The editors of Multichannel News are proud to introduce the inaugural Wonder Women in Streaming, a group of 12 influential executives set to be honored at a gala breakfast gathering on Thursday, Sept. 5, in Santa Monica, California.

An extension of the magazine’s 22-year tradition of selecting and saluting Wonder Women in the cable and telecommunications industry, the inaugural Wonder Women in Streaming event will highlight women playing important leadership roles in the growing realm of streamed video.

The event will be held at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, ahead of the OTT & Video Distribution Summit that same day.

Also to be honored at the breakfast event are 12 Women to Watch, selected for contributions to the advancement of video streaming that are emblematic of the vital roles they’re likely to play in the content industry’s ongoing transformation.

To read the profiles of this year’s honorees, click on the links below. For much more on the West Coast event, and for registration and sponsorship information, go to wonderwomeninstreaming.com.

PROFILES

Anne Aaron, Netflix
Kelly Abcarian, Nielsen Corp.
Thea Ellis, Sony Interactive/PS Vue
Alison Hoffman, Starz
Lori LeBas, Disney and ESPN Media Networks
Sarah Lyons, WarnerMedia
Julie McNamara, CBS All Access
Heather Moosnick, Hulu
Diana Pessin, HBO
Soumya Sriraman, BritBox
Julia Veale, Showtime Networks
Dina Weisberger, Google

WOMEN TO WATCH

NAME: Soumya Sriraman
TITLE: President
COMPANY: BritBox
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Launched BritBox, the OTT British content service, in March 2017 and has seen remarkable growth (400,000 subs in September 2018, 500,000 in January 2019, currently more than 650K) thanks to savvy marketing, near-live North American premieres of U.K. events and programs, and great word of mouth
QUOTABLE: “You’re not going to switch to [a different service] when the thing you’ve already bought into is giving you what you want. Part of this loyalty must be marketing and the other part has to be being good at what you do.”

Ask the uninitiated to define what a traditional “military tattoo” is and they might say it’s some elaborately styled ink — perhaps reading “USMC” alongside a set of dog tags — appearing just below a person’s shoulder. However, ask the many thousands of BritBox subscribers who know better, and they’ll tell you the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo is a concert spectacle: a glorious, artistic annual performance featuring British Armed Forces and international military bands in stunning, parade-like formation.

They’ll also tell you the event is pure BritBox, the two-year-old specialty streaming service that channels British programming of unparalleled quality, popularity and uniqueness to the United States and Canada. The fast-growing service now boasts 650,000 happy subscribers, all of whom owe a debt of gratitude to Soumya Sriraman.

As the service’s founding president, Sriraman has been instrumental in creating a North American streaming home for BBC Studios and ITV content, featuring the likes of Agatha Christie and Blackadder, Vera with Brenda Blethyn, and Rowan Atkinson in Maigret, and John Cleese in Hold the Sunset, and the comedy classic Are You Being Served? But the OTT service goes that one better for the eager Anglophile. It combines not only the “new” and “known” shows, but offers a “Now” feature for near real-time premieres of programs such as popular British soaps EastEnders and Coronation Street, and many others.

“The ‘Now’ feature came from an incredibly creative idea of Soumya’s,” said Ann Sarnoff, the BBC Studios – Americas president who helped found BritBox before joining Warner Bros. as chair and CEO. “The ‘Now’ brings lifestyle, news, dramas, live events and much more within hours if not minutes from the original premiere in the U.K. BritBox is the only [subscription video-on-demand] service of its kind to offer this feature.”

Needless to say, such an idea, and its execution, requires a multitalented cross-platform mind to pull it off, and Sriraman is that rare talent. As she put it, “This is the first job that brings together my skills as an engineer, my natural leanings as an analyst, and my heart that cries out loud for the shows I love.”

Humble Beginnings

Sriraman’s own journey could be the stuff of award-winning drama. Her mother — raised by her grandparents because of her parents’ financial difficulties — had to set aside her dream of working in engineering. Instead, she insisted her three daughters (Sriraman was the oldest) become engineers. “I rebelled against it but it was ordained for me,” said Sriraman, who grew up in India (“We were a very lower-middle-class family,” she said) before earning her degree from Texas A&M. “But I’m grateful. Hindsight is 20/20, and in some ways it was that education that allowed me to bring a structured view to the way that I think about the world we’re in today.”

Sriraman made the most of every opportunity, notably as senior VP for theatrical marketing at Vivendi Universal (in a six-year run starting in 2004), then president and CEO at Palisades Tartan Films (relaunching the Tartan brand through notable releases), before landing at BBC Worldwide in 2011 as executive vice president, franchise and digital enterprises. While there, she grew brand platforms and broke records in expanding the home entertainment and licensing businesses (adding, among other crown jewels, Doctor Who and BBC Earth). In other words, she evolved her skills in preparation for a longtime dream of creating an over-the-top outlet for British content across the pond.

“The idea was to bring together a combination of new, now and known shows,” she said of BritBox’s origins. “And one of the things we knew was that this required equal parts content curation and technological prowess to pull off this near-live thing we wanted to do from day one.”

The rubber truly met the road when Sarnoff informed her in summer 2016 that ITV Studios content might be available in the deal. ITV and the BBC being competitors, it seemed a long shot, but Sriraman knew the tie-up was essential if BritBox would live up to its potential of the best and biggest British shows. “Getting this done was just not easy,” she said, but the partners agreed on one thing: “We have a common mission, let’s work together toward that.” By the fall, the papers were signed, and BritBox ultimately launched in March 2017.

Still, even if Sriraman knew great niche content was a “field of dreams” for North American viewers, she also realized simply building it — given a league of coliseum-like competition from the likes of Netflix and Hulu — didn’t mean the faithful would now just come. That’s where her savvy marketing came in. The “Now” feature gave viewers a sense of connection to programming most other services don’t exploit, along with an increased sense of place and even loyalty.

Analysis indicating a core audience of women age 45 and over from the South and Midwest led to expanded originality in programming and marketing ideas. A reasonable cost ($6.99 per month; $69.99 per year), strategic social media and great word of mouth have led to swift growth. And tapping the mystery genre programming Sriraman loves, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco is both BritBox’s foray into created originals and the resurrection of a fine franchise. The future of BritBox looks bright, especially with Sriraman leading the parade.

NAME: Thea Ellis
TITLE: Head of Content Acquisition
COMPANY: Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Vue
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Helped manage recent PlayStation Vue deals with AMC Networks, Discovery, NBCUniversal and Turner. Part of the inaugural team at Dish Network to negotiate for the product now known as Sling TV.
QUOTABLE: “I’ve always come across really, really impressive women and really have felt that this space, at least for me, has presented a lot of great role models, which was exciting, but I don’t know if every single industry can say that.”

Playstation Vue’s content acquisition chief, Thea Ellis, always keeps the consumer in mind when approaching deals.

“Every single thing is very much grounded in what is best for the consumer, whether that be existing partnerships or new partnerships,” said Ellis, who was tapped as head of content acquisition, Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Vue in September 2018.

Since assuming her role, Ellis has overseen deals between Sony’s virtual multichannel video programming distributor and programmers including AMC Networks, Discovery, NBCUniversal and Turner, among others.

“What Thea does is she looks at a deal from both sides,” said Toby Berlin, a consultant for content acquisitions and strategic partnerships at PlayStation Vue. “If you think of a deal like an iceberg, 90% of it is in the details and under the water. And that part is very, very important, because you don’t want to take any risks. You want to ensure that you’ve thought of everything, that you know your i’s are dotted and your t’s are crossed.”

Berlin, who also is founder and president of consultant company School of Toby, first met Ellis in August of 2016, when Ellis joined PS Vue as senior manager of content acquisition.

“[Ellis is] very detail-oriented, so that is wonderful when she’s going through a deal,” Berlin said. “She also has that incredible Dish training, for lack of a better word, and you know they just were so tenacious.”

Ellis got her start in pay TV at Dish Network, which recruited her out of Northwestern University in 2012, where she earned her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

“To me, Dish was just a great way for me to be around people who knew the business and were hungry to challenge the business,” Ellis said. While at Dish, she was part of the team that did the first deals for Dish’s over-the-top television service, Sling TV. She also was instrumental in negotiations for Sling with Viacom and Scripps Networks Interactive.

From Queens to Los Angeles

Ellis grew up in Jamaica, Queens (New York), the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica, West Indies.

It was during her childhood that Ellis discovered her love for education.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of school, of learning, and so I really worked on not only public school, but just going to school,” said Ellis, who spent summers attending educational programs to study topics such as cancer and biology.

After high school, she went to Dartmouth College, where she graduated with a degree in sociology but didn’t know what she wanted to do. She briefly worked at a law firm before deciding to move to Los Angeles to work for startup Fifteen Minutes Public Relations.

“I really was yearning for more decision-making from a business perspective,” Ellis said of her experience in PR. Berlin said that background helps Ellis look at deals from the consumer’s point of view.

PlayStation Vue, which launched more than four years ago, came into the picture when she received a cold email about opportunities at Sony. Early on, she had conversations with fellow Kellogg alum and PS Vue head of business Amit Nag, as well as PS Vue VP and head Dwayne Benefield.

