January 15, 2025 • 45 mins
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja gives his first interview since taking the reins of the studio. The conversation was held Jan. 8 at Variety’s Entertainment Summit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, as firestorms were raging across Los Angeles County. Later that day, NBCUniversal ad sales chief Mark Marshall and NBC Sports host Maria Taylor brought some levity with a freewheeling session previewing what Marshall calls “the greatest 730 days that any media company has ever had” given the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, NBA coverage and more on tap for 2025 and 2026.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Littleton, co editor in chief of Variety. Today's guests
are Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja and a separate
conversation with Mark Marshall, NBC Universal ad Sales chief, and
(00:31):
NBC Sports host Maria Taylor. Both conversations were held on
January eighth as part of Variety's annual Entertainment Summit at
the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. At Variety, we
love starting the year off strong with a day long
event that is part of the biggest tech and media
conference of the year. We were proud to land the
(00:53):
first interview with Ahuja since he took the reins as
CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment from Tony Vincent Acquera, who
is no stranger to Strictly Business. But this year everything
at CEES was harder as our event happened as devastating
wildfires were raging in Los Angeles County. I was born
(01:13):
and raised in Pasadena. Fire danger is a fact of
life in California. I've never seen anything like this level
of destruction, pain, and anguish. Dear listeners, please hold good
thoughts for the tens of thousands of fire victims out there.
And as I record this on January fourteenth, it is
(01:35):
definitely not over. The fire situation, not surprisingly, is the
first thing that Ahuja and I discuss in a conversation
about leadership and the studio's future. Like the pandemic a
few years ago, the LA firestorm has put into sharp
relief the importance of strong leadership in times of uncertainty
(01:55):
and crisis. That conversation is coming right up after this,
and we're back with a conversation from cees with Sony
Pictures Entertainment CEO Rabbi A Hooja. Well, thank you Robbie
(02:16):
for being here, and I want you to know, folks,
this is Robbie's first interview as CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment,
So we are honored.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's true and thank you and actually my first week
in this role.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes, and mother nature has thrown you some curveballs here,
not to belabor it, but you know you are now
and this is actually we're talking about issue, you know,
leadership and you ascending to the CEO post again. You know,
a tough call. Uh. You were saying to me that
you made you made some decisions about the studio. Lut
(02:53):
can you talk about what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I mean, obviously, this situation, which I'm sure everyone is
familiar with or at least as much as you can now,
is very fluid. So starting yesterday into today, our you know,
thoughts were obviously with our employees in this situation. You
think safety first, right, and you want everyone to be okay.
Some people are not right. Some of our employees have
lost homes, many are displaced. But then there are other
(03:16):
parts of the city that are okay. You know. We
find that in our case, the decision is do we
close our lot? Our lot has its own power, and
it actually is in some ways a refuge for some people.
So we've strongly encouraged people to work from home, but
are keeping a lot open as a refuge or if
people are close enough and feel it's okay to come
(03:38):
to work. I don't think we're going to get much
work done today, even if people work from home. It's
just too difficult of the situation. But you're right, Cynthia,
it's a it's a classic decision that goes right to
the top of you know, you have to pull meaning
from the fog and try to figure out what to do.
The good thing is, you know, ultimately a lot is
made of who makes the decision. But there are a
(04:00):
lot of very good people, and.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I have a lot of sound need yees to go
to you who've.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Been through these situations before. And then of course you
talk to colleagues too, right, other studios that are close by,
so you sort of in that sense crowd source a
lot of the information so that you can make a
good decision and hopefully you make the right one.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I have long suspected that the Hollywood studios have kind
of that red phone that Commissioner Gordon used to have
in Batman, where where you can all kind of if
you need to communicate with each other on an emergency basis.
But well, your studio a lot is about fifteen minutes
from my house, so I am definitely hoping that everything stay,
everything stays calm in that area.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Never so happy to be in the flatlands, yes, But
to that point, was there when you woke up yesterday
and today and saw this magnitude of it was?
