross-section of 25 executives, each serving influential companies in the streaming business, each working in very tactile ways to reimagine the video business. 

This list aims to offer a diverse representative sample of key decision-makers, spanning C-suiters to product mangers, working for production studios, SVOD and AVOD services, smart TV makers and other types of companies, and involved in a range of activities, including everything from content production technology development to business strategy to sales. 

Our methodology for selecting these executives was informed by our daily news cycle—which are the platforms, products and technologies driving the business, and who are key executives backing them with very hands-on roles? For this list, we didn’t necessarily aim for the top decision makers, or folks “under 40.” Again, we aimed for aimed for hands-on relevancy.

1. Greg Peters, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Product Officer, Netflix

2. Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer, YouTube

3. Alison Levin, Vice President, Global Ad Revenue and Marketing Solutions, Roku

4. Bozoma Saint John, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Netflix

5. Shalini Govil-Pai, Vice President and General Manager, Google TV & Android TV, Google

6. Sandeep Gupta, Vice President and General Manager, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon

7. Andy Forssell, Executive Vice President and General Manager, HBO Max

8. Peter Stern, Apple Business Leader for Video, News, Books, iCloud,  Advertising, Fitness Plus and Apple One, Apple

9. Krishan Bhatia, Executive VP, Business Operations and Strategy, NBCUniversal’s Advertising Sales Division

10. Dwayne Benefield, Vice President, Entertainment, T-Mobile

11. Michael Ahiakpor

Chief Product Officer, Tubi

Ahiakpor joined AVOD platform Tubi in 2012, as one of six original staff members in a business then known as adRise. During his tenure, he has led the startup’s product management, data science, design, user research, content experience, customer support and QA efforts. The company now has more than 33 million monthly active users across more than 25 device platforms. In March, Tubi was acquired by Fox for nearly $500 million.

12. Michele Barney 

Senior Vice President of Content and Programming, AT&T

The former mergers and acquisitions attorney is responsible for AT&T’s programming relationships and deal negotiations with a variety of content providers, ranging from premium networks to SVOD providers to cable networks, securing content distribution rights across AT&T’s traditional, OTT and mobile video platforms. She also oversees the content deals and scheduling for advanced formats, including 4K, HDR, Dolby Atmos, AR, VR and IoT for AT&T’s curated 4K channels.

13. Devin Emery 

Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President of Content Strategy, CuriosityStream

With 13 million subscribers in 175 countries, CuriosityStream touts itself as the biggest publicly traded pure-play streaming video company behind Netflix. The SVOD service has carved out a niche in science and nature shows and  factual programming. Emery oversees innovation, development and design across all CuriosityStream platforms as well as strategic content creation for the brand. He was recognized as one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 in media in 2019.

14. Craig Erwich 

Senior Vice President of Content, Hulu

Since joining Hulu in April 2014, Erwich has overseen the straight-to-series orders for Hulu’s premium slate of originals, including award-winning series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Ramy.” He has also spearheaded efforts to acquire libraries from other networks including AMC and Turner Broadcasting, while expanding Hulu’s film offerings through deals with partners including Epix and Magnolia Pictures. Hulu had 36.6 million subscribers as of Q3, Disney said.

15. Lauren Anderson 

Co-Head of Content and Programming, IMDb TV

In February, Amazon moved the content team for its fast-growing AVOD platform, IMDb TV, under the Amazon Studios management umbrella, putting Anderson in charge, along with Ryan Pirozzi. Anderson and Pirozzi oversee production, licensing, research and strategy for the free-to-consumer platform. Among free, ad-supported streaming platforms, IMDb TV stands out, not only with high-profile acquisitions like AMC’s “Mad Men,” but original shows including “Alex Rider.”

16. Michael Hawkey

General Manager, TiVo

Since 2015, the former Slingbox engineer has led growth initiatives for TiVo. This includes helping to oversee overall strategy and product offerings in multiple areas for the company’s User Experience group. That unit is key to TiVo’s master plan — that is, to differentiate itself by developing the kind of personalization and search-and-discovery features that truly cut down the complexity of finding something to streaming on television. 

17. Mike Hopkins

Senior Vice President, Prime Video and Amazon Studios

After roles at Sony Pictures Television and Hulu, Hopkins joined Amazon in February 2020, overseeing all aspects of the tech giant’s video entertainment businesses and reporting to CEO and chairman Jeff Bezos. Amazon doesn’t break out the number of active Prime Video users from its regular Prime subscribers, but as of January 2020, there were over 150 million Amazon Prime subscribers, a number that is expected to surpass 200 million this year.

18. Robert Gelick 

Executive VP & General Manager, Streaming Services and Chief Product Officer, ViacomCBS Digital

ViacomCBS is currently planning to rebrand its CBS All Access service under the Paramount Plus brand, which will roll out next year. Gelick leads ViacomCBS’ direct-to-consumer entertainment experiences and network-based sites, apps and SVOD services, including the CBS All Access subscription service, as well as the multiplatform experiences for Viacom-branded networks and the Smithsonian Channel. Gelick’s team also produces original online content to support CBS Television Network’s shows.

19. Amy Kuessner

Senior VP of Content Strategy and Global Partnerships, Pluto TV

Kuessner manages hundreds of deals with major Hollywood studios, TV networks, distributors, sports leagues, news and publishing outfits for ViacomCBS’ free streaming service, Pluto TV. The AVOD platform recently passed 28.4 million monthly active users in the U.S. and 7.5 million worldwide. The company expects to reach 30 million domestic users by the end of the year and is planning to expand to Brazil, followed by France and Italy in 2021. 

20. Chris Larson

Senior VP of  TCL North America

TCL introduced its low-priced smart TVs, powered by the Roku OS, into the North American market just two years ago. Today, TCL is the No. 2 brand, controlling 14% of the market, trailing only Samsung. The fast proliferation of these TVs is the biggest reason Roku is the top U.S. device platform. And Larson, a long-time top Toshiba sales exec, has led the team responsible for this growth. 

21. Jon Lin

Vice President of Product, Sling TV

Lin joined Sling TV earlier this year where he directs the Dish Network-owned live-streaming service’s product management and design functions. Lin oversaw the launch of Sling Watch Party, which lets subscribers invite up to three friends for co-viewing. He was also involved in the integration of OTA channels directly into the Sling TV user interface on LG Smart TVs. The virtual MVPD service recently reported that it has 2.5 million users. 

22. Val Boreland 

Executive Vice President, Content Acquisition, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming

Boreland oversees acquisitions across all NBCUniversal entertainment networks and platforms including NBC, USA Network, Bravo, E!, SYFY, Oxygen, Universal Kids, and Peacock. With the latter surpassing 22 million sign-ups within a few months of its national launch, Boreland and team have secured programming for Peacock from across NBCUniversal and beyond, including a wide variety of third-party networks and studios including A&E, ABC, CBS, The CW, FOX, HISTORY, Nickelodeon, Showtime, ViacomCBS, Paramount, Lionsgate, Warner Bros and Blumhouse.

23. Michael Paull

President, Disney Plus and ESPN Plus

Paull is responsible for leading the Disney Plus and ESPN Plus streaming platforms including marketing, product and technology, data science, and business operations. Paull joined Disney in 2017 with the acquisition of Bamtech Media, where he served as CEO. Disney recently reported that its Disney Plus streaming service hit 73.7 million subscribers in its first year, exceeding expectations. The company is planning to launch a new general entertainment, streaming platform overseas in 2021 under the brand Star.