“We were thinking a lot alike in terms of how the strategy and the industry was ever-changing,” Ellis said. “Between them, and just getting a sense of the culture and the vibe of PlayStation, it started to very quickly be a place that I could totally see myself contributing to.”

Ellis leads a “small and scrappy team” at PS Vue, consisting of herself and two others. Though she doesn’t have a typical day at the office, she said she always speaks to at least one or two executives from a major programmer.

“My intent, in terms of every single action, it really is about serving my stakeholders to best serve the product, and then my team knows that’s how I view things and I think the expectation is, that that’s their approach as well,” Ellis said.

What sets PS Vue apart from other vMVPDs on the market, Ellis said, is that the product has a consumer-friendly user interface and offers stable and reliable video quality. Among streaming offerings, PS Vue ranked No. 2 in 2019 for customer satisfaction, coming in a point behind Netflix, according to data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

“I think people are going to always go where the good stories are and if those stories can be conveyed in a way or in a product experience that is really compelling to the customer, those are going to be entities that win,” Ellis said.

While Ellis does not know where her story will end up, she does see herself continuing in the video space.

“I am excited about new products coming into the marketplace because I do think more competition typically results in more creativity and more solutions that you probably wouldn’t have had to think about without that,” she said. “And so I guess I am excited about more change. Also a little nervous about more change. But probably more excited than nervous, just because I think we’ll all be better for it.”

NAME: Anne Aaron
TITLE: Director of Encoding Technologies
COMPANY: Netflix
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Creating a modern, cloud-based Linux video encoding platform that has allowed Netflix to expand its operation into 190 countries around the world.
QUOTABLE: “Our goal was to bring down the bit rate needed to still have compelling picture quality. For some folks in some regions, you have to make it good enough for them to watch.”

Back in 2011, as it embarked on an ambitious global invasion plan to take its subscription streaming model to Europe, Asia, Latin America and every far-flung region in between, Netflix needed a little, well, empathy.

People in different countries consume the internet in very different ways, with a variety of infrastructural wherewithal. In short, the world was ready to stream video. But not everyone could stream the same way. As luck would have it, a young former Cisco Systems engineer, Anne Aaron, had just signed onto Netflix’s encoding team. She had a fundamental understanding of the challenge at hand.

The Filipino native rode in “jeepneys” (World War II vehicles converted into public transports) on her frequent visits to her homeland. Passengers access the internet through the mobile hotspot feature on the driver’s phone. Of course, there’s a sign on the side of the vehicle reading, “Free WiFi.”

The jeepney is an “extreme example,” laughed Aaron, who now holds the title of director of encoding technologies at Netflix. “But you have to know how people live in these places.”

Global Knowhow

Indeed, overseeing a team of around 40 engineers, a case can certainly be made for Aaron’s MVP credentials. Could Netflix have embarked on a march to 190 countries, serving 150 million subscribers, without developing the kind of sophisticated video technology that let it distribute over such a diverse swath of infrastructural and consumer needs?

After earning a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University, Aaron still lives in nearby Menlo Park, California, with her husband, another denizen of the Valley startup video scene, and her two young boys.

She was happily working for Pure Technologies, maker of the Flip Video camcorder, when Cisco bought the company for $590 million in 2009. Two years later, though, Cisco decided it didn’t want to be in the Flip Video business after all, and the Flip camera group, including Aaron, lost their jobs.

Now was the time to join Netflix, a company that had been courting her for years and about which she was already very familiar with and fond of as a consumer.

In the beginning, in 2011, the Netflix encoding team was just Aaron and her manager, David Ronca, then Netflix’s director of encoding technologies. They immediately got to work on revolutionizing Netflix’s process for taking video, digitizing it in hundreds of different versions, then delivering it to customers at a bit rate that allows them to watch on their given device and with their given internet connection. It started with a migration from an old Windows-based platform onto a more robust, Linux-powered, cloud-based system.

Previously, it might have taken Netflix five days to encode a two-hour movie. “With the new system, we could chop that up into little pieces and do it in just a few hours,” said Aaron, describing a skill that became essential as expansion drove up the number of required versions exponentially.

Ronca, her former boss, said: “I knew I wanted to work with Anne from the day we first met. She is smart, unafraid to take risks and has a good business sense. During the time we worked together at Netflix, Anne built one of the best video technology teams in the world. Her team did pioneering work on Dynamic Optimized encoding, delivering the highest possible quality at bit rates as low as 100 Kbps. In addition, Anne has been a vocal advocate for diversity and inclusion, and she has worked hard to increase opportunities for women in video technology. Anne is an exemplary leader and role model.”

From the beginning, Aaron and her group, which grew over time, worked to deliver the best picture quality possible without disruption from buffering. Netflix could adjust on picture resolution and overall quality, under disparate conditions. But if the video stopped, it was game over.

Bringing Bit Rates Down

“Our goal was to bring down the bit rate needed to still have compelling picture quality,” Aaron said. “For some folks in some regions, you have to make it good enough for them to watch.”

Achieving Netflix’s encoding technology goals has always been about incremental progress versus huge, transcendental leaps, she explained. “You find a way to save five bits here, and five bits there,” she said.

Under Aaron’s watch, Netflix has developed technology that lets it stream video at connection speeds as low as 100 Kilobits per second (not much faster than your 56 Kpbs modem was 25 years ago). This has been crucial to the company’s entry into mobile-first, bandwidth-contained markets like India.

Netflix can now deliver a 500 Kbps standard-definition video stream to most mobile device users in the regions it services around the planet. But new challenges like 4K and HDR await. And of course, there’s keeping up with the competition, which now includes outfits like Disney+.

Aaron, though, said: “We feel we’re ahead in terms of the technology. And besides, people come to Netflix for the content.”

NAME: Lori LeBas
TITLE: Senior VP, Affiliate Partnership Development and Operations
COMPANY: Disney and ESPN Media Networks
CAREER HIGHLIGHT: Led the effort to integrate the company’s networks with all of the major live streaming virtual MVPDs. Spearheaded adoption of Disney’s Watch products. Helped architect revised organizational structures within Disney’s Affiliate Sales and Marketing distribution team. Oversaw the global ad sales operations team responsible for all post-sales processes for television, digital and magazines, as well as the global affiliate operations team.
QUOTABLE: “Do it! What’s the best that can happen?”

Lots of people are talking about how TV is moving from traditional cable to streaming video. As senior vice president of affiliate partnership development and operations for Disney and ESPN Media Networks, it’s Lori LeBas’s job to make it all work.

LeBas has been in cable operations for 20 years, starting when the business was relatively simple with channels delivered via satellite and sent to homes via coax and set-top boxes. It’s a lot more complicated now.

“It’s really been fascinating to watch the evolution of the technology and also the evolution of how consumers have come to believe they should be in charge of their content viewing experience, that you’re not tethered to your TV anymore to watch what you want to watch,” LeBas said.

LeBas has been on the front lines, working with distributors to deliver an expanding array of Disney services, many on the streaming front. She’s spearheaded projects including the adoption of ESPN Watch, video-on-demand and integrating with the new virtual MVPDs.

That’s meant a lot more interaction with Disney development teams working on products like in-app experiences.

“It’s forced the distribution team to be much more connected and collaborative with parts of the company that we would have worked with before, but never to the extent that we’ve had to now,” she said. “It’s also made it infinitely more complicated and challenging and it’s also forced us to be much more engaged with our technical equivalents, our product equivalents at our distribution partners’ shops.”

LeBas’s team, for example, worked closely with Comcast to integrate ESPN3 into the Xfinity X1 platform.

“We value working with Lori and her team because we know that we’re going to be able to get something done that’s meaningful and it’s going to be done in a thoughtful way,” said Vito Forlenza, executive director of product management at Comcast Cable. “They were saying, ‘We want our fans to get the best experience possible from ESPN3 when they’re on X1.’ That sort of collaboration is wonderful and quite frankly I don’t really get that from everybody.”

Forlenza said the ESPN team gets that attitude from LeBas. And even when there’s a disagreement, “we have a calm conversation about the best way to achieve something.”

The ESPN and Comcast teams have gotten to be friends and bond every year by attending games the Eagles play in Philadelphia on Monday Night Football. “It’s just a nice way to celebrate the partnership,” Forlenza said. “We’ve taken behind-the-scenes tours. We’ve gotten on the field during pregame warmups. We’ve had obviously always great seats.”

LeBas’s work is also appreciated by the brass at Disney, including her boss Justin Connolly, who was recently promoted to president, media distribution.

“Lori is amazing,” Connolly said. “She is selfless and puts the interests of the company first. At the same time, she has a tight bond with so many people across the organization. Lori has solved so many problems it’s hard to keep track.

“She approaches the solution with a simple question: ‘What’s best for the business?’ She then patiently, calmly and persistently checks the series of options and questions against the overarching question. It’s so powerful to work like that.”

