CANWEST MEDIAWORKS TV AND radio president Kathleen Dore is one year into her overhaul of Global Television.
She has brought in new senior executives on the marketing and programming side who are all dedicated to righting a ship that in the ratings, had fallen well back of the market leader, CTV.
Dore (left) was appointed just over a year ago after 21 years in New York with Rainbow Media. She was president, entertainment services, for U.S. cable networks AMC (American Movie Classics), IFC (Independent Film Channel) and WE (Women’s Entertainment) and was responsible for the development, launch and success of the Independent Film Channel and IFC Entertainment, which distributed the award-winning independent films My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Boys Don’t Cry.
She was also responsible for the growth and expansion of Bravo, when it was owned by Rainbow (NBC bought it in 2002), where she served as president for six years. At Bravo, she oversaw the development of the award-winning series Inside the Actors Studio and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. On her watch, Bravo went from viewership of fewer than 500,000 U.S. households to more than 68 million.
She clearly knows TV.
And, thanks to a recent column on www.cartt.ca which one those new hires, marketing senior vice-president Walter Levitt, thought was all wrong, editor and publisher Greg O’Brien was given the opportunity to chat with her last week on the eve of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention, of which she is the co-chair.
What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Greg O’Brien: I guess I’ll just start with that column and its basic tenets, some of which Walter didn’t agree with. I called it “The New TV” and put a bunch of issues together in it. I wrote it from a cable conference, so I guess I was thinking primarily from the cable side and as a cable consumer.
I’ve got a PVR and I use VOD and part of the point of view of that column is that brands, from a broadcast perspective seemed to me to be lessening in terms of impact as the shows become the brand. Obviously you disagree, but where do these new services leave a broadcast brand like Global Television?
Kathleen Dore: I come at it from a bit of a different perspective than Walter, but I’ll end up in the same place. Both here in Canada and in the U.S., the conventional broadcasters have done themselves a historical disservice by not creating strong, well-articulated brands.
And, certainly the audience will go to content that’s high-quality, entertaining, and/or informative. I also think brands have always played a significant role as television has evolved – and specialty and pay channels have proliferated because those are the networks that first started creating strong TV brands.
Now as we go forward – and I totally agree with one of the things you said in that article is that the lines between conventional broadcast, pay and specialty are totally blurred for the audience, and for a long time have been – then for conventional broadcasters to compete, they will need to have just as strong a brand as anywhere else in the television marketplace, and certainly anywhere else in the consumer product world.
GOB: How do you go about building the brand then? Is it more about producing your own content, or is it just insinuating the Global brand in more places than it has been?
KD: I think it starts with you have to have a very clear point of view on what position you want to occupy in the marketplace – and you have to make sure that everybody internally, no matter what phase of the business they’re involved in, understands what you’re trying to be to the consumer and then you have to clearly deliver that.
It’s interesting, you spent a fair amount of time in that article on CTV’s acquisition of MTV content in Canada… because to me MTV is one of the very best examples of a network that started out with a strong brand and vision.
They knew what their brand was and they delivered on it – and they had programming that was not even exclusive for many, many years. Then they began to strengthen the brand and strengthen their product by creating original programming that really represented it – that personified what they were trying to do and by combining outstanding programming with that brand umbrella. That combination enabled their programming to break through.
So, what we as conventional broadcasters need to do is certainly continue to expand our original content offering, which is something that we’re doing in a significant and relatively rapid way (at Global). But, we also need to make sure that we can connect that programming to the audience we want to attract with that brand and I think that’s a connection which has been missing in many ways for Global in the past. People like Walter and (programming chief) Barb Williams and some of the others we’ve brought on recently are really trying to connect these dots.
GOB: What sort of programming is Global doing? The original programming you have now, I’m thinking Entertainment Tonight Canada and Falcon Beach which is coming. What else?
KD: Entertainment Tonight launched this fall, yes and Falcon Beach is coming after the first of the year. We have committed to a co-production deal on ReGenesis where we’re getting the first post-pay window.