24. Katherine Pond

Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Vizio

Pond leads OTT distribution, content acquisition and strategic partnerships for Vizio. Since joining the consumer electronics company in 2012, she has initiated, negotiated and closed distribution, ad tech and licensing deals across content, technology, advertising and data verticals. She was named Concordia University’s 2020 Alumna of the Year for Professional Achievement and was chosen as one of Cynopsis’ 2020 Top Women in Media.

25. Soumya Sriraman 

Head of Prime Video Channels, U.S.

Sriraman recently joined Prime Video after serving as founding CEO and president of BritBox. Under her oversight, that niche SVOD channel grew to 1.5 million subscribers in just over three years. Prime Video Channels lets users subscribe to third-party networks and streaming channels ranging from HBO, Starz and Showtime, to niche fare like Shudder and Broadway HD. The Prime Video Channels model now accounts for a significant share of subscribers for many streaming services.

In 2013, Mohan was called Google’s $100 million man after the company paid the online ad wizard a prodigious retention bonus to keep him from bolting to Twitter. 

These days, Mohan might be worth even more to Google for one of its biggest divisions, YouTube. Mohan oversees the user experience on not just the iconic ad-supported video service, but also YouTube Music, Kids and VR, and subscription services YouTube Premium and YouTube TV.

Mohan’s remit includes trust and safety, a Sisyphean task in this fraught year of pandemic misinformation, election disinformation, deep fakes and other headaches. YouTube in 2020 may be more central than ever to its 2 billion users who consume everything from 15-second shorts to feature-length movies to hours-long live streams. 

“We’ve always thought of YouTube as an open platform where people come to connect with each other, learn how to do virtually anything, be entertained and informed,” Mohan said in an email interview. “This came to life during COVID-19, when we saw an acceleration of many trends that were already in progress.”

Those trends include online education, which Mohan said accelerated substantially during the pandemic. 

“Now people have really seen how this can work at scale, and I expect we’ll see a lot of evolution of education as a result,” Mohan said.

He also expects more live streaming and large-screen viewing, already up 80% year over year for YouTube and YouTube TV.

“While the majority of YouTube consumption happens on mobile, our fastest growing area is actually the TV screen,” Mohan said. “In the U.S. alone, over 100 million people watch YouTube and [YouTube TV] on their TV screens each month. The Living Room presents a great opportunity for YouTube.”

Mohan is a self-described “huge sports fan,” rooting for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and looking forward to next year’s Tokyo Olympics. That may be one reason for the many live sports on YouTube TV. 

“I am always looking for the latest sports content on YouTube TV and trying out our new features — Key Plays is a game changer,” Mohan said. “It tracks important plays and lets you easily rewatch them.”

Faced with a period of rapid tech innovation that is disrupting much of the traditional TV business, research into new technologies at the CableLabs, led by CEO Phil McKinney, will be worth watching over the next few years.

The impact of this research is apparent in the research consortium’s work on 10-gigabit networks, mobile convergence, artificial intelligence and new 3D holographic entertainment experiences. 

When McKinney took the top job at CableLabs in 2012, he brought with him a long career in software and tech startups, providng the expertise that he’s used to help operators speed up the pace of innovation.

“Around 82% of the U.S. now has access to 1 gigabit [of internet speeds, up from] less than 3% three years ago,” McKinney said, with more to come. “Today’s networks are not going to be the networks of 10 or 20 years from now. We are going from 1 gig to 2 gigs, to 10 and 25 gigs. It is never-ending. There is nothing to indicate that you get to some speed and you’re done.”

To help with that, CableLabs launched a 10G initiative that has already produced some successful trials with blazing 10-gigabit network speeds. “10G will not only enable the continuing growth of our networks but also improve economic growth,” McKinney said. 

Other top priorities include: research into mobile and mobile network convergence that will create new services and allow content and data to seamlessly flow between mobile and traditional cable networks; work on artificial intelligence to create more reliable, networks; cybersecurity; and new ways of creating and experiencing content like the upcoming holographic Light Field technologies, McKinney said.

Rapid change will also require more investment in training for tech teams. That imperative led to the recently announced merger with Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers /International Society of Broadband Experts (SCTE•ISBE), which will become a subsidiary of CableLabs. “There are hundreds of thousands of employees who have to be trained to deploy these new technologies,” McKinney said. “Bringing the two organizations together will create reduced overhead costs so we can invest more in training programs.” 

Six years ago, Levin was Roku’s first ad sales person, charged with explaining why brands should send ad dollars to this newfangled device. 

Levin’s group now has more than 200 employees, and a broader client base, including Fortune 500 firms, “channel partners” such as Peacock and Disney Plus, and local companies connecting to nearby consumers. She has a much easier time explaining why linear TV advertisers should jump to Roku. 

“We spent the last six years growing that business from the ground up, helping brands understand how much they should move out of linear into OTT as the right targeting tactic,” Levin said. “How do they right-size media spend to consumption and make the best path to those consumers, depending on what they’re trying to accomplish? It’s been an exciting journey, and we’ve only really just gotten started.”

That spade work has paid off in the pandemic, as locked-down consumers have increasingly turned to streaming, especially free, ad-supported services, including the Roku Channel and its many competitor/partners. The company doesn’t break out ad revenue, but Q3 earnings saw a 70% jump year over year in “platform” revenue, which includes advertising. That positions Roku to “help shape the future of television — including TV advertising — around the world,” the company’s shareholder letter said. 

Expect Levin, who formerly worked at YuMe, IAC and BusinessWeek, to be at the center of that.

“What we witnessed as the largest streaming platform in the U.S. is that the No. 1 thing people search for on Roku is ‘free,’ ” Levin said. "They’re looking for free content to supplement their viewing behaviors on Netflix or other places. And that only accelerated during COVID.” 

“Free” means ads. Going forward, Levin expects two trends to shape 2021: identity and frequency. Knowing your viewer’s identity means you can build a direct connection to the consumer with better data and better advertising. And then you have to figure out how often does a given ad run. 

“What’s the right balance, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish?” Levin asked. “What’s the right consumer journey? That’s a big focus for us in the next year.”

Sweeney came to his new post from Xaxis,  GroupM’s programmatic media arm, signaling a new approach to a changing media landscape. Sales execs call him very strategic and a great partner. “He learned extraordinarily quickly and he was well prepared for the upfront,” said an ad-sales head from a top media company who asked not to be identified.

But before getting to the upfront, Sweeney had to deal with the pandemic on behalf of his clients. “We ranked our preferred partners based on how flexible they were with us through COVID when we needed to move or even cancel some dollars,” Sweeney said. Now, GroupM is judging them on delivering on their upfront guarantees. Ratings have eroded, but might rebound as scripted shows return to schedules.

Media companies are responding well. “We expect that to continue because it will impact what budgets look like in next year’s upfront,” Sweeney said. “If you can’t deliver consistently, why would I not option dollars away from you and put them where they can have the greatest impact for our clients?”

At a time when some wondered if there would be an upfront, Sweeney convinced GroupM clients to mostly buy at the traditional time, a strategy validated by a scatter market where prices are high and little inventory remains available.

“We have to expand on the definition of TV and go beyond traditional pay TV,” he said, noting that one needs only to follow the money to see that media companies are investing in programming, data and technology to pursue more direct-to-consumer business. Similarly, ad dollars are increasingly following viewers towards streaming with outlets owned by the big media companies such as Hulu, Peacock and Pluto TV.

“We have to make sure there’s value there,” he said, adding that the industry needs to collaborate so advertisers can measure and optimize across media brands.