Funny story: LeBas hired Connolly at Disney. Connolly had been at Disney but left to get his MBA at Harvard. LeBas convinced him not to take a job offer from The New York Times and return to Disney as a director of ESPN’s contract administration team, so he could learn the details of the company’s deals. “There are many things I’m proud of in my career, but I’m going to take that one to the bank,” she said.

Giving Viewers ‘Instant Access’

Connolly also pointed to LeBas’s work on what the company calls “instant access.” It happens when a consumer who tries to watch something from Disney on an authenticated platform isn’t a subscriber. Instead of simply turning the consumer away, instant access provides a convenient pathway to sign up for a subscription to a virtual MVPD like YouTube TV or a traditional distributor like Comcast and start streaming right away. Disney has acquired about 500,000 subscribers that way, LeBas said.

“We know people are watching more and more television, more and more content, so let’s make it easy for them to do that if there’s something they want to see that would require a multichannel subscription,” she said.

Next up for LeBas is helping Disney’s distribution partners become third-party platform providers for its important streaming products ESPN+ and Disney+.

LeBas said there is a lot of interest in reselling those products among distributors. Also, that would “give people who want to consume as much content as possible from The Walt Disney Co. the chance to do that in one place,” she said. But again, that will be easier said than done.

In her off hours, LeBas said she’s a marathon runner and a yoga instructor. “Our son recently moved to Stockholm, so we’ll get chances to go to Sweden with some frequency,” she added. “Traveling is something we love to do, and we enjoy fine dining in these places that we visit.”

NAME: Sarah Lyons
TITLE: Senior VP, Product Experience
COMPANY: WarnerMedia
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Was DirecTV’s VP of OTT media products and VP of product management of DirecTV’s streaming video services. Oversaw the launch of DirecTV’s authenticated product suite as well as the roadmap for the NFL Sunday Ticket streaming service. Prior to that, was VP of revenue marketing, responsibe for generating $4 billion in revenue across a broad portfolio of subscription services and transactional content.
QUOTABLE: “We need to project out into the future based on intrinsic human behavior, which people in streaming services sometimes forget.”

In her new job, leading AT&T-owned WarnerMedia’s Product Experience Team for its new direct-to-consumer offering, Sarah Lyons is right in the middle of everything. And that’s right where she likes to be.

“Over the course of my career, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I enjoy,” said Lyons, who has been in the role since January. “And I’ve found out that I love to be in roles that are at the center of change in the industry, in a place where I can affect the trajectory of the industry and where the company is putting momentum behind the project. This job is literally all of those things.”

Lyons is responsible for defining the product’s features, user experience and product road map while shaping the app experience across all major platforms and paving the way for innovation on how content is viewed and experienced in the future.

“Sarah has been thinking about where the puck is going in the consumer video business before innovation in our space was even an en vogue thing to talk about,” said Tim Gibson, vice president of video & application marketing, who previously partnered with Lyons at DirecTV.

Lyons has been involved in streaming for years. Before taking on her current job, she held various roles within DirecTV, including vice president of OTT media products. She also oversaw the launch of DirecTV’s TV Everywhere extensions as well as the product road map for the NFL Sunday Ticket streaming service.

“I’ve been fortunate to have moved into areas that are rebuilding something or building something from scratch,” she said, adding that the word “fortunate” is not false modesty: it took time and introspection to figure out that’s where she thrives. “Now every time I crest the wave and reach maintenance mode I think ‘I’m ready for another challenge.’ ”

Vikash Sharma, AVP and general manager of OTT video products at AT&T Communications, worked with Lyons during the development of AT&T’s next-generation Open Video Platform. One reason Lyons is so successful, Sharma said, is her leadership skills. “She nurtures creativity in teams and empowers individuals to think about creating the best possible experiences for the consumer while articulating a strong vision for the organization and industry,” Sharma said.

Lyons said she believes everything she’s done in her career to date, going all the way back to “streaming Sunday Ticket live on the Web before the iPhone even came out,” has prepared her for her current role.

With the industry evolving so rapidly, Lyons said, she has been constantly learning — about rights deals, about what resonates with customers and can be impactful and about “when the juice is just not worth the squeeze.”

“My business experience, my marketing experience, my streaming experience all really prepared me,” she said. But some of the experiences she brings to bear go back even further: She’s been painting (with oils) since childhood, and minored in the subject in college (her parents wanted a more practical major, so she studied communication).

Lyons still paints occasionally, but she’s found another outlet for her artistic experience in designing apps. “It’s about balancing elements on the page and how you move your eye and moving the customer along a happy path,” she said.

A lifelong learner, Lyons has also studied wine, earning a diploma from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust. She and her husband own a small vineyard near Santa Barbara, where in “my golden years” she will make her own wine.

Learning the Dos and Don’ts

That love of learning plays a role in streaming. It’s not just about making the right decisions, it’s about learning from mistakes and knowing “what not to do.”

“If you look at things that were done wrong, then you can cut out a lot of the noise and really focus on what matters,” she said.

Even consumer research can’t always be taken at face value, she said, as ordinary citizens aren’t able to see ahead in terms of technological changes. Before the iPhone came out, people said all they wanted from a cellphone was to not have their calls dropped.

“Then, bam, you’ve got a computer in your pocket,” she said. “A consumer never would have predicted that. We need to project out into the future based on intrinsic human behavior, which people in streaming services sometimes forget.

“There are things like giving consumers a sense of accomplishment or satisfying the collector in people,” she added. “We need to figure out how we can capture those desires in streaming and create something that will surprise them that they’d never have thought of on their own.”

The goal is to launch products now that create a road map, and train for behavior that brings consumers along for any products the future might hold. Right now she points to social media as proof that consumers are hungering for a connection — they want to be engaged with, not talked at — and “most streaming today doesn’t engage the consumer the way they are engaging on other platforms.”

Lyons has her team seeking to “capture that same essence and create those experiences in streaming,” she said. “That’s where we can drive this thing forward.”

NAME: Heather Moosnick
TITLE: Senior VP, Content Partnerships
COMPANY: Hulu
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Drives Hulu’s content partnership and acquisition strategy across live and on-demand subscription streaming services. Joined from Google, where she was head of global business development, strategy and content partner management for YouTube TV and Google Fiber. Led teams that secured content deals for the launch of YouTubeTV. Negotiated CBS’s first content deals with Netflix and YouTube.
QUOTABLE: “It’s been an amazing ride so far, and we all know the media industry’s transformation is really just beginning.”

Heather Moosnick’s career has touched nearly every sector in the media industry over the past 25 years, from publishing, to TV, to music and back.

Moosnick, who joined Hulu last year to help drive content partnership and acquisition strategy, was a young associate at a law firm in the 1990s when she negotiated the programming and trademark deals that set up MTV Japan.

“I was instantly hooked on the TV business,” she said.

Soon she was working at Viacom’s MTV Networks International, doing more deals to launch channels around the world. She also started crafting early digital distribution deals, before streaming even was a thing in the U.S.

“Even more than the traditional TV business, I loved being on the front lines of creating new types of deals to help viewers access great content in more convenient ways,” she said.

As video streaming finally began to take hold in the U.S., she transitioned to the business side and “continued to get deeper into launching new digital services across the music and TV industries throughout my career.”

Moosnick has already been part of some notable milestones in streaming. She helped to launch CBS’s Audience Network, negotiating CBS’s first deals with Netflix and YouTube. She helped Warner Music get its music videos back onto YouTube in 2009 after talks broke down. And she did the first content deal that led to the launch of the YouTube Music and YouTube Premium services.

Top of her accomplishment list, though, was the work she did as head of content partnerships to help launch, in early 2017, the virtual MVPD called YouTubeTV. She was already at YouTube working on the launches of YouTube Music and YouTube Premium when the concept of a television package started to percolate, she noted.

“As soon as I saw the early product plans for YouTube TV, I couldn’t wait to jump in to make it a reality,” she said. “The rise of on-demand streaming services, and now digital MVPDs, is leading to the most fundamental transformation of the media landscape we’ve seen since the launch of cable.”

All of those experiences paved a path in late 2018 to Hulu, the 28 million-subscriber streaming provider, majority-owned by The Walt Disney Co., which started out as a primary source of “next-day” network shows before adding its own originals like The Handmaid’s Tale, Casual and The Path. Hulu CEO Randy Freer brought her on to help the service continue its upward progress against stiff competition such as streaming powerhouses Amazon and, of course, Netflix.

“Heather is a highly strategic, creative and relationship-oriented executive who has spent her entire career driving change and innovation,” Freer said in hiring her in October. “As Hulu looks to transition television from a gatekeeper-driven experience to one that’s led by the consumer, Heather’s leadership and fearless approach to evolving antiquated business rules make her a perfect fit for our team.”

Moosnick said her new role puts her in “an even more unique and creative position as a deal-maker” across Hulu’s on-demand and live streaming services.

She joined Hulu at a pivotal time. In just the first eight months since she’s been there, Disney acquired Hulu from Fox, Turner and NBCUniversal, and Hulu is set to join the Disney “super bundle” with Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu for $12.99.

Moosnick and her team continue to help Hulu load up on content, from popular TV and movies “to the best superfan content.”