Speaker 5 (04:49):
It was? It was there.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
A moment of like, wow, the buck stops with me
now I'm the CEO.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I suppose I was well prepared for it, so I
kind of assumed that was the case. So, No, it
wasn't surprising at all. And honestly, that happens a lot, right,
It's just the question the size of the decision, whether
it's a small thing or it's something like this that
actually is very serious that in most people's safety. Right,
it's not just money, which is very important, but it's
(05:17):
a very different kind of decision.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, and the metrics aby which those are made are different.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Well, let's talk about it sort of staying on that
kind of big picture level. You have been with Sony
since early ish twenty twenty one, Yes, and what would
you say? You know so, and you've been a key
part of real you know, Sony has really been through
a transformation the last seven years under your predecessor, Tony Vincequero,
who is a friend to Variety for many years. And
(05:48):
in talking I know that you're kind of coming in
with if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yes too, that's correct, right, I mean we're doing very well. Right, So,
there's no need to go and be revolutionary, and it's
more look like every strategy needs to be refreshed, so
it's more of an evolutionary thing. I think we need,
right is just to continue to evolve and add to
our capabilities and lean into places we're growing. Rahul was
just here right Crunchy rolls a high growth, high growth business,
(06:16):
so it's just doing much more there. He talked about
some of the things that we're doing with Ghost of
Tsushima with Solo leveling, So within that segment, that's what
we're doing. But each of our segments has a unique
strategy that we lean into.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
And you've been been a key architelp to be a
key architect for that. So this is truly as many
people observed, a rare, truly seamless transition of manage.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I think it's good. It's a credit to Tony
first of all, right in thinking about the importance of
succession and doing it in a very deliberate way. Right.
I spent time last year as COO, so that was
a gradual process. Our parent company at Sony, this was
an important thing to them and they were helpful in
the transition. So it can be done right. It doesn't
(07:03):
seem to be done done right in our town often enough,
but it can be done right. So look, I think
it's worked well so far.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And Sony obviously Sony for you know, within the industry,
it is now well known that Sony you know, very
deliberately sort of staked out a strategy of you know,
being a content provider, a content hub, but not going
sort of full bore into into streaming services, with one
big exception of crunchy Roll, which has been you know,
(07:33):
quite a success story and sort of riding that wonderful
wave of anime. Part of that is, as you are
a creator of content, you know, focusing on delivering content
for other platforms you really I know that that puts
a lot of pressure on the studio to think about
you know, the classic where's the puck going? Yes, the
nature of consumption is changing. Everybody in this room knows that,
(07:55):
the generational change in the way the audience wants to
consume that. Can you talk on the high level, how
do you wrap your arms around that? How do you
try to you know, sort of figure out where you
want to steer people where you want at your resource?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, Well, the first thing is just strategically. We Arms
Dealer has been used to talk about us a lot,
and that's true. For part.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I was trying that to be so violent.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It's true for part of our business. We're an independent studio.
It is Hollywood, and we sell content to people. But
the way that I think about it is each of
our segments, it's they're actually the same segments every media
company has. We have a film studio, we have TV studios,
we have direct to consumer and crunchy role, and we
have an experiences division now, so we have the same
things everyone else has. The difference is we do each
(08:38):
one uniquely and differently to what everyone else does. In film,
we are theaters first. The theatrical bar is the highest bar.
You know, in total we're content focused. The theatrical bar
is the highest bar. So we are theatrical first and TV.
We are the arms Dealer. We're an independent studio that
sells to others. That's the highest bar. It's not internal sales.
(09:01):
We've got to sell to other people, so we've got
to have the highest standards in direct to consumer. Our
view and this preceded me. You know, Tony did this,
and when I was on the outside, I thought it
was a great decision was not to do what everyone
else was doing a general entertainment streaming service, but instead
to focus on a particular area where we could be different.
(09:24):
And anime is a fantastic one and crunchy Rolls been
enormously successful. We've just started on experiences and there we've
done some licensing of ourp to others, but we also
bought Alamo Draft House, which is a dine in theater chain,
which is a very different kind of theatrical experience, and
from that we're going to build more IP based things.
(09:45):
So that's the way we think about it. We're content focused.
So then as part of what you just asked Cynthia
is so how do you think about the big trends
in the business right And you're right, some of the
big trends are new platforms, YouTube and TikTok. We have
the third biggest YouTube chainannel in the world with our
India business because YouTube is so big in India, so
(10:05):
big with kids, so it's really about identifying places where
those platforms are particularly big. We have a kid's YouTube
channel we've just launched very early days, but we'll do
more there with gen Z gen Z's could consumption habits
very different to older generations, right, very very different. Anime
(10:25):
was a perfect example of that. It's primarily a gen
z Jen Alpha product. There are some millennials who also
get Crunchy Rol, not too many xers, but but you
know that's how we lean into that. And then we're
also very hard at work at building on our franchises,
which you know we heard a little bit about in
the prior panel, but very hard at work on that.
(10:48):
Example there Karate Kid. We have a Karate Kid movie
coming out in May. So famously Karate Kid was a movie,
TV show and Cobra Kai now back to movie. So
you know we're pro act actively working on franchise as well.