Sweeney is not the only digital guy who believes TV advertising remains powerful. Some of the smartest, data-driven marketers — Amazon, Google, Facebook — spend more money on TV than they did three years ago as a percentage of their marketing budgets, he said. “There’s still tremendous value there.”

Since taking over as president of Local Sports in July of 2020, Steve Rosenberg has found himself in a closely watched position that will have important implications both for the broadcaster and the future of regional sports networks. 

Sinclair partnered with media entrepreneur Byron Allen to purchase the Fox Sports Regional Networks in 2019 for $9.6 billion from The Walt Disney Co. following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox. At the time, there were already concerns about the future of regional sports networks, given the rising cost of sports rights and the impact of cord-cutting on subscriber fees. Those issues became much more worrisome with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which dramatically reduced the amount of live sports. Dish, Sling, YouTube TV, Hulu and fuboTV have dropped the channels from their lineups. 

In its Q3 2020 earnings, Sinclair wrote down the value of its RSNs by $4.2 billion and reported that it will have to pay $371 million in rebates in 2020 to MVPDs for failing to deliver enough live sports. The Wall Street Journal has also reported debt-restructuring talks between lenders and the Diamond Sports, the Sinclair subsidiary that runs the channels. 

Since then, promising news from vaccine trials has pushed up Sinclair’s stock and Sinclair executives remain bullish on the RSNs’ prospects. On Sinclair’s Q3 2020 earnings calls, President and CEO Chris Ripley stressed: “We’re very excited about the growth opportunities we have with the RSN [regional sports networks] ....  [S]ports betting … we think is going to be a game-changer. And we intend on reinventing the RSNs around gamification, around community-based fandom and around direct-to-consumer [streaming apps].”

To implement those strategies, Rosenberg brings an impressive resumé with experience working in the television, entertainment and sports industry, including a 20-year stint at Universal. He also has a particularly strong background in distribution, marketing and sales that will help the networks find new audiences and revenue streams. 

Turnaround hopes depend on the impact of COVID-19. How quickly the 42 major league teams that supply games to the networks can resume full game schedules in 2021 remains an open question. Sinclair declined to comment for this profile.

Even close observers could be forgiven some brand confusion discerning the differences between Alphabet Inc.’s Google TV and the older, closely related Android TV. But make no mistake; the combination on a global scale represents Google’s most coherent effort yet to connect the streaming-video industry’s hardware, software and content sides in a way that consumers find compelling and useful. 

Making that initiative work on a global scale is Govil-Pai’s job.

The best way to understand Govil-Pai’s streaming empire: Android TV is an operating system for streaming devices. Google TV is a viewer-friendly interface that sits “atop” Android TV. Google TV ties together technologies including search, machine learning, mobile, smart home and smart assistants, while making it easier for viewers to unearth interesting programs across SVOD, AVOD, live TV and other sources. 

“Many of us are realizing that while there is a lot of great content, it’s really hard to find something to watch,” Govil-Pai said in an email interview. “That is where Google [TV] comes in, providing an interface which helps you find content in a seamless search and discovery experience.”

Google TV launched this summer alongside a $50 dongle and remote control called Chromecast with Google TV. Coming soon: Google TV in Android TV-powered connected TVs, third-party streaming devices and more. It’s a potentially potent combination.

With Android TV gaining momentum with both pay-TV operators and consumers, Alphabet hopes Google TV will take it over the top in the global connected-TV arms race with Amazon and Roku. 

That’s the challenge facing Govil-Pai, a Bollywood-born former child actress who made a savvy career pivot, picking up two computer science degrees from the Indian Institutes of Technology before becoming technical director on early Pixar animated films such as “Toy Story.”

Even as pandemic viewership has shot up across the streaming industry, Govil-Pai’s unit has “continued to stay focused on providing an experience that meets users’ needs … helping them find something to watch” with a “platform with features such as watchlist and screensaver mode that help entertain and delight our users at a time when it’s needed more than ever.”

This has been a difficult year for everybody and every business, yet Pearlena Igbokwe, who was promoted this fall to chairman, Universal Studio Group, doesn’t see obstacles. 

“All I see is opportunity,” declared Igbokwe, who is now responsible for all aspects of creative affairs and production for Universal Television, Universal Content Productions (UCP) and NBCUniversal International Studios, reporting directly to Jeff Shell, CEO of NBCUniversal. “The opportunity to share resources and talent across our four content production businesses; the opportunity to tell meaningful, impactful stories no matter the format; and the opportunity to bring our global teams together with the common goal of creating great television.”

Igbowke oversees production of more than 2,500 hours of programming currently airing or streaming around the globe, but it’s an extension of a role in which she has repeatedly proven her chops. For the past four years, she was president, Universal Television, with dominion over creative development, casting and production for the studio. Her tenure produced the sitcom The Good Place, the acclaimed Russian Doll and a new Dick Wolf franchise FBI.

Igbokwe said she was most proud that “we were able to grow our volume of series by 100%. We produced approximately 25 series when I first arrived in 2016 and by early 2020, we were up to 50 series at 12 different networks or platforms.”

Programming has long been a passion for Igbowke. In earlier positions she developed the top-rated new broadcast dramas for three out of her four years in the role, including The Blacklist, and This Is Us. During her 20 years at Showtime she helped shepherd into existence Masters of Sex and Nurse Jackie, among others, and was involved in developing the pilot and overseeing the first five seasons of Dexter.

Life at the top removes her further from day-to-day creative development, Igbowke acknowledged. “But I work with people who have instincts that I trust, and my job is to make sure they have all the resources they need to make hit shows,” she said. “I still watch dailies and cuts and read scripts, so I’m not too far away from the process. I can’t help myself.”

Top TV execs are tightening up their chin straps as NFL rights negotiation season approaches. NFL games represent TV’s most powerful content, accounting for 22 of the 25 top-rated telecasts this year, and determine the winners and losers in the media world.

ESPN’s $1.9 billion a year deal for Monday Night Football expires after the 2021 season. The league’s deals with Fox, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and DirecTV, worth a total of $4 billion a year, expire after the 2022 season. Bet that the new deals will be more.

Wall Street knows how important the NFL is to networks and analysts pepper earnings calls with questions about discussions with the league. Last month, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch called the NFL “our No. 1 programming partner” and tried to assure investors that “we look forward to continuing that partnership.”

Lining up for the NFL is Brian Rolapp, chief media and business officer for the league since 2017. The NFL’s  objective — beyond getting as much revenue as it can — remains  “maximizing the availability and reach of football and making sure that, locally, you can watch your team,” he said. 

But the decline in pay TV is creating a more fragmented landscape, making reaching humongous audiences more difficult. “That’s going to mean some changes in the future, which we’re trying to think through,” he said.

To see what the NFL is thinking, look at Thursday Night Football, a combination of broadcast with Fox, cable with the NFL Network and streaming with Amazon Prime Video. Rolapp said Thursday has been the NFL’s “strategic game package” and that its digital viewership is now bigger than the audiences other sports get on television.

Another experiment comes when playoff games go digital on CBS All Access and Peacock. Will that build reach? “We’ll find out,” Rolapp said. “We applaud their efforts to figure out how to innovate in this changing world, and we certainly want them to be successful.”

Rolapp doesn’t expect COVID to depress how much money the NFL will seek, or how much partners will be willing to pay. “We have not seen a lack of interest because of economic concerns,” he noted.

In January, Amazon Fire TV surpassed 40 million active users, as the platform continues to battle Roku for the lofty title of “World’s Top Connected TV OS.” The clout of these two device ecosystems was on full display over the summer, when two major streaming services, Comcast/NBCUniversal’s Peacock and AT&T/WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, both tried launching without support from either Amazon or Roku. (Fire TV has since enabled an app for HBO Max.)