One recent content deal she points to is a food-focused programming pact with Vox Media Studios, David Chang’s Majordomo Media and Chrissy Teigen’s Suit & Thai Productions. The multi-year, multi-show partnership will see Hulu develop and produce premium food-centric programming for the platform.

Ready for the Shakeout

Moosnick might be biased but she thinks Hulu is well-positioned to survive the TV shakeout.

“I’m personally betting on Hulu because I think it’s in its own lane by offering a Live TV service alongside one of the richest catalogs of on-demand content, as well as giving viewers the option to choose between ad-supported and ad-free,” she said. “At $5.99 and soon as part of the Disney+, ESPN+, Hulu super bundle at $12.99, it’s easily the best value for the most ‘must-watch’ content on the market.”

Moosnick is “a born and bred New Yorker” who was an actress as a kid: at 10 she got her start in the old Yiddish theater on Broadway. Musical theater, she said, was her first love. She went to Northwestern University, then UCLA School of Law.

“While I eventually transitioned to the media world when it was time to pay off those college student loans, I think everything I’ve accomplished as a media executive ties back to what I learned in the theater: the importance of teamwork, preparation and — of course — knowing that no matter what happens, the show must go on!”

She’s moving to Los Angeles this summer for Hulu and is excited about it. She says her 9-year-old, Oscar, is a sports fan who proudly wears his “Hulu Has Live Sports” slippers. “Through this move,” she said, “he’s learning to be fearless in the face of big life changes and looking forward to making a name for himself on the local little league, flag football and basketball teams.”

NAME: Alison Hoffman
TITLE: Chief Marketing Officer
COMPANY: Lionsgate-owned Starz
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Led the effort to develop a performance marketing strategy and team around the Starz streaming app, including revamping the in-house analytics team in New York. Focused Starz on becoming more digital- and female-first.
QUOTABLE: “When you don’t get defensive, it’s exciting to see that you are moving the needle, that you have made progress with an audience. It helps you feel more in control in a very competitive environment.”

Most entertainment marketers didn’t get into the business because of their love of data.

But in this age of direct-to-consumer streaming offerings, many of them are now finding themselves leading teams of data scientists and analytics interpreters right next to their teams of motion-graphics designers and copywriters. The two skill sets aren’t often found together in the same executive, but that’s not the case with Alison Hoffman, Starz’s chief marketing officer.

“She’s probably the best left-brain, right-brain marketer in the business right now,” said Starz chief operating officer Jeffrey Hirsch, to whom Hoffman reports. “Our marketing continues to be some of the best in the business.”

Like so many entertainment marketers, Hoffman got her start launching shows. From 2005 to 2010, she served as vice president of creative and brand strategy at AMC, debuting such groundbreaking series as Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. She joined Starz in 2012 as senior VP, originals marketing, and quickly climbed her way through the ranks, being named chief marketing officer in June 2016.

During that time, she has seen Starz through several iterations. When she arrived, Starz was a premium cable network with a business model much like HBO and Showtime, but like both of those networks, Starz has been forced to evolve. In 2010, with the arrival of former HBO CEO Chris Albrecht (who departed in February), the company started aggressively launching TV originals, with flagship shows Outlander and Power premiering in 2014. In April 2016, it launched the Starz standalone streaming app. And in December 2016, Lionsgate completed its $4.4 billion acquisition of the company.

Today, Starz continues to offer Outlander and Power, which ends this season and will segue into a spinoff starring Mary J. Blige. Along with those shows are Vida, American Gods, Sweetbitter and more.

When Starz decided to launch its app, that was a “trial by fire” for Hoffman and her team, she said. While entertainment marketing is about getting potential audiences excited about shows, performance marketing is about getting people to subscribe to your service and stick with it. Via real-time data, the results of those efforts come in immediately and constantly, providing a continuous feedback loop.

“I come from the world of entertainment marketing, of key art and trailers, and of bringing a show to life through a marketing campaign,” Hoffman said. “But to be able to get real feedback through acquisition marketing is really fun. We’ve had to pivot the mindset of the organization to be more digital-first. Before [we launched the app], we didn’t have that relationship with our customers.”

When Hoffman was given oversight of the app, no such performance marketing team existed at Starz, nor had Hoffman ever overseen that sort of marketing before. She learned quickly, though, and successfully got new teams up and running, including ramping up insights and analytics teams. In the past year alone, subscribership to the Starz app has grown by 62%.

“She’s been very good at understanding the marketplace and adapting to it,” Starz executive VP, affiliate sales Joe Glennon said. “Her adaptability is unbelievable. What we were doing even as recently as one year ago has changed dramatically.”

One thing that offering the direct-to-consumer app has helped Starz understand is that it appeals strongly to women. The network is intentionally leaning into that appeal with its programming and marketing, led by Hoffman, as it moves forward.

“Female audiences are driving the success of our content,” Hoffman said, an insight she has gained via all of the new performance-marketing analytics now at her fingertips. “When you look at us versus our competitors, we do skew female. Women love complex, interesting, character-driven stories. This is is a nice open field for us to play in.”

Another thing that so much data provides is constant feedback, and feedback isn’t always something people welcome. But Hoffman said her team has learned to embrace it.

“I feel really proud of my team that it doesn’t feel like something to get defensive about anymore,” she said. “I think people are really excited to see how things perform and move on to the next challenge. When you don’t get defensive, it’s exciting to see that you are moving the needle, that you have made progress with an audience. It helps you feel more in control in a very competitive environment.”

Encouraging and Creative

It’s that encouraging attitude — among other things — that Hoffman’s team likes about working for her.

“As a leader, she’s very creative but very collaborative,” Whitney Lee, executive director, originals marketing, said. “She listens to everyone in the room and she wants to hear from everyone. She wants to get to the best solution and that helps bring up the entire team and make them want to grow. That’s why she, to me, is a wonder woman: there are very few people who have both sides of that coin and can lead a team of people who don’t necessarily have that ability.”

“It’s very inspiring to work under someone like that,” Lee added. “She cultivates a culture of people who want to do the best creative work. She holds us all to a standard that is driven by passion.”

NAME: Dina Weisberger
TITLE: Head of TV Partner Strategy & Development
COMPANY: Google
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Joined Google in 2014 and was business lead for Google Ad Manager’s linear, addressable TV solutions for set-tops, including leading the launch of Android TV’s monetization efforts. Prior to Google, led ESPN’s TV and multimedia ad product strategy. Began her career as a national TV buyer at MediaVest, and has over 20 years’ experience in TV advertising buying and selling.
QUOTABLE: “I enjoy working as a team, being in a supportive environment where everyone is pitching in toward the same goal, moving the ball forward in small ways every day.”

Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household in New Jersey, Dina Weisberger didn’t play much organized basketball as a kid. At New York University, though, she became a point guard and then spent two years as an assistant coach.

“Basketball definitely shaped me — as a person and who I am professionally,” Weisberger, the head of TV partner strategy and development at Google, said. “Playing taught me what my limits are and aren’t: if I was thinking I could do X, I learned I really could go above that. And coaching taught me not just value of teamwork but that every person on the team has a role, and it’s essential to ensure that everybody understands their value.”

Weisberger’s leadership skills have led her from an early ad-agency role onto ESPN and now to Google. In her current role, she bridges the digital TV and traditional linear TV ecosystems through partner engagements with TV technology providers (Operative, Imagine and clypd among them) while also finding next-generation solutions for television. She was the business lead for Google Ad Manager’s linear addressable TV solutions for set-top-boxes, and most recently led the launch of Android TV’s monetization efforts. She has also contributed to Google’s efforts across programmatic TV and measurement and is a go-to subject matter expert for TV business requirements at Google.

“Dina has been a crucial and critical partner in helping to lead the path forward on all of Google’s efforts in the TV space, especially with traditional linear and now with smart TV sets,” said Stella Loh, product manager at Google, who works closely with Weisberger. “Dina’s expertise in traditional TV monetization proved invaluable when we first embarked on developing a linear addressable solution for TV operators.”

Weisberger joined Google in 2014 after 13 years at ESPN, seeking a different challenge in the realm of advertising technology. “I wanted to get more involved with where I felt the future of ad tech was going,” she said. “I’d just finished a pretty sizable endeavor at ESPN, laying the framework for a tech, TV and multimedia perspective. But I was ahead of where they were. I wanted to go where the industry was headed.”

Weisberger, who began her career as a national TV buyer at MediaVest, didn’t have a plan, nor did she imagine herself at Google. Yet it was the perfect next step. “Google afforded me the opportunity to be forward-thinking about TV, to be thinking about what’s next instead of about what’s out,” she said. “That’s what I’ve always liked to do. I just stay curious and follow my passion and allow that to be my guiding light.”

She sought her current role to better grow “the partner-facing side of what I was doing,” she said. “I also felt there were emerging areas that no one was focusing on from a technology perspective.”

Weisberger, who with her wife has a 4-year-old daughter and a baby girl, is not a vocal or animated leader, but instead leads through her actions. “Dina is very inclusive,” Loh said. “She makes sure that everyone’s opinions and thoughts are heard and that whatever decisions need to be made are made with everyone’s input and considerations.”