Those windows become interesting to look at in terms of new ways of positioning and timing product delivery – and certainly this is programming that hasn’t gone from a pay network to a conventional broadcaster before and we think that it has potential to reach a very targeted audience on pay and then to reach a much broader audience on conventional.
GOB: And there’s a bit more of an advantage here as compared to the States because pay TV penetration here is so much lower than there, so there aren’t as many people who have seen the first run of ReGenesis. You’re really showing ReGenesis to a whole new crowd.
KD: Absolutely. We see the ratings continuing to move up each week and again, that’s the role of conventional broadcaster – to continue to serve the mass audience and to do it in a way that creates a viewing experience on air that people want to come to. And, with all of the conversation about the death of television… I do think the way that we watch TV will change and is evolving, however, I also think that people will for decades certainly, come and congregate in front of a television set and want that viewing experience.
But they’ll also look for stronger brands. They’ll look for environments they want to go to and it’s very clear that historically, both because conventional broadcasters were the first and for many years the only choice and because they have the big shows and they were oriented towards a mass market, it was felt they didn’t need strong brands. So in a sense we’re the last people back in with a strong brand and it’s going to take a while, but I think we have some good lessons to learn from our specialty counterparts.
GOB: Sure, look at TSN or ESPN or HBO or Showcase and that. They’ve all built their niches from the ground up and people know exactly what type of programming they can find on those channels.
The one thing I always try to caution myself though when I’m thinking of the new ways to watch TV and all that, is that those of us in the industry are the early adopters. I’ve got a PVR, for example. I don’t know if you do.
KD: Yes.
GOB: And I remember two years ago (CHUM CEO) Jay Switzer saying he had one and marveled at how it changed his viewing habits. But, still, none of my neighbors currently have one. I’m pretty sure most of them don’t even have a digital cable or satellite box. My next-door neighbour only bought his family’s first DVD player a few months ago. I try to keep those folks in mind when I write because most people are still watching linear TV and that gets lost, I think, in a lot of the future-predicting that we all try to do.
KD: I’m a real believer in understanding who your target audience is, even if you’re a convention broadcaster: Understand what those people look like, know how they behave and know what they are looking for – and then often the answers to those questions aren’t simple. They’re more complicated than saying “everyone who’s young wants to watch programs on their cell phone.” Well, they don’t.
I was visiting my sister and her family a few weeks ago. She has a 15-year-old son and they have appointment television viewing every Monday night – they are both huge Prison Break fans but they’re obviously in a very different demo. He’s 15, in high school. She’s 47 and a stay-at-home mom with teenagers, so if you think about it just from that standpoint – from the new hit show, a breakout hit – she’s probably going to be really interested in the Entertainment Tonight segment on the star or the making of this new, very hot, guy.
The son may actually want some sort of new technology, extra mobile downloads or may want to go to a web site and interact with additional information or games or something like that. But, again, the core of that is you have a great slot, great characters, a great story, and then understand that if you’re appealing to that broad an audience, then what are the different things that you can do from a promotional and a content perspective to continue to draw that audience in?
GOB: One of the others things I’ve been writing about is the targeted advertising point of view where the ability to send an ad to the 15 year old on the TV in his room and a different ad to mom in the living room is coming. However, most of the thinking is being done on the neighborhood level where you send the BMW ad to Rosedale and the Kia ad to Scarborough at the same time.
Are your media buyers demanding that and is there anything Global is doing to move down that path?
KD: We’re not racing down that road to be able to do that. Probably, to a degree because neither the advertiser nor the content provider really control the mechanism to provide that. There’s really a third party in there (cable/DTH) and I think that the way the industry is organized in that way where the content providers aren’t really controlling the means of distribution full-scale – it’s just going to delay the implementation of that.
The interesting thing, just to bring it back around to brand, is I think what is becoming interesting from the standpoint of advertising is the desire on the part of advertisers, not really to target a specific audience, but instead to attach a product to a show or a character or a network that psycho-graphically fits with their product.