Sitting at the controls as an emerging distribution paradigm unfolds, with OTT device ecosystems serving as the new gatekeepers, Gupta considers Fire TV fierce competition with not just Roku, but also Google and Apple, “a good thing because it provides customers with more options and more selections. We are Amazon and we believe in open customer choices. But we at Fire TV feel like we are delivering the best product.” 

The former Apple and Yahoo executive joined Amazon in 2011, and was put in charge of the company’s quickly aborted FirePhone initiative. That early misstep aside, he has helped lead the company’s successful Fire TV-fueled OTT ambitions since early 2015.

As they have for Netflix, Roku and other big streaming companies, the pandemic’s changing consumer habits have helped fuel rapid growth for Amazon’s Prime Video content and Fire TV software/hardware initiatives.

“What we’ve seen during the lockdown is people looking to TV as really a way to connect with the world,” Gupta said. “They want to understand what’s going on and get entertainment. It’s redefined what people are looking for in our devices. The amazing growth in live usage [on Fire TV] is a great example of that.” 

Making Fire TV a better conduit for live streaming is where much of Gupta’s focus is these days. There’s also international expansion of the platform to consider. 

“We want to (expand) in a way that we don’t ever sacrifice or compromise the customer experience,” explains Gupta. “Meaning that when someone gets a Fire TV, they know they are getting a great experience that they are going to love. We will never ever go into a region if we can’t provide that.”

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic forced the shutdown of all major pro sports this past spring, but no sport rebounded better than the National Basketball Association.

After shutting its 2019–20 season down in March, the league — under the leadership of Silver — began work on an innovative gameplan to resume the season safely within a quarantined environment in Florida that would host the league’s truncated regular and postseason schedule. 

The Los Angeles Lakers in late October emerged from the nearly three-month bubble experience with the NBA Finals trophy after defeating the Miami Heat. Ratings for the competitive, six-game championship series were subpar, but competition was extreme against the NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals, MLB’s World Series and the NFL regular season.

The “bubble” scenario at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports complex was unprecedented in its scope and operations, but achievable because of Silver’s dogged determination to see it through. Silver brought together a range of groups — including the NBA Players Association along with its television partners, as well as health officials on call to administer strict COVID-19 protocols.

“Nobody thought we were going to spend months in a [bubble],” Silver said during a recent Reuters interview prior to the league’s Nov. 19 NBA Draft. “Ultimately, we concluded that’s the best we could do under the circumstances.”

Silver’s deft work with the players union on emphasizing social justice and racial equality messages throughout league play also earned him accolades across the sports world.  

If that wasn’t enough, Silver has the league in position to start its 2020–21 season in December — the shortest period between seasons in NBA history. With the league set to play during its traditional winter/spring time period with a shortened, 72-game schedule, Silver has the league poised to continue its successful play as one of the pre-eminent pro sports leagues. 

“We feel comfortable that the protocols that we’ll have in place in our practice facilities and our arenas will keep our players safe,” Silver said to ESPN. “We’re set out on a course to open on Dec. 22, but we will undoubtedly be learning new things every day.”

Starting in the mailroom and rising to the top is a Hollywood trope. But Daniel didn’t even begin at The Walt Disney Co. as an employee: his first position was as an intern. This fall, the 46-year-old Daniel became chairman of Disney’s new distribution division and the first Black person to be a division head, reporting directly to the CEO Bob Chapek. 

That intern title is a bit misleading, though. Daniel wasn’t a college freshman but a Stanford University MBA candidate. After that internship, Daniel actually spent three years at Goldman Sachs before joining Disney in 2007. 

As a child, the Chicago native loved movies but has said in the past, “I never imagined that there was a business side to entertainment.”

At Disney, he proved how much he learned as part of the team involved in the purchases of Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm that have spearheaded Disney’s revenue in the past decade. Prior to his promotion, Daniel was president of Consumer Products, Games and Publishing, overseeing the creation and delivery of products across a variety of channels — including Disney Store and Disney Parks (bringing to life “Star Wars” and “The Avengers” in that arena) — while managing the licensing organization spanning numerous categories. Daniel also oversaw the games and interactive experiences businesses plus Disney Publishing Worldwide.

In his new role, Daniel’s landscape grows even more. He oversees the organization responsible for the P&L management and all distribution, network and engineering operations, sales, advertising and data worldwide for all content engines. And with streaming revenues vital to survival, he is also responsible for the operations of Disney’s streaming services and domestic television networks while working in close collaboration with creative leaders across the company on content budgeting, as well as programming decisions and the execution of marketing campaigns.

Disney’s most recent numbers — Hulu Plus Live TV, 4.1 million subscribers; Hulu VOD, 32.5 million subscribers; ESPN Plus, 10.3 million subscribers; and Disney Plus, 73.7 million subscribers — show Daniel is off to a good start in his new role and he has a healthy platform from which to work his (Disney) magic.

When Netflix named Saint John CMO in June, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. 

She’d spent the previous two decades working in executive roles at some of the world’s most formidable brands and tech companies, including Apple Music, Beats Music, PepsiCo and Uber. Saint John was the first African-American woman to join Netflix’s group of C-Suite executives and the streaming giant’s third marketing chief in less than 18 months. 

At Apple, she spearheaded campaigns geared toward growing consumer brand recognition and loyalty around the world. She made a name for herself at Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developer’s Conference, when she managed to get a room full of tech developers to rap— slightly—along to The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.” 

In June 2017, Uber hired Saint John to repair the company’s reputation and morale. One year later she left to serve as CMO at entertainment and sports agency Endeavor. And she reportedly left that job after receiving a $7 million-a-year offer from Netflix.  

Over 15 million people subscribed to Netflix in the first three months of 2020, marking record growth for the top subscription video-on-demand service. In all, Saint John will be responsible for marketing to the 182.8 million Netflix subscribers. 

She joins the streaming behemoth at a time when the company is up against a slew of new competitors, including Disney Plus, HBO Max and Apple TV. But Saint John, who says she learned at an early stage in her career to “trust her gut,” seems to have plenty of ideas up her sleeve about how best to promote shows on the streaming service. 

The exec told a packed crowd at the 2019 online marketing festival in Germany that performance marketing is key to success. “All of our businesses and corporations require a level of intimacy with our consumer that can only be reached through performance marketing,” she said. “[We need to understand] what are the expectations of our audience? What do they want us to know about them and therefore we can service them better.”

CEO Jason Kilar, 49, tends to be ahead of the curve. In 1997, after earning his MBA at Harvard, Kilar joined a company that was selling books over the internet called Amazon. For nearly a decade, he  held a variety of leadership roles there, helping it grow into the behemoth it is today.

Then, before most of America really even knew what streaming was, Kilar left Amazon to become founding CEO of a streaming startup called Hulu. By 2013, he had led the company to more than $1 billion in revenue. 

Along the way, he issued a 2011 blog as a manifesto that became famous in the industry for challenging the status quo (and his corporate bosses). “History has shown that incumbents tend to fight trends that challenge established ways and, in the process, lose focus on what matters most: customers,” he wrote, critiquing traditional TV for having too many ads and the industry as a whole for not understanding how people want to be able to control when and on what screens they can watch their programming. It also explored the importance of understanding the influence of social media.

In 2013, Kilar became co-founder and CEO of Vessel, a next-generation online video service, bought by Verizon Communications in 2016.