It’s essential to be honest and a clear communicator, Weisberger said. “There are lots of smoke and mirrors in ad tech, but if I say we’re going to do something we actually do it — that’s hard to find.”

Tech Translator

She also prides herself on her ability to translate the business side for the technology side, and vice versa. “I’ve been more right than wrong about decisions about technology and business,” she said, which enables her to figure out a game plan for the team she has built.

That said, she’s always a little impatient, hoping to reach the future already. “I have an idea of what I want to happen and obviously I want things to happen quicker,” she said.

Weisberger realized she needed to lay a solid foundation, identifying new partners for Google. “We had to create a stronger partner base to push our product forward in the TV ecosystem,” she said. “My first couple of years, our time was spent getting those partners, like Univision, MLB and Disney. Now we’re really starting to explore what our role could be in this converged world — how we could help in a unified monetization system across TV and digital.”

Weisberger said she’s confident the industry will find ways to measure viewership and performance while respecting privacy, and that a new targeted ad experience will soon emerge.

“We don’t even know what it will be yet,” she said, but accelerating the programmatic monetization of OTT platforms is essential. “Viewership and engagement is still far above where monetization is today. It will take time. I hope over the next three years those become more aligned. It will have to get fixed.”

NAME: Julie McNamara
TITLE: Executive VP, Original Content
COMPANY: CBS All Access
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Launched original programming for CBS’s SVOD service, which is experiencing 60% growth in subscribers streaming originals year-to-date. Spearheaded the rebirth of the Star Trek franchise with the first series in more than a decade, Star Trek: Discovery. As head of drama development at CBS Studios, shepherded hits including The Good Wife, Hawaii Five-0, Elementary, NCIS: LA, Blue Bloods and Jane the Virgin. At ABC, developed Desperate Housewives, Lost and Grey’s Anatomy.
QUOTABLE: “Great and confident artists want real collaboration to bring out what the best of their vision can be.”

Julie McNamara, executive vice president of original content at CBS All Access, has leveraged her extensive relationships in Hollywood to establish the direct-to-consumer platform as a place for elite producers to bring their passion projects. The lineup of auteurs doing shows for CBS All Access, which launched in the fall of 2014, includes Jordan Peele, Marc Cherry, Kevin Williamson and Michelle and Robert King.

“What’s so great about Julie is that she has such broad experience,” said Marc DeBevoise, president and chief operating officer, CBS Interactive. “She knows so many people in the industry and has such good connections.”

McNamara came on board at the streamer in 2016, after spending the previous decade at CBS Television Studios, departing as executive vice president, drama development. Her projects while at the studio included the Kings’ drama The Good Wife, Jane the Virgin, Blue Bloods and Madam Secretary.

Prior to her time at CBS, McNamara was VP, drama development at ABC, where she worked on Desperate Housewives, with Marc Cherry, and Grey’s Anatomy, among other shows.

She was intrigued by the opportunity to work at what was essentially a startup, albeit one with a big backer. “It felt like a really good time to transition to a new learning curve,” said McNamara. “It seemed like a challenge and an opportunity to start something new and be entrepreneurial, be nimble.”

Original Thinking

With McNamara overseeing original content, CBS All Access expanded from three original series to what aims to be a dozen next year. “Original series have been a huge driver for us,” DeBevoise said, “and Julie has been responsible for all of that.”

CBS All Access offers current CBS series on-demand, as well as the network’s library of content, which includes Cheers and Perry Mason, and original shows. Those include a batch of Star Trek projects, including well-regarded Star Trek: Discovery, which will premiere season three later this year, and Star Trek: Picard, starring Patrick Stewart. The Picard trailer debuted at Comic-Con and has tallied more than 25 million views. The show begins early next year. Also in the works is Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated comedy about the support crew on a lowly Starfleet ship. That comes from Rick & Morty executive producer Mike McMahan.

The Good Fight, spinoff of The Good Wife, has gone for three seasons. All Access ordered a second season of Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot. Coming up are Cherry’s comedic drama Why Women Kill, which launched Aug. 15, and season two of Williamson’s fairy tale thriller Tell Me a Story.

CBS All Access will also premiere a series based on Stephen King novel The Stand, with James Marsden in the lead, and King himself writing the final episode.

Comedy No Activity debuts season three in November. McNamara is keen to add more comedies — single-cam, multicam — to the All Access lineup.

The service costs $5.99 monthly with commercials and $9.99 without. For McNamara, the calculus is simple: Every original series must do its part to convince customers to shell out cash. “The originals need to be a driver of subscribers,” she said. “Everything we put out — we believe it merits additional expense and will drive people to come to the service.”

DeBevoise noted at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour earlier this month how stellar originals begat more stellar originals. “We’re finding that once subscribers try an original series, they typically engage with [others],” he said. “These become their top-viewed shows and we retain them at a much higher rate, creating a virtuous cycle for us as we grow our slate.”

Up Stream

McNamara said top producers who have made their name on traditional TV are keen to give streaming a shot. “It’s helpful to have a built-in relationship and built-in trust, but people are excited about being on a newer platform,” she said.

Marc Cherry shared his thoughts on streaming at press tour. “To get the freedom of more time, more money, less episodes, it leads to a different kind of storytelling, a richer kind of storytelling,” he said.

McNamara singles out Nina Tassler, former chair of CBS entertainment, and David Stapf, president of CBS Television Studios, as mentors. She described Tassler as “a fierce, powerful person” and a “loving teacher.”

“In the early days of my time at CBS, I called her about everything,” she said. “She never failed to be kind, never made me feel bad about things I didn’t know.”

She refers to Stapf as “a boss, a rabbi, a therapist,” and a “constant champion for people who work for him.”

McNamara is elevating to a mentor role at CBS. DeBevoise said he constantly learns programming nuances from his originals chief. “Julie is one of the most thoughtful and caring executives I’ve known,” he said.

NAME: Julia Veale
TITLE: Executive VP, Business, Product Development & Management
COMPANY: Showtime Networks
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Veale has been a key player in launching Showtime’s streaming service, on-demand services, HD channels, interactive TV and the formation of the joint venture with the Smithsonian Institution to create Smithsonian Networks. On her watch Showtime launched its direct-to-consumer app on all of the major streaming platforms.
QUOTABLE: “I’m not an engineer by training, but I have always spent a lot of quality time with engineers. That was my start in understanding technology, or at least understanding what the possibilities could be with technology.”

Julia Veale knows a lot of things. But over a career that has spanned nearly three decades in the cable business, perhaps the most important thing she knows is what she doesn’t want.

That has led the Showtime executive — her official title is executive vice president, business, product development & management for Showtime Networks — on a variety of career paths over the past several years. Whatever road she chose, it inevitably led to what has been her goal since she graduated from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in 1993: a role in helping to create what was known in a simpler time as interactive TV.

A New Hampshire native, Veale went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, earning a degree in economics and political science. But Kellogg was where she found her footing.

“Kellogg was the transition point for me,” Veale said. It was there, after a brief stint as a commercial banker out of college, that she began trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

“I knew I didn’t want to be a management consultant, I knew I didn’t want to be in investment banking, those things didn’t really interest me,” she said. “And along the way, in the early ’90s, the mid ’90s, I became fascinated by the promise of interactive TV. That’s when the first trials for video-on-demand were starting. That piqued my interest. That was what I wanted to do when I got out of school.”

Interactive Interests

Interactive TV was in its infancy at that time, mainly focusing on transactional operations, like ordering pizzas via remote. It became clear pretty quickly that Veale’s career in that fledgling segment of the business wasn’t quite ready for primetime. So after a stint sleeping on friends’ couches and watching her classmates land jobs, she focused on another part of the industry — technology — and landed a position at tech pioneer General Instrument.

“I wrote a paper with a group at Kellogg on TCI [Tele-Communications Inc.] and they happened to be one of GI’s biggest customers,” Veale said. “I sent that paper and my resume to the head of GI and said I really want to work for you guys and I got an interview. It was sort of being in the right place at the right time.”

While Veale wasn’t a techie, her time at GI proved to be invaluable. She was working in corporate development while the company was heavily involved in creating the first digital set-top box.

“I worked with the head of advanced development and a team was formed and it ended up launching one of the first cable modems, so it was sort of in the early broadband space,” Veale said. “Fast-forward a few years, technology advanced and the market kind of caught up to what I was really initially interested in.”

That was 1999, and after hearing about an opportunity at Showtime, Veale took a position there, first working on the programmer’s on-demand products. As broadband started to become more prevalent, Showtime recognized the opportunity and importance of enabling its subscribers to access content on their devices, which led to the launch of the premium network’s authentication service, Showtime Anytime, in 2010.

“That was obviously interesting to figure out what we needed to do, gave us creative control over users’ experience with Showtime and gave us opportunities to gain new insights into consumer behavior because now we have a one-to-one direct relationship with subscribers,” Veale said.

Veale helped create a dedicated product team, putting together folks with experience in product development; product management and user experience design; software development and data engineering; and data science and quality assurance, helping to create that expertise in-house.