So it's taking our mission, which is content focused, pursuing
a differentiated strategy, but leaning into those trends in each
(11:09):
of those businesses.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Interesting that Alamo draft House, when you you know, the
assumption is that you're a studio, you're buying a theatrical chain,
but you're really seeing this as an experience, is in
addition to enhancing your film distribution.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yes, that's right. We the two are managed separately, so
the Alamo Draft hoos does not report into the theatrical division,
so they work together as any theater chain would work
with a film studio. But that's not how we were
thinking about it, that we're just going to exhibit our
own films. That wouldn't work at all.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Robbie, your background prior to coming to Sony was largely
in television.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
What was you know in coming into Sony and coming
into the CEO job. You know a lot of big
picture thinking about about film. I know that you led
the Alamo Draft House acquisition, so that was, you know,
obviously a strategy. What for you was the learning curve
in film? The business were less familiar with.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It's still happening. It's uh yeah, Obviously film is close
enough to television that you have some familiarity with it,
moving pictures, actors, stream right, exactly, exactly. Understanding the mechanics
of the business is actually not the hardest part. The
people becomes the harder part, right. I think that's even
true in television. If one is new to television, you
(12:22):
can understand the business relatively quickly after a couple of years,
for sure, but it's really knowing it at a much
deeper level like you do. Cynthia so in film it's
you know, I think that's the next part of the
journey there. But I do know the business, right, and
I think we've got fantastic colleagues. And Tom is the
best teacher in the world.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Tom Rothman who runs with an iron fist. No, I
mean Tom Rothman, one of the most successful and seasoned
executives out there and one of the biggest champions, one
of the biggest champions of the box office. But you,
I mean you all. You know in the Pandemic and
everything that there was a lot of experimentation, but you
have very much. Sony has very much committed to the
(13:03):
theatrical experience.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yes, we think there's a lot of value in it.
We also think it's a good business, right, It's it's
the best way to make a movie big. And when
a movie is big in theaters, it's almost always big
in streaming. But the opposite is not true. Some movies
that are good for passing time in streaming won't work theatrically.
So the theaters really provide the highest bar.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Absolutely, I'm going to just another small elephant in the
room that I'm going to raise here. I know that
there has been a lot of a lot of press
about a little matter involving a movie called It Ends
with Us that was distributed by Sony, and it has
been obviously, it's been the talk of Hollywood, and I
just want to I just want to acknowledge that Sony
was the distributor. It has it has exploded into litigation,
(13:48):
and I understand that it's that this is a you know,
a very touchy topic. I also wanted to to note
that in that case, Sony was the distributor, not the
producer of the problem. And so not not asking you
about the specifics of It Ends with Us, but how
how are you, how do you how are you thinking
about navigating those kinds of relationships. There are some, you know,
(14:11):
some cases where Sony is the bank role and the
develop the very germ of the development idea starts with you.
And in some cases projects come to you correct in partnerships,
and you know, sometimes those can be fraught.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So it's true we play a different role in each situation,
more so in film than TV. Right, I think that's
true in the case of It Ends with Us. I mean,
for one, I wasn't personally involved with it right out.
My focus was on the TV side, and I don't
know any of the people on a personal level. But
also correct Cyndia, the litigation and so on. I want
to be respectful of the parties and not wouldn't be appropriate,
(14:45):
I think to say anything on that. But yeah, the
situations are different depending on what role we play. That's true.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Do you and it's an interesting question obviously film that
you know there's often higher costs and other other factors
global distribution, But do you and to I mean, do
you know overseeing the TV business, do you anticipate a
world where there might be more partnerships coming in in television?
There might, certainly there are co productions, but even like
investment in the same way that film sometimes a film slate,
(15:14):
it may even a major studio film slate will bring
in some outside investment. Do you see that happening?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I don't necessarily see slate financing. I mean I think
of anything, it'll go farther away from that. The last
panel talked about how p and ls for shows. I
think Barry was saying it the p and ls for
shows don't exist anymore, so that makes slate financing very difficult.
Apart from if you're doing it with us, So I
don't think we'll see that, but there may be a
(15:39):
change in how it works, right. I think the traditional
cost plus pricing is kind of where streamers have gone.