He also served on the boards of Dreamworks Animation and Brighter and is currently on the board of Univision Communications, Opendoor, Wealthfront and Habitat for Humanity International.

Now at WarnerMedia, Kilar has quickly made an impact. While he acknowledged a large learning curve in the cable and film sides when he started in the spring — not to mention a pandemic and a shaky economy that is changing business dynamics daily — there clearly was confidence in his penchant for being detail-oriented yet also trusting of department heads.

Not surprisingly, he has emphasized the centrality of streaming and HBO Max in the company’s future. He also showed confidence in his grasp of the company’s situation. In August, three top executives — Robert Greenblatt, Kevin Reilly and Keith Cocozza — suddenly found themselves out of a job, with Kilar saying in interviews, “Disciplined companies have to make tough decisions.”

Ryan’s career as an entrepreneur, before  he became overseer of ViacomCBS’s critically important global streaming strategy, journeyed through the music world (CDuctive, back in the days of custom CDs and Smule, a custom singing app) and the clothing world (Threadless and Trunk Club) before he entered TV as the co-founder and CEO of Pluto TV.

“Since I became an entrepreneur back in the mid-’90s, I’ve always been highly focused on the consumer,” he said. “And I’ve also been a contrarian — to find the best opportunities you have to look for the white space where no one else is.”

Contrarian doesn’t mean going against the grain just for the sake of it, Ryan added: “It isn’t just being different; it’s also about what will be highly sought after and what can be done better.” At each of his stops, along with his new role, he has come to understand the “power of curation. It’s the paradox of choice, too much of which can be paralyzing so you need to curate for the consumer.”

In his new role, a promotion in October, Ryan will have plenty of consumers. He is overseeing the company’s global streaming strategy across both paid and free services, including CBS All Access, which will relaunch as Paramount Plus with a vast library of TV episodes along with hundreds of movies from the Paramount library in early 2021, and Pluto TV, the leading free streaming television service. (The latter, which was acquired by Viacom for $340 million in 2019, is free and ad-supported streaming; in the third quarter it grew domestic monthly active users 57% to 28.4 million.)

“I’m super excited about our opportunities in both the free and paid arenas,” Ryan said. “We are well-positioned with a world-class brand that has near universal awareness in almost every major market globally. We will bring that to bear at the intersection of free and paid, so that consumers of our free content on Pluto TV can be funneled into paying for premium content and originals and people who churn out, because some do, can be kept in our ecosystem with Pluto TV.”

With the pandemic dramatically accelerating the importance of streaming, Roku has emerged as the leading platform, with 46 million active accounts in Q3 2020, up 43% from a year earlier and triple the 15.1 million accounts at the end of Q2 in 2017. By way of comparison, Roku’s active account base was now more than double Comcast’s 20 million residential and business video subscribers in Q3 2020. 

That has made Cittadine, who oversees Roku’s content strategy, acquisition and partner channel development, a powerful force in the TV and movie business.

Cittadine came to Roku with a resumé that includes an MBA from Georgetown University, work in corporate banking and expertise in digital media and the movie industry from a 2006 to 2017 stint at 20th Century Fox. In 2017, he joined Roku in his current role, overseeing Roku’s content strategy, acquisition and partner channel development.

A big part of the job, he said, is helping channel providers grow their subscription, advertising and content sales businesses. “When Disney’s ‘Mulan’ launched over Labor Day weekend, more people watched Disney Plus on Roku than all other streaming platforms combined,” he said.

That has helped programmers expand their streaming businesses but it is also crucial for Roku, which takes a cut of those revenues. In Q3 2020, Roku’s Platform business, which includes licensing and advertising, grew by 78% compared to a year earlier. 

How those streaming revenues should be divided has also touched off some contentious negotiations with streaming services like HBO Max, which is still not on the Roku platform. The standard distribution agreement publicly available on Roku’s website indicates that it asks for 20% of subscription fees and 30% of ad revenue. 

“We believe we have an opportunity to make these new  services incredibly successful,” Cittadine explained. “We are the largest streaming platform in the world and we believe that these services need Roku in order to be successful. We are really excited about structuring agreements that will … allow them to create a tremendous amount of value and allow us to share in a fair amount of value. There is a lot at stake.” 

HBO’s drama series Watchmen was the most celebrated scripted series at the 72nd Emmy Awards this past September, winning 11 awards and pacing the cable network to an industry-high 30 statuettes — a feat achieved despite having nearly 60 less nominations than rival Netflix.

Yet exceeding expectations is nothing new for Bloys. Since taking over the position at the leading premium service in 2016, he’s always answered the call from viewers and critics as to whether the service can continually remain the industry’s leader in creative, innovative and entertaining scripted content. The question most recently was posed after Emmy record-holder Game of Thrones ended its eight-season run in 2019. Bloys’s post-Thrones answer was not only the development of Watchmen, but also the successful and Emmy Award-winning series such as  Succession, Big Little Lies and Euphoria.

“As long as we continue to find talented artists with something to say, we hope we will do well with the Emmys,” Bloys said. “Total nominations and wins may fluctuate year to year, but we are not changing our strategy of betting on the storytellers.”

Now with HBO Max under his creative belt, Bloys has a wide canvas to develop original content for an ever-growing digital audience. 

“We try to keep in mind that the goal for HBO Max is to broaden the audience for HBO,” Bloys said. “While HBO will continue to produce the kinds of shows you would expect, the shows for HBO Max will continue to push into new genres, like reality, DC [superhero franchises], tentpole dramas and young adult content.”

Indeed, the future success of the subscription-based HBO Max service relies on the fortunes of its anchor HBO. Given the successful runs of such acclaimed series as Lovecraft Country and I May Destroy You this year, as well as the 2021 returns of “Succession” and multiple Emmy Award-nominated comedy series Insecure — along with new limited series Mare of Easttown with Kate Winslet and The White Lotus from Mike White — Bloys is poised to keep HBO in its creative leadership position and to make even more noise during the 2021 Emmy season.

Rice, who joined The Walt Disney Co. when 21st Century Fox was acquired last year, is king of the Magic Kingdom when it comes to television content. He is responsible for the mine that produces more than 4,500 hours of TV programming a month. He’s also responsible for sorting which shows go to which outlet, a new Mandalorian for high-profile streaming service Disney Plus, another “Bachelor” for ABC to broadcast or a Fargo for FX and Duck Tails for Disney Channel on cable, and even election coverage on ABC News.

Disney has pivoted to streaming, which has changed everything from the way its business is structured to the way it measures results. In October, Disney CEO Bob Chapek separated the people who create content from those concerned with profit and loss, distribution, advertising and technology, including managing Disney’s streaming services and domestic TV networks.

Rice explained the new mandate in a Nov. 10 memo to his staff: “For our team, this means we will wholly focus our resources and efforts on developing, producing and marketing exceptional content to fuel the company’s streaming and linear platforms while our colleagues at Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution will distribute and monetize that content and run the linear networks and streaming platforms.”

Most of Rice’s group had been focused on linear TV networks. “As we look to the future and how consumers choose to watch their programming, this reorganization is an opportunity for us to fully focus on what we do best, making great programming for viewers wherever they choose to watch their favorite shows,” he said in the memo.

Making better television — and lots of it — might be Disney’s key advantage as it challenges Netflix for streaming superiority. The new structure should let him stick to storytelling in a business where successful creative executives tend to get bigger and bigger loads of business and administrative duties heaped on them.

“He was already functioning as head of the television studio and spent about 75% of his time on development, talent and scaling production,” an exec familiar with the situation said. “I think he’s really happy with this.”