“It’s been a progression,” Veale said, noting that Showtime’s streaming initially launched with on-demand programming, with a live feed added later. In 2015, the network officially launched its over-the-top service, simply called Showtime. But Veale recognizes the importance of remembering where you came from.

“Showtime Anytime, our authentication service, gave us a big leg up in being able to launch an OTT service,” she said. “With that we gained greater insight into the entire subscriber life cycle.”

Behavioral Insights

Showtime Networks senior vice president, business/product development Amy Salerno said a knack for keeping ahead of the curve, as well as a talent for building great teams, has been a continuous thread throughout Veale’s tenure at the programmer.

“Julia has been at the forefront of Showtime’s digital product e6volution, staying ahead of changes in the marketplace and finding opportunities to transform the way people buy and watch Showtime,” Salerno said. “In addition to developing and managing Showtime Anytime and the Showtime standalone streaming service on every major platform, Julia has built a best-in-class product team that is focused on continually innovating our user experience and creating data-driven products and features. Julia has created a team culture that fosters collaboration, creativity and is fun to be a part of!”

SCILLA ANDREEN
CEO and Co-Founder, IndieFlix

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Scilla Andreen is an award-winning producer and director as well as the CEO and co-founder of IndieFlix, a global subscription, streaming and screening service that focuses on content for a purpose. She launched IndieFlix in 2005 as a DVD on-demand platform to serve independent filmmakers, amassing more than 10,000 titles from 85 countries and securing worldwide rights on a revenue-share basis. In 2007, she transitioned the library to streaming delivery, and in 2016 she successfully pivoted the streaming service to be edutainment-focused. IndieFlix now offers over 5,000 curated shorts, features, documentaries and TV series. She also created IndieFlix Originals, producing and streaming IndieFlix original content.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “As a CEO of a global streaming service and film director of social impact films, I love that I get to create content for a purpose and distribute it into the world. I also love the travel and the people I get to meet. Love my job!”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “I spend the entire day working with the teams and I end up doing my work late at night, on weekends and holidays, so finding balance can at times be challenging. I also don’t love fundraising but when we need it, I go do it.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “I always say my Chinese grandmother, because she truly is the queen bee and taught me so much. But I also want to say my mother because she stepped out of the way and let me find myself. Many times it was really hard but she never intervened and I am incredibly strong and independent because of her.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “When things don’t work out it’s a sure sign there’s a better path.”

STACIE ANTHONY
Editor-in-Chief, STIRR, Sinclair Broadcast Group

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Stacie Anthony was hired in March 2018 to lead the editorial team at STIRR. In less than a year, she hired a full staff, developed the brand, ingested over 40 linear channels and thousands of on-demand hours from programming partners and successfully launched STIRR on Jan. 16. Under her editorial leadership, STIRR is already regarded as a top direct-to-consumer OTT service.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I’ve been involved with several new product launches throughout my career and absolutely love that element of my job because of the strategy and collaboration it requires. It’s incredible to build something from scratch, build a team, and see a good idea materialize into an excellent product that solves problems for consumers. That’s the joy of working in the streaming space — we’re inventing and perfecting solutions that reflect how audiences want to consume content.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “It is challenging to keep pace with consumer viewing trends and communicate the influence traditional linear and broadcast still has in the industry. We have to be flexible and constantly pivot, which sometimes adds more work for the team, but overall it’s exciting to work in a rapidly evolving industry.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “Laura Corn, the author and one of the largest independent book publishers. She took me in at age 26 and taught me everything about publishing, distribution, and sales, all while helping me hone my craft as a writer and editor.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Toughen up, buttercup. Back in my writing days, I worked with an amazing managing editor, Lisa Ingrassia. She once told me to ‘toughen up, buttercup,’ and that mantra has trickled into how I manage my team today.”

ANDREA CLARKE-HALL
Vice President, Business Development, Tubi

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Andrea Clarke-Hall is responsible for negotiating Tubi’s content-acquisition deals, building a content library of more than 12,000 titles and most recently launching Tubi’s partnership with NBCUniversal. She also leads Tubi’s app-distribution deals, including its deal with Comcast Xfinity, where Tubi was the third streaming app available on the cable service after Netflix and YouTube. Prior to joining Tubi, Clarke-Hall managed global business development for Sony Pictures’ Crackle. She also served as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., for six years, where she litigated and tried major racketeering and economic fraud cases.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I love that it’s very entrepreneurial and I am able to have a huge impact on growing the business. I am lucky to work for a CEO [Farhad Massoudi] who encourages risk taking and trusts me to do what is right for Tubi. It’s incredibly fun to be part of a team that is building the future of streaming!

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “Since Tubi is a startup, I have the luxury of moving very quickly with little red tape. However, much of my job involves dealing with large, multinational corporations, and it can be frustrating dealing with the slow timelines and bureaucracy.”

BIGGEST MENTORS: “I was personally mentored by Tubi’s co-founder, Tom Hicks, a business-development genius. Tom taught me the importance of moving fast, prioritizing the deal points that matter most, and focusing on aggressive growth. After less than two years under his tutelage, Tom handed me the keys to his BD team.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Never take a job for the money, but for what you can learn.”

VANESSA DENNIS
Director, Product, PBS NewsHour

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Vanessa Dennis is PBS NewsHour’s wonder woman in live streaming, playing a pivotal role in helping the organization become one of the biggest producers of live news streams across the internet. Whether she’s troubleshooting new captioning technologies, developing ultra-fast workflows for streaming breaking news or traveling to stream news and events from remote locations with shaky connectivity, she has always has a solution. She was an early proponent of live streaming at the program and advocated building an infrastructure to support video that now enables it to reach hundreds of millions of live streaming views per year. Beyond her contributions to daily success on streaming platforms, she keeps PBS NewsHour staff on top of the latest technologies, orchestrating tests, creating new workflows and constantly improving its suite of streaming products. She is also an ambassador for live streaming to other colleagues in public media, regularly helping to train other organizations about best practices, technologies and experiences, to strengthen local producers on streaming platforms around the nation.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I enjoy getting to play a role in helping to shape public media for the future and help PBS News- Hour continue to reach new audiences.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “I’m passionate about my job and it can be hard to mentally escape that at times.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “I’ve worked at the intersection of editorial, design and technology, and I’ve had a few bosses who weren’t afraid to cross back and forth between those fields. They showed me it was possible for designers and technologists to have heavyweight editorial chops, too.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Do the job you want, not the job you have.”

TINA EXARHOS
Chief Content Officer, NowThis

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Tina Exarhos is chief content officer for NowThis, the leading socially distributed news brand, responsible for program development and production and content partnerships. Since joining NowThis in 2016, she has been at the helm of the brand’s evolution to becoming the top news source for millennials, overseeing the expansion into original series, deeper investigative reports, new verticals and brand partnerships. Prior to joining NowThis, she was chief marketing officer of MTV, overseeing all marketing and creative development for the network. She spent nearly 30 years at MTV.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I am so lucky to be part of a group of passionate, young and innovative journalists and creators who are shining a light on the most important issues of the day.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “It’s a complete myth that young people don’t care about news. We have huge audiences who are avid consumers and deeply engaged in the world around them. Yet too many people still discount them or don’t understand their value. It’s my hope that NowThis can continue to play a strong role in demonstrating the importance young people have in shaping our political discourse and holding power to account.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “My former bosses Judy McGrath and Carole Robinson have always been committed to lifting as they climb.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “My dad taught me how to read The New York Times on an NYC subway. He showed me how to fold the paper in a way that didn’t interfere with other people’s space. I didn’t realize at the time that he was teaching me to read the N.Y. Times every day. He couldn’t have imagined that one day I could get all the news on my phone in my pocket. Always be reading. Always be learning.”

VANESSA HULLEY
Vice President, Marketing & Strategy, Endeavor Streaming

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Vanessa Hulley oversees a global marketing, customer acquisition and media buying team focusing on direct-to-consumer marketing strategy and enterprise level marketing technology integrations. Endeavor Streaming powers leading properties’ digital services, including the National Football League, National Basketball Association, English Football League and Eleven Sports, alongside owned and operated services like UFC Fight Pass and Professional Bull Riding’s Ride Pass. She previously worked on the Endeavor Properties business, which is comprised of more than 200 live events.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I enjoy the opportunity to deliver compelling content directly to consumers. I also love the feedback loop between consumer, product and content. My job allows me to be customer obsessed and work with some of the biggest content creators in the world.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “I am lucky to work on a streaming business within a content organization. There are so many creative concepts and new business ideas within the organization. I wish I could test and bring to market all of the ideas that come across my desk in real time, but sometimes have to manage the pipeline against the calendar.”