GOB: I always thought the Dukes of Hazzard, if anyone was thinking of it back then, could have been great for Dodge. Every show, there was this orange Dodge. Flying through the air, every show. Too bad they weren’t selling the same kind of Dodge Chargers then.
KD: Absolutely. I think those attachments, in a sense, are more tangible and visible to a degree and doesn’t require the same amount of targeting that you get when you go after a neighborhood. Now, that’s coming, but at this point there are other kinds of targeting that advertisers can take advantage of without having to completely reinvent where they want to go.
GOB: There are some things to be careful of though, when attaching your brand, as an advertiser, to such shows. I’m thinking of The Apprentice last year where there was some negative blowback on the episode that was like a Pontiac Solstice one-hour infomercial. Many people didn’t like that.
KD: In that kind of situation, everybody suffers. The advertiser gets criticized, the program gets criticized, the network gets criticized. If the audience doesn’t react well, they’re going to blame everybody. Let’s just say you really had created an extremely strong brand a-la MTV, to a certain degree then, the advertiser doesn’t have to be that overt with product placement because as long as they’re attached and they’re advertising frequently on that network and within the confines of that brand (that they identify with), then they’re getting the same attachment without having to be in the editorial.
GOB: And with that sort of thing, too, being it was the Pontiac Solstice in the programming, that has to present some unique problems for Global because A) you’re not getting any of the revenue from Pontiac and B) you can’t sell any time to Ford during that hour. A bit of a Canadian market quirk, maybe.
KD: Yes, a unique quirk in terms of the Canadian marketplace.
GOB: That was my segué into my last question on your time here which has been 18 months now?
KD: Thirteen, actually.
GOB: What have been the challenges or the surprises as an American coming to broadcasting in Canada?
KD: First of all, the television marketplace here is a much more complex marketplace. It’s a very challenging market and I’m not sure that in the U.S. there’s an adequate appreciation of the complexity of trying to create a successful television network here. To me it’s three-dimensional chess.
You have simulcast, then, you have the whole issue of Canadian content and that’s all in a very very competitive landscape.
I like the complexity of it. I do find it challenging and I think it’s a good thing for the marketplace here. I think that there’s probably more focus on what television as a medium should deliver to the public whereas in the U.S., market forces almost completely prevail.
The other thing that I found really interesting and one of the things that excited me about the job was the opportunity to really participate in what I think is a very valuable production community, whether that’s in news or entertainment or drama, I think Global, particularly, can participate in that to a much greater degree.
GOB: In recent years, that has been one of the main criticisms of Global from the production community is that it didn’t do enough Canadian content. Do you see Global doing much more?
KD: We have made significant inroads, even this year in the short term. One of the things that I found in my experience in cable television in the U.S. is that there are always opportunities to do creative, innovative programming, if you have creative, innovative partnerships with the production community and I think that the key is to look at the evolving marketplace and try to not be constrained by the models that have worked in the past and be thinking about how you tell good stories, whether you’re telling a news story or telling a story about a celebrity on ET Canada or telling the story of Falcon Beach.
There’s tremendous talent here… We’re doing a new series with Debbie Travis, a new reality series (to air in Spring/Summer 2006) which is a departure from anything she’s done in the past and certainly a departure from anything Global has done. I think we’re finding that because of her passion for her business (home decorating/improvement), that it’s going to be a different sort of reality show.
But, I’m really pleased that in the last year, we’ve partnered with the Canadian production community and with a brand like ET to make a Canadian version of that.
Making (original content) a real priority is the first step and my view is that you can’t look at it like, “well we have to do this” because to me, the best reason to do it is because it’s good business for us to do it. And, if it serves to reflect the brand we’re trying to deliver then at the end of the day we will attract new audiences and there’s nothing better than saying “this show represents what we’re trying to do with Global television.”
I had one show in my career that really did that – Inside the Actor’s Studio – on Bravo and that show said “this is what Bravo is trying to be” – to bring high art and pop culture together in a way that’s substantive and that only television can deliver.
To comment on this or anything else on www.cartt.ca, drop us a line at editorial@cartt.ca.