Noah may not have the decision-making power of the top executives on this list, but he is perhaps its most widely recognized face. And in a presidential election year, during a pandemic and months of social-justice protests, his was an important voice in the comedy world and also the cultural landscape.

Early in the pandemic, he paved the way as the first late-night host to shift to doing shows from his home, beginning March 23. (He also has paid the salaries of about two dozen furloughed staffers.) Steering away from the laughs, he gave National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci 13 minutes of airtime on March 26. In a subsequent interview, Noah explained that he worried about experts and facts being sidelined for opinions. “American news generally is geared more toward entertainment and engagement than information, because information can be very boring,” he said. “We needed to give this expert a platform.” (The show was viewed on YouTube nearly 12million times.) 

As the only Black host of a major late-night show, he also offered a unique perspective on the George Floyd killing and subsequent protests, explaining clearly and potently why, in some early cases, the protests shifted into violence and looting. (Noah, who is from South Africa, is interracial; his background is explored in incisive detail in his acclaimed memoir, Born a Crime.)

He also pushed the limits of linear television this year, persuading Comedy Central to extend the show to 45 minutes to allow more time for interviews, even if it meant the show no longer neatly fit the traditional half-hour time slots. 

But Noah is more than just his nightly time on Comedy Central on the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning show. (The show earned six Emmy Award nominations in 2020.) He has helped the show move into the modern era, breaking free of the linear constraints with engaging social media content, including an award-winning digital series and podcasts for his global audience. This year, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah earned Webby Awards for Best in Comedy and Best Web Personality/Host.”

As broadcasters race to attract a new generation of viewers, the tech strategies being implemented by Jenkins will be worth watching over the next year.

Jenkins’ efforts to use technology to improve Nexstar’s business builds on a long career of innovation, including work on digital broadcast technologies for a variety of broadcast equipment vendors and senior tech jobs at Ion Media, LIN Media and Media General. He assumed his current position in 2017 after Nexstar acquired Media General.

As the nation’s largest broadcast group, with 197 TV stations and significant digital and cable network operations, Nexstar faces a rapidly changing media landscape. “Tech is bringing a lot of disruption to so many areas,” Jenkins said. “But I feel really privileged to be in a position to think about applying technologies to our businesses in ways that will help us navigate all these disruptions. Hopefully, we can look at these disruptions as opportunities, not problems.” 

One major opportunity is the NextGen TV standard ATSC 3.0. Implementing ATSC 3.0 will help stations do a much better job of improving their traditional business of delivering content to consumers by allowing them to broadcast higher-resolution video, improved audio, new interactive services and advanced advertising systems, Jenkins explained.

Beyond that, Jenkins noted that ATSC 3.0 will enable a much more robust broadcast platform, opening up opportunities to offer spectrum and services to other companies in such areas as automotive, the internet of things or content distribution.

“We are still in early launch mode, but we will have stations in 12 or maybe 13 markets lit up with ATSC 3.0 by the end of this year and another 20 or so next year,” providing ATSC 3.0 signals on Nexstar stations to about 30% of the country by the start of 2022, he said. 

Jenkins has also been playing a major role in the Television Interface Practices (TIP) initiative to develop standards that will help stations better compete against digital media by automating and streamlining the buying process. “TIP will benefit not just Nexstar, but the whole industry by making it easier for buyers” to buy local TV ads, he said.

Perhaps no one made a bigger 2020 splash in streaming video than Bajaria.

Bajaria’s elevation to Netflix’s top programming job, displacing 17-year veteran Cindy Holland, stunned Hollywood. Bajaria then did Netflix’s version of the restructuring hitting Hollywood, work she’s still doing.

“I’m focused on building my global team so that we’re structured for the next five years,” she said in an email interview. “I wanted to put in place a structure that eliminated silos and leaned into everyone’s strengths. And I wanted it to be really user-friendly and clear for creators who want to work with us.”

As executives left, show pitchers were still confused. But the restructuring sets up Netflix for the global content battles to come. Simply put, as Hollywood studios’ streamers focus on winning the U.S. market, Netflix wants to win in nearly 200 countries.

“We don’t talk about the U.S. and label everything else as ‘international,’” Bajaria said. “Everything really is local, no matter where you live. The most important thing is that our stories are locally relevant and authentic, and when we do that really well, they travel the world on Netflix. Books have done this for centuries, and we’ve seen music do it in recent years with hip-hop and K-pop. We have more members outside the U.S. than within, but there’s enormous opportunity in both in the coming years.” 

Bajaria will draw on her globetrotting background (a former Miss India USA, she lived in London until age nine) and international programming experience (including hit co-productions such as Star Trek: Discovery and Bodyguard). Among the 50-plus productions finished since the pandemic, Bajaria tabs two as must-watch: Cobra Kai’s season 3, and a reboot of durable French character Arsene Lupin.

What Bajaria isn’t doing is worrying about competition.

“We can’t focus on the road ahead if we’re looking over our shoulders,” she said. “So I try and stay focused on what’s best for Netflix and our members and not pay a lot of attention to what others are doing. It’s a competitive space, but it’s not zero sum.”

Cable One set the trend for the rest of the industry back in 2013, deemphasizing video and setting the stage for the emergence of streaming services that dominate the business today. 

Laulis has been an integral part of that transition, one followed by virtually every other cable operator since. She said former Cable One CEO Tom Might caught sight of some early signs of the decline of video that the team modeled out over time.

“We felt this trend was inevitable, so we embraced it and gained further confidence in our strategy given our early results,” Laulis said. “While we had the foresight to ‘skate to the puck,’ we could not predict whether the timing was right. But by 2016, these higher growth and higher margin products made up a majority of our revenues for the first time, which dramatically improved our profitability in large part because we were no longer subsidizing video.”

That switch helped fuel the company to an unprecedented period of growth. Since splitting from Graham Holdings (parent of The Washington Post Co.) in 2015, Cable One stock has been the top performer in the sector, rising more than five-fold from $399.85 to $2,021.25 per share in five years. 

Laulis got her start in the cable business 35 years ago with Hauser Communications, later moving to Jones Communications. Since 1999, she has held several roles within Cable One ranging from marketing to operations and customer service, which has given her a breadth of experience across all lines of the company’s business, culminating in being named president and CEO in 2017 and, a year later, chair of the board.

While Cable One has profited from the switch in focus to broadband, Laulis is not ready to call the video business dead. She believes video still plays a vital role in informing and entertaining the public, even as consumers have myriad more choices and options to access that information today.  

“So rather than saying video isn’t an option, it seems more likely that video as we know it today will continue to evolve,” she said.   

In January, just ahead of the introduction of new streaming service Peacock, NBCUniversal introduced its One Platform advertising initiative. 

Created to streamline ad buys across all Comcast, NBCUniversal and Sky platforms by uniting linear, digital and streaming ad inventory, the initiative provides marketers with tools to target key consumers. Bhatia, a veteran advanced ad man, was put in charge of ushering in this transformation.

“Industries that adapt to change fastest end up being in a leadership position,” he said. “So our call to action is for the agencies and advertisers to join us in that transformation and shed legacy from a measurement, planning and buying perspective [and] to follow where the audiences are going. That is ultimately what One Platform is intended to do.”

While plenty of time is spent “making the future feel less threatening” to marketers, Bhatia noted, so far they don’t seem too intimidated.

“There’s definitely a trend towards using data and technology to target and optimize media buys,” he explained. 

To do just that, NBCU created AdSmart, a technology that unites client data with NBCU’s audience data to make sure marketers reach both linear and digital audiences. 