BIGGEST MENTORS: “In my professional life, I am inspired by DeJuan Wilson, who joined Endeavor from Soundcloud and brought with him a ton of audio streaming experience. My ultimate mentor is my godmother, Caroline Thompson, who is a film writer and director. In 2008 she hired me to lead marketing at my first streaming job, a company called ‘Small and Creep Films!’ ”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “I have heard a ton! Some of the key ones: ‘lean into your strengths,’ ‘anyone can be a leader,’ ‘practice empathy,’ ‘keep enough I-quit money on hand so you can leave a job you hate’ and always ‘hire people smarter than you and spend your time cultivating talent in your organizations.’ ”

AMY KUESSNER
Senior Vice President, Content Partnerships, Pluto TV

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Amy Kuessner is responsible for acquiring content, curating unique programming and developing channel strategy for the Viacom-owned free streaming television service. During her tenure, she has closed more than 100 deals with major Hollywood studios, TV networks, production companies and more. Prior to Pluto TV, she held marketing and business development roles at companies including NBC, Liberty Media, Sony, TBS and DirecTV.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I love being able to apply my expertise as an integral player in a company that is redefining the entertainment landscape. I relish the challenge of being on the front line and representing the business with new and existing content partners, in an area that is ever-evolving. It has allowed me the opportunity to expand my scope to develop strategic and creative promotional, content and revenue opportunities.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “There is not much I don’t like about my job. If I had to, I would simply say that the challenge of keeping up with the pace of our accelerated growth can be trying at times. However, I am someone who thrives off of pressure and so it circles back to my first point, that I love my job.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “I am fortunate to have two mentors that I get to work with and learn from each and every day. Tom Ryan would be embarrassed to know, but I truly admire this humble and fearless CEO. With my chief business officer, Jeff Shultz, whereas I am the yin, Jeff is the yang. Jeff doesn’t know he is my secret mentor … but that gentleman has abilities that I continue to strive for in my own professional career.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Anyone who comes in contact with your business or employees deserves to be treated with kindness and respect.”

CROI McNAMARA
Senior Vice President, Programming, Condé Nast Entertainment

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Croi McNamara knows digital entertainment and how to effectively program content across each platform. As the senior vice president of video programming at Condé Nast Entertainment, she oversees all digital video content for 20 brands averaging over 1 billion video views a month across a network of 60 partners, 2,300 websites and more than 32 million YouTube subscribers alone. Her unique role involves creating viral videos for a diversity of Condé Nast’s iconic family of brands, which include Vogue, GQ, Glamour, Vanity Fair and Wired. She also oversees programming across all platforms, including Wired and Bon Appétit’s recently launched over-the-top channels.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “I’m lucky to work at a company that understands the value of video across multiple mediums. We’ve been given the resources and opportunity to innovate with a best-in-class team of video creators for a market that demands our quality content. With this innovation, we’ve been able to grow fast and excel as a premium creative provider. Our success stems from our content getting longer and more premium, which is so exciting to me considering my television background.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “This fast-paced industry keeps us on our toes so we’re always pivoting quickly and efficiently, which can be tiring at times. But it’s an exciting challenge to every day look forward and think, ‘What’s next?’ ”

MAJOR MENTORS: “One person that I have been thinking about a lot is an early boss and mentor, Christine Weber. At the time, Christine was an executive at Discovery Studios and she always challenged me to be the best collaborator and creative I could be, while always remaining kind and compassionate.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Whatever you do, have grit and determination.”

LIZ MOOTHART
Senior Director of Marketing, Crunchyroll and VRV

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Liz Moothart manages the marketing strategy for anime brand Crunchyroll and VRV, the fandom-focused streaming platform featuring premium SVOD channels. Her user acquisition and retention strategies have helped Crunchyroll grow to more than 2 million subscribers. She created and developed all launch marketing for the VRV platform in 2016, and she developed the “Childhooding with VRV” launch campaign for NickSplat, which celebrates Nickelodeon cartoons from the ’90s and beyond. She joined from Hulu and eHarmony, where she was focused on growth marketing for both subscription services.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “My team and the fans we serve! I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with many brilliant and ambitious people who have made my time at Crunchyroll and VRV fun. Additionally, we aim to serve passionate communities and this really comes through in how our fans connect in such a deep and meaningful way to our brands and the content we provide.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “I’ve seen my company go through many phases, from a small (70 person) start-up when I joined to now a part of one of the biggest media companies in the U.S. (WarnerMedia Entertainment). The pace of change, rapid growth and constant new challenges to tackle have been draining at times … but ultimately, this has been a reflection of our continued success and the career opportunities I’ve been presented with.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “My mother, who is a model of grace and resilience, taught me to live without fear. My former boss Arlen Marmel (Ellation, Hulu) bet on me time and time again and taught me to yearn for greatness while enjoying the journey.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “ ‘Done is better than perfect’ — Sheryl Sandberg. This motto has helped me pursue things that I might not otherwise for fear that I won’t achieve perfection.”

THAI RANDOLPH
Executive Vice President and General Manager, Laugh Out Loud

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Thai Randolph has spent her career at the intersection of content, consumers and commerce. She has a track record of developing brands, audience and revenue for such big names as WPP, Publicis, Sony, Facebook and Kevin Hart. In 2018, Randolph was named to Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 and Cynopsis’s It List. As executive VP and GM for Laugh Out Loud, she manages day-to-day business strategy, operations and P&L management for Kevin Hart’s comedy brand and multiplatform network. Previously, as senior VP, marketing and monetization, she oversaw audience development, brand strategy and ad sales, working with advertisers such as Lyft and P&G on content series including Kevin Hart: Lyft Legend and Cold as Balls, which collectively tallied more than 225 million views and multiple Streamy and Cynopsis Model D nominations; Lyft Legend won a Streamy for best branded content series.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “At Laugh Out Loud, we’re building a next-gen comedic content company at a time when the landscape is rapidly shifting. It’s an incredibly exciting time in the industry and I love being at the center of this innovation — piloting new business models, experimenting with new formats and helping to shape the future of content consumption and distribution.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “I’ve always considered myself pretty quick-witted … but when surrounded by comedians, landing the best punchline is nearly impossible.”

MAJOR MENTORS: “Kevin Hart, LOL’s CEO, is definitely among my biggest mentors. His work ethic, positive outlook and business savvy are not only inspiring, but contagious.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Early on in my career, one of my managers advised me to focus on impact over activity. I’m constantly calibrating to make sure I’m not just busy, but impactful.”

ROMINA ROSADO
Senior Vice President, Digital Media, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Romina Rosado leads the development and execution of all digital programs across Noticias Telemundo and Digital News. She is experienced in content creation, audience building and driving monetization across linear and digital platforms. Most recently, she was senior VP of global content at NBCUniversal-owned E! in Los Angeles, where she oversaw all content, newsgathering, audience development, and product for the news division. Prior to that, she was executive producer at Us Weekly.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “At Telemundo, we are not only riding the wave of the digital transformation, but also of the demographic revolution. There are 60 million Hispanics in the U.S. with a median age of 27 — and next year, for the first time, the majority of under 18-year-olds will be non-white. Programming to this audience and creating a content ecosystem that ensures they interact with Telemundo on any platform is a challenge I love.”

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “The 24/7 nature of the work — especially when it comes to our current news cycle — and the unending flood of emails and meeting invites!”

MAJOR MENTORS: “Throughout my career, I have been blessed with both formal and informal mentors — from my first boss, a serial entrepreneur who taught me how to build a business from the ground up and that it’s perfectly OK to be different (and to have an accent), to Jen Neal, the CMO at E!, who taught me to be more strategic and thoughtful.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “Don’t play small ball — be it in your career or personal life. Not everything that is urgent is important, and not everything that is important is urgent. Figure out the difference and regularly question where you are spending your energy. And never stop reading for pleasure.”

YAZMIN WICKHAM
Senior Director, Digital Platform Management, Katz Networks

WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Yazmin Wickham is responsible for identifying digital opportunities and implementing strategies to improve user interfaces and customer retention for Atlanta-based Katz Networks properties. She also onboards new platforms for all Katz Networks websites and apps, which include Bounce, Brown Sugar, Laff, Grit, Escape, The List and Court TV. She helped build the Brown Sugar app and website. Prior to her current role, she spent 19 years as the owner of YazminMedia, creating innovative online solutions for B2C clients. A military veteran, Wickham received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army as a Specialist First Class.

LIKES MOST ABOUT HER JOB: “In the four years I’ve worked here, I’ve had the opportunity to roll up my sleeves to deliver on unique roles, all while building my skill set, learning new areas of business and leading/collaborating with diverse multicultural teams across all departments to achieve amazing results. That aspect of doing so many different things and being able to pull them together to deliver a solution is the thing I love most about this job.

LIKES LEAST ABOUT HER JOB: “The drive time!”

MAJOR MENTORS: Cheryle Harrison, general manager of Bounce and executive VP, ad sales operations, Katz Broadcasting. “As I spent years running my own business, my value system is very different than the one found in the corporate world. She has guided me and helped me find my footing in this space … and most importantly, without compromising who I am and what I bring to the table.”

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: “One of the phrases I heard often in the Army was: ‘There is no I in TEAM.’ It’s something that has always been a big part of how I approach most things, if able.”

NAME: Kelly Abcarian
TITLE: General Manager, Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group
COMPANY: Nielsen Corp.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Through her work at Nielsen, Abcarian has helped to mint the new currency of how advertising will be measured across all video content going forward. Her work on one-to-one marketing, collection of real-time data on viewership through automatic content recognition and creating the first cross-platform addressable ad solution, along with the notion of holistic campaign measurement through total ad ratings, are bold lines on a rich résumé.
QUOTABLE: “Any company that isn’t willing to disrupt themselves will be disrupted.”

If you were writing the uniquely American tale of the Nielsen Corp. as a screenplay — the story of an untouchable television industry monopoly that suddenly sees itself roiled by a sea of sweeping streaming change, only to regain its footing with newfound relevance while heading toward 100 years old — you’d get a lot of pushback for inventing a character as incomparably heroic as Kelly Abcarian.

And yet it’s all right there in the script. Abcarian pulled off the dynamic double of both working to increase the breadth of Nielsen’s measurement pool while forging new methods and partnerships to ensure all the numbers would be useful and transparent, setting the stage for something once thought mythical in this mad era: true collaboration. Now in her current role as general manager of the Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group, she’s worked at expanding audience measurement beyond linear TV into subscription video-on-demand (SVOD), which opened the dam to the onrush of information about consumption of digital content. Streaming service ratings for Nielsen customers is now a reality, with Abcarian beginning by partnering with Roku on research initiatives. Suddenly, Nielsen — which once toiled in a comparatively tiny measurement world — is operating in a universe of visibility, creativity and comparability among once-disparate numbers. Addressable TV advertising — bringing one-to-one targeting capabilities to smart TVs — is a reality with her name all over it. The same goes for holistic campaign measurement through total ad ratings. And keeping Nielsen current with acquisitions of Gracenote, Qterics and Sorenson Media has the company poised toward the worlds of, among other things, automatic content recognition (ACR) and its smoother real-time data collection. Now that’s what we call rolling the credits.

True Collaborator

Her industry colleagues don’t need to see this movie; their reviews are already in, and frankly, they’re spectacular.

“Advertising is crucial in our industry, but if we don’t have a better way for it to work and be measured, one of the key monetization engines falls apart and content will suffer … Kelly and Nielsen are the key players in ushering in the solutions,” said Tracey Scheppach, CEO and co-founder of ad agency Matter More Media. Adds Scott Rosenberg, Roku’s senior vice president and general manager of Platform Business. “Kelly was my business partner at Nielsen from day one. Most importantly she evangelized the deal internally despite it being a very new kind of deal for Nielsen.”

And Megan Clarken, who is the chief commercial officer for Nielsen Global Media and an important mentor for Abcarian, said: “Ten years ago, Kelly was at the forefront of the phenomenon of streaming video when it went from display advertising to streaming.”

Right place, right time has been a pattern through Abcarian’s career. Growing up in a small town outside Columbus, Ohio, she earned her accounting degree from the University of Dayton in 1998 and “three years later, I realized accounting wasn’t the career path for me,” she said. She then spent five years as a senior project manager at Silicon Valley customer relations management company Siebel Systems. “Their CEO, Tom Siebel, was really a visionary,” she said. “He was innovating in the industry and it taught me a lot about pushing myself and knowing that innovation is always out there .”

The perfect fit for her creative sensibility and determination came in 2005, when she joined Nielsen, “which was then an 85-year-old company at the epicenter of consumers, and I thought I could influence how Nielsen measured real people.”

Starting on the Connect or commercial side — “Not too many people worked across both sides” at the company, she said — she did some innovative work that attracted attention; moving to the Media side in 2010, she was asked to run the digital portfolio of products, and also began to earn her reputation for evaluating all the details and seeing the way around corners while others kept looking ahead with blinders on. And that’s when the tea leaves told her the way to go: “I thought, ‘We can begin writing the next narrative around how Nielsen starts to evolve measurement as technology and consumers continue to change so rapidly and quickly.’ ”

Fast-forward to the present, and that narrative is in the process of raising all boats in a storm-tossed content industry, with Abcarian keeping a watchful eye on the horizon.

“Advertisers are spending billions in order to understand how to reach consumers effectively and they need independent, transparent information,” she said. “Measurement is a team sport and everyone has to collaborate. We have deep partnerships across the biggest digital players. Keeping the data behind their closed doors doesn’t help the industry grow and prosper.

“When we launched online campaign ratings it was with a strategic partnership with Facebook,” she said. “That was something probably five years before Nielsen never would have considered doing. Nielsen’s come a very long way in the last decade, and at the end of the day, we can drive value across everyone to the ecosystem at large.”

As happy endings go, the industry would take it.

NAME: Diana Pessin
TITLE: Senior VP, Digital Media & Growth Marketing
COMPANY: HBO
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Oversaw 2015 launch of HBO’s direct-to-consumer app, HBO Now. In the final season of Game of Thrones, subscriptions to HBO Now more than doubled through paid media channels, while subscriber acquisition costs fell by almost half. She also developed a retention marketing program that has increased engagement on the platform by more than 20%.
QUOTABLE: “Data and analytics are a huge foundational piece of what we do. Our whole marketing approach is data-driven.”

When Diana Pessin was asked to make the leap from overseeing HBO’s e-commerce division to the 2015 launch of the network’s direct-to-consumer app, HBO Now, she made the move with seemingly no reservations.

“We’ve always managed the program as an evolution, and it keeps building and evolving based on those learnings today,” Pessin said.

Much of Pessin’s strategy involves not just attracting new subscribers but the tricky business of keeping them — even when their favorite show has ended for the season.

“Our whole philosophy is, good retention starts with good acquisition,” Pessin said. “We model our prospects based on the highest-value customers. We always think about what a customer is worth to us when we go into a market. Data and analytics are a huge foundational piece of what we do. Our whole marketing approach is data-driven.”

While Pessin has made it look easy, it’s because she brings to the table a surprising combination of breadth and depth — an ability to understand the deep implications of data while also being able to form lasting, productive relationships.

“I have this joke that I want to be Diana Pessin when I grow up,” Sabrina Calouri, executive vice president, digital media and marketing at HBO, said. That’s high praise considering that Pessin reports to Calouri, who in turn reports to WarnerMedia Entertainment chief marketing officer Chris Spadaccini. “It’s been wonderful to watch her reinvent herself at the company. Diana has the quantitative ability to run the subscriber acquisition side of the business but she also intimately understands the consumer. She thinks about user experience and creative in a way that helps drive the business forward.”

Strategic Thinker

Admiration for Pessin runs downstream as well: “I often get asked at HBO what it’s like to work for her, especially by younger women who look up to her and want to know how she’s been able to make the moves she has,” said Alissa Tofias, VP, digital media and acquisition, who has been reporting to Pessin for more than two years. “She’s been able to reinvent herself and try new things. She goes super deep and understands all of the pieces, but she can be really strategic at the same time.”

Prior to being tapped to launch HBO Now, Pessin spent more than 10 years as HBO’s director of e-commerce and marketing, managing operations for the HBO online shop. As part of that, Pessin oversaw the global expansion of HBO’s e-commerce footprint throughout the European Union with a multi-language, multi-currency and mobile-optimized storefront. While in that job, she learned how to apply data to grow a business, but also has found that e-commerce is a different beast than direct-to-consumer marketing.

“Some of the foundational skill sets are the same — e-commerce is a performance-based marketing initiative — but there are a lot more differences than similarities,” Pessin said. “There’s so much nuance in selling a subscription service versus selling a product. And retention marketing is new. We are trying to further our connection with the consumer.”

Still, Pessin has adapted quickly by all accounts.

“At HBO, she is the most skilled and experienced person on the streaming side,” Kevin McGovern, executive director, strategy, HBO at Omnicom Media World-owned Hearts & Science, said. “The main thing I have learned from working with Diana is that there is a brilliant executive mind that is able to operate at the highest strategic level but also has this crazy appetite for detail. She’s not like your typical executive, who asks a couple of questions to make her feel like she participated. I’ve never had a client like her and it’s a workout in a way, but it’s good, it keeps everybody on their toes.”

From the experience of running HBO’s e-commerce business, Pessin had a leg up when it came to building HBO’s data teams. For example, she made sure a control group was put into place at HBO Now to help guide the way.

“One of the pieces we are most proud of is our ability to measure our progress against control groups that allow us to see if we didn’t do anything, what would the consumer’s natural behavior be?” Di Wu, director of life cycle marketing, HBO, said. “That adoption discipline is something we hold ourselves to. It, in turn, allows us to be very honest with ourselves, asking, ‘why did or didn’t this work?’ This helps us to make sure we aren’t taking credit for something that would have happened on its own. Without that strategy in place, it would be a much harder lift to go back in time and try to capture that information.”

Looking forward, Pessin has next spring’s launch of HBO Max on the horizon, but she feels confident that what she’s learned via HBO Now will apply.

“It’s about how you sync what’s working and scale it for a bigger service,” Pessin said. “There’s going to be more mass interest in this service based on the offering, so we need to figure out how to speak to different types of people, including kids and families. It’s creating a lot of new opportunities for us.”

“It’s an exciting time,” Calouri said. “Certainly, all of the work that we’ve done and that Diana has led over the last five years has laid the foundation for us to be ready for HBO Max.”