“Two thirds of our Adsmart business is actually doing custom matches with advertisers’ CRM databases,” Bhatia said. “They are looking to find those at scale across our TV, digital and OTT properties. So we work with them to create these custom matches and create a segment that then dimensionilizes those audiences across all of our properties and run an optimized media campaign against it.” 

The national launch of Peacock in July meant another NBCU platform for advertisers to infiltrate. Unlike Netflix, Peacock is an ad-supported streaming service with subscription tiers. The service launched with 10 advertisers, including Target, Subaru Unilever and Verizon, as well as a promise to run no more than five minutes of advertisements per hour. 

Bhatia said that it is critical for brands to be where consumers are. “Follow the audience,” he said. “If audiences are consuming content on streaming platforms at a growing clip, then our offer to advertisers is to enable them to follow those audiences into those environments.”

In 2016, Apple hired the former Time Warner Cable executive to handle cloud-based subscription services. At the time, the Wall Street Journal speculated that in addition to increasing Apple’s investment in Apple Music, Apple Books and iCloud, Stern’s duties would include helping the tech giant tap into the television streaming service industry, which had been on the table for years. 

Stern’s executive vice president-level tenure at a large cable company, where he led product and strategy, made him a perfect candidate to, according to Digiday, bridge a contentious divide that had erupted between various entertainment companies and Apple due to the Cupertino giant’s alleged hard-nosed negotiation tactics. 

Cut to November 2019, when Apple launched Apple TV Plus. The subscription platform, which was originally intended for original content only, has become a formidable player in the streaming wars. Apple TV Plus currently offers 16 original TV series and movies, including Emmy Award-winner “The Morning Show,” “Ted Lasso” and “Greyhound.” (Last spring Apple announced that it would acquire older movies and shows for TV Plus to build a larger catalog of content in an attempt to compete with the massive libraries available on competitive platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Disney Plus.) 

While Apple hasn’t released TV Plus subscriber numbers in its first year, the company’s broader services unit — which houses not only the SVOD platform and the app it runs on, but also things like iCloud and Apple Music — generated $13.2 billion in revenue in the third quarter, up 16%. 

Stern was also behind the 2019 launch of Apple TV Channels, which offers both premium networks like Showtime and Starz, as well as streaming services such as CBS All Access, in a single app and billing system, similar to Amazon Prime Video Channels. Stern said last year that Apple TV Channels is a way to provide subscribers “only the channels you want, on-demand, ad-free, for the entire family, and all of it inside the new Apple TV app.” 

Also in 2019, Stern helped launch Apple News Plus, which gives paying subscribers access to more than 300 magazines, select newspapers and premium digital news services.

Forssell is in charge of the new HBO Max business group, overseeing international expansion. Already, there have been plenty of challenges. The $14.99-a-month service launched in May with a confusing brand proposition, and lacking distribution deals with Amazon Fire TV or Roku. More than 30 planned original shows had to be scuttled or delayed as a result of the pandemic. 

In October, however, WarnerMedia reported that HBO and HBO Max were reaching 38 million combined subscribers — up from 33 million at the end of March — including 8.6 million on HBO Max. 

“From programming to product to technology to marketing and everything in between, the team did not miss a beat when we went into lockdown in March,” Forssell said. “While we had to adjust some of our plans, especially marketing, which planned extensive campaigns around live sporting events, the launch was pretty seamless.” 

With an Amazon deal now in place, a Roku pact reportedly on the way and an end to the pandemic at least in sight, HBO Max has aggressive growth benchmarks to meet.

AT&T CEO John Stankey, who has pledged to invest $4 billion into HBO Max over the next three years, has also told investors that he wants the service to have more than 50 million U.S. subscribers by 2025.

Forssell’s international agenda is also ambitious.

The SVOD’s first international launch will be in Latin America in the first half of 2021. HBO Max will also “start upgrading HBO branded streaming services in Europe to HBO Max,” Forssell said.

Forssell is also focused on content. Hit TV franchises like “Friends” and “South Park” are available to HBO Max subscribers, as are series and movies from within the broader WarnerMedia portfolio and superhero sequel “Wonder Woman 1984” is set to debut on Dec. 25.

“We’ll need to add capabilities to accept new payment methods for each region and, of course, provide full local language support,” he added. “To be successful, streaming services must be global in operation but local in appeal, so that means adding regional programming as well as very tailored marketing efforts that authentically reach audiences in each country.”

Anyone who has been in the cable business over the past 20 years is well aware of Bourkoff. Before founding LionTree in 2012, Bourkoff was one of the top cable analysts in the country, and the only one in the sector covering both the equity and debt sides of the business. Along with other previous positions within UBS, Bourkoff served as vice chairman and head of Americas Investment Banking at UBS and served on the UBS Investment Banking Executive Committee. Before joining UBS, he was a high-yield research analyst at CIBC World Markets from 1997–99 and Smith Barney from 1995–97, where Institutional Investor ranked him the number one ranked cable and satellite analyst for seven consecutive years.

LionTree has offices in New York, San Francisco, Paris and London, and Bourkoff and his team have been strongly influential in the deal market. According to a 2017 New York Times profile, Bourkoff first pitched the idea of using his investment in Charter Communications to roll up the cable business to Liberty Media chairman John Malone on Malone’s private jet.  The result was Charter’s $80 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable.

Since its founding, LionTree has had a hand in more than $500 billion in transactions, including Liberty’s purchase of Virgin Media in 2013 and the sale of its German and Eastern European assets to Vodafone in 2019 for $20 billion. More recently, LionTree advised Viacom in its $20 billion merger with CBS, Virgin Media founder Richard Branson’s satellite venture Virgin Orbit and TiVo in its $3 billion merger with Xperi.  

In his 2019 end-of-year letter to employees, Bourkoff said the focus for 2020 would be on whether scale players can move from the disruption of 2019, take an offensive posture and continue to innovate.

“The answer, of course, is that they must,” Bourkoff wrote. “The next decade will be the stage for a clash of titans, as battle-tested platforms that have emerged stronger than ever will compete against one another for consumers’ attention. As advisers first and foremost, we must be cognizant of the fact that each scaled player’s ‘motion’ will be different.”

Benefield honchoes T-Mobile’s latest effort to disrupt an industry: a low-cost, no-contract OTT skinny bundle that notably expands the wireless carrier’s services.

TVision is a suite of offerings priced between $10 and $60 a month, targeting different TV-watching audiences, with optional Android TV-based hardware, a free year of Apple TV Plus, and even a $99 deal on the Apple TV 4K. Benefield calls the various tiers “right-sized lineups featuring the content they love most,” backed by support from “real humans” in thousands of T-Mobile retail outlets, online and on the phone. 

TVision launched Nov. 1 for T-Mobile customers, with more tranches to come, and the promise that prices would stay low, tech support human and contracts non-existent. A licensed pilot since he was 16, Benefield must navigate those sometimes conflicting promises and make TVision a sustainable part of the T-Mobile portfolio. That’s proved difficult for competitors, including Benefield’s former employer, Sony, where he presided for five years over its skinny bundle, PlayStation Vue, which shuttered in January.

Benefield joined T-Mobile just as it wrapped up a transformative merger with Sprint, adjusted to new CEO Mike Sievert, and accelerated buildout of its hugely important 5G network.

According to Benefield, “5G has the potential to change the mobile-viewing experience by allowing even faster load times, faster download speeds, seamless playback, and reduced playback delays. As 5G evolves, it will deliver lower latency for a better interactive experience and more efficiency through multicasting.”

A Wharton grad, Benefield worked at Disney and Google before Sony. Now, he’s charged with helping T-Mobile navigate a fast-changing sector far from its carrier, or even “un-carrier” roots. 

“As people return to work, we expect the time spent watching TV to continue to exceed pre-pandemic levels, and the manner in which they watch, including more mobile and interactive viewing, to forever change,” he added.

Just ahead, TVision’s part in delivering another Sievert promise, 5G-based wireless home internet, to rival the cable powerhouses and deliver to areas they can’t reach. T-Mobile plans to have in-home internet in more than half of U.S. households by 2026. 

Peters has a lower profile than, say, co-CEO Ted Sarandos, or even just-elevated Head of Global TV Bela Bajaria. But he’s the guy, after a dozen years, who’s figuring out how to tweak the user interface or bump up the price, or give away the service for a weekend in one big corner of the planet.

Peters is one of a handful of people on every quarterly earnings call. And this year, he added chief operating officer to his previous title of chief product officer . So, he’s crucial if not always noticed outside the world’s biggest streaming-video company. That makes him a lock for a list of people to watch in streaming video. 

Peters had career stops at several companies a long way from Hollywood, including Wine.com, Red Hat and NOCpulse, before becoming a senior executive at video-technology firms Mediabolic and Rovi (before it merged with TiVo).

Peters joined Netflix in 2008, initially as chief streaming and partnerships officer for nearly nine years, before becoming chief product officer in 2017. Now he’s in an even more central position with the streaming giant, even as it continues to evolve its succession strategy, and its customer-acquisition strategy across the globe. 

Peters will continue to experiment with the Netflix value proposition across the world. Even as the company ended its free promo offering in the United States, Peters talked at Netflix’s latest earnings call about going free for everyone in India (a country with 1.3 billion people and perhaps Netflix’s single biggest growth opportunity).

“We think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend is a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have … and how the service works, really create an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up,” Peters said. 

Expect to see Peters continue to pull the strings on price hikes, free weekends, interface tweaks and so much more that makes Netflix the most dominant streaming-video service on the planet.

With broadband services a necessity for people working from home and kids taking online classes during the pandemic, cable operators have been scrambling to build networks that can be even faster and more capable in the future. 

That makes the tech moves by Mitchko-Beale, Charter’s top technologist, particularly newsworthy. Work on the transition to blazingly fast 10G networks, efforts to expand its mobile offerings and plans to use artificial intelligence and data analytics to offer more reliable services are all part of an ambitious tech roadmap. 

Inspired by her father’s career in engineering, Mitchko-Beale got an engineering degree at New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering in 1987, and then worked in a variety of high tech jobs before joining Cablevision Systems in 1999. 

During a 15-year stint at the cable company, she earned two Technical Emmys and one Emmy for interactive TV as she worked on a variety of cutting-edge technologies, including the launch of high-speed data services, advanced advertising systems and the first U.S. cloud DVR deployment.

Mitchko-Beale further honed her skills in software development and data analytics between 2015 and 2019 at Cadent before rejoining some of her old Cablevision colleagues at No. 2 U.S. cable company Charter Communications. 

Rapid growth in broadband services, which boosted Charter’s internet customers to 28.6 million in Q3 2020, make the transition to even faster networks an important part of the company’s tech roadmap. “We’re working closely with the industry and CableLabs on 10G,” a suite of technologies that will offer 10-gigabit speeds, she said. 

Mitchko-Beale stressed, though, that network upgrades are “an evolutionary process” that involve a range of technologies. “We are working on some big programs around home Wi-Fi, improving the reliability of our network, mobile and the whole idea of using data to improve business operations,” she said.

To speed the pace of innovation, diversity is also a top priority. “I really believe that great ideas are born from input from all different types of people,” said Mitchko-Beale, who recalls being the only woman in her college engineering classes and is one of very few women overseeing tech operations and strategies at a major company.  

Discovery will take a bold step in 2021 within the traditional linear cable universe with the launch of a channel that will feature two of the most popular stars in the home renovation genre.

Page is up for the challenge with Magnolia Network, a joint venture between Discovery and Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines. The veteran Scripps Networks executive will look to establish the new network’s footprint in a crowded linear cable marketplace. 

“Magnolia Network is a network that people very much want, need and look forward to because it represents positivity, family and comfort,” Page said.

Previously, Page was president of HGTV and Food Network. Prior to Discovery’s acquisition of Scripps Network in 2018, Page was general manager of U.S. Programming and Development for the company’s HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel, DIY Network, Cooking Channel and Great American Country brands.

It was at HGTV where Page displayed her programming acumen, launching such network franchise shows as “Flip or Flop,” “Brother vs. Brother” and “Fixer Upper,” which will be part of the new Magnolia lineup. Page’s influence on the network continues to fuel its success today: HGTV is one of the highest-rated cable networks in a year dominated by shifting programming lineups due to production schedules disrupted by to COVID-19.

“[HGTV] is real comfort food for viewers,” Page said. “I think brands with a clear, consistent, compelling brand promise provide a lot of comfort for viewers because you know what you’re coming for and your expectations are met.”

While the network has yet to set a firm launch date, Magnolia Network has already generated awareness through content previews on sister networks Food Network and DIY. 

Magnolia Network programming will be prominently featured in the Discovery Plus direct-to-consumer service launching in January. Discovery Plus will offer episodes from several Magnolia Network series and specials, including “Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines” and “The Courage to Run with Chip Gaines and Gabe Grunewald.” 

“Our role in it will be something that will be a great offering to people who want that Discovery larger product, but also serves as a great marketing tool for us,” Page said of the streaming product. “Hopefully it serves two great purposes of giving people a real sense of what we’re going to be, as well as showing some highly anticipated content.”

Strong is in charge of Comcast Cable’s main profit center and the backbone for which its content services flow — Xfinity video, mobile and broadband. So far, Strong, who joined Comcast in 2018 after nearly two decades with Liberty Global where she held senior executive leadership roles, has risen to the challenge. Comcast reported the strongest quarterly broadband subscriber growth in its history, 633,000, in the third quarter, and signs all point to that momentum continuing. 

Strong has been a big proponent of Comcast’s Internet Essentials program to bring low-cost  broadband to low-income households. Since 2011, Internet Essentials has connected more than 8 million people with high-speed service. 

“With learning looking very different this year across the country, we want to help give our educators the connectivity they need to support America’s youth during these unprecedented times,” Strong said in a statement. 

Adding to broadband’s allure is Xfinity Flex, which gives broadband-only customers access to streaming services like Peacock, Hulu, CBS All Access, Netflix and Amazon Prime. Flex crossed 1 million devices deployed in May and has been a big part of overall broadband growth.  

“Flex was designed to fit seamlessly into the lives of our internet-only customers,” she said in another statement. “We are thrilled our customers are quickly embracing this device on such a large scale.”

While broadband appears to have a lot of growth runway left, the mobile business also presents opportunity. Comcast launched Xfinity mobile in April 2017, and currently has about 2.6 million customers. In Q3, Comcast added about 187,000 Xfinity Mobile customers, but the company increasingly sees the service as a gateway to its other products. 

During its Q3 earnings call, Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said Comcast wireless growth has been “material” for several quarters, despite closing down retail stores because of the pandemic. With those stores now reopened, and by bundling wireless with all of its products, not just broadband, Watson sees accelerated growth ahead.

“We’re already seeing, as we put our shoulder to bringing things back, some real early-stage success in terms of what mobile can do,” Watson said on the call.