I'm not sure that's always the best idea. With very
standard terms, standard premiums, with arrange standard licensed terms of
they own the show for the life of the show,
plus an additional ten years.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
It makes it kind of hard for us studio to
make a little money on it.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, right, you become really a producer, right, So it
becomes very difficult. And we have said to streamers will
make it for less of a premium, but we want
it back faster, so we'll believe in the success of
the show. I think the streamers, while there's an intellectual
openness to that, they haven't quite gotten there. I get
asked that question all the time. Have you guys made
(16:22):
progress with that?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
And the internet is not really It seems that there's
been sort of a dawning realization of the importance of
having that those incentives aligned, and sometimes in a cost
plus model where the streamer plays a pays the production
costs plus a ten or twenty percent you know, profit
bonus for a studio that still doesn't that that's not
(16:43):
swinging for the fences like you know, it's when Sony
distributed Seinfeld and you know, watch the Stack of Cash.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Correct, I love correct. Yeah. So I do think some
of those things will evolve. I think we've just been
through this huge gold rush, right the peak TV thing,
and a lot of the business practices got skewed, and
I think some of them will be completely new and different,
but some will return to normal because they just don't
make sense right. So I think we'll see that over
(17:11):
the course of the next say five years.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
You have taken the helm at a very interesting time.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
It's always an interesting our business.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Let's talk a little bit. One thing that has been
very noticeable and you know, lots of on screen expressions
of it. But Sony has been very focused on kind
of bringing the parts of Sony together more than they
had in the past, especially Sony Music, especially Sony PlayStation content.
That that initiative helped produce a little show called The
(17:38):
Last of Us, which is coming back in April. As
we learned from the Sony presentation on Monday, and that
was that was news that was devoured by Variety readers
within seconds of it going up on our site. That
is always such a measure of just how quickly people
gravitate to news. So yeah, rest assured. Season two, there's
(17:59):
a lot of antis the patient. But can you talk
about how that has you know that not just around
the Last of Us, but other other projects and I
know there's a number of things in the hopper, How
that has you know, fostered collaboration, how that has created
opportunity by adding you know, one plus one plus one
to equal five or six.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, it's interesting because it's maybe people won't believe this,
it's really organic. It truly is, right. I mean, there's
some something of a push in the sense that we
put people together so they meet each other.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Buy them lunch.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yes, we feed people and put them in a room.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
So there is that.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And then in the case bless you, and then in
the case of in the case of PlayStation there is
a group called PlayStation Productions that focuses specifically on that.
So there are people who follow up continually. So there
is a little bit of a push, but it is organic.
Right at the parent company level. There isn't a you
(18:56):
must work with each.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Other, nobody's picking okay this title this time.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
No no, and what's good. The only way it really
does work I think, I think very strongly is the
creator has to be deeply involved. So you know, when
we were talking about Ghost of Sushima and working across
the company, it's you really have to have in that
case Aniplex be the guiding light on the creation, or
(19:20):
in the case of Last of Us Naughty Dog and
Neil being deeply involved, because you have to have somebody
who really lives it and feels it. Otherwise, if each
group is kind of doing their own thing, it can
be a bit of a mess. So you know, we
work that way, but we don't have like a committee
that you know, forces people to do things and says
(19:41):
there must be four collaborations this year. We don't do
any of that. So it's it. You know, this is good.
It's collaboration without bureaucracy. So everybody feels good about it
and leans into it.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
And you know, the proof is definitely on screen.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
Yeah, do you uh?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Has there been sort of just general benefits and people
kind of even just getting to know their colleagues and
people at Sony Pictures knowing a little bit more how
things are the priorities of Sony Music. I would imagine
in any organization. I've always found communication gaps are the
biggest are usually the source of all problems. Is that
communication gap? So if you're fostering a lot more communication.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, absolutely so people also understand your business. What matters
to you? What do you care about? You know? For
our music colleagues, for our PlayStation colleagues, it's if we
do a TV show and it features you know, your talent,
or it features your IP, how does it help you?
You know, we don't really know. So should we go
fight for a bigger premium on a smaller platform, for
(20:41):
example with PlayStation, or do we go to the biggest
platform and not care so much about that? To be honest,
we're still learning a lot of that, right, We're still
relatively early in a lot of this. But by having
that open dialogue we figure that out and then you know,
competitively we're ahead of people. It becomes our unfair advantage
that for us is you know, is a real positive
(21:03):
from a business point of view.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
I mean, the amount you know, Hollywood has I think,
especially in the last couple of years with the Last of
Us and other things, become aware of just the amount
of time that people spend playing video games. There is
such a love and connection to that content that can
be tapped.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Isn't it. It's funny, Cynthia, because five years ago people
would have said there's no way, right, is.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Every video game adapt takee Yeah, most of them have
been really poor and they didn't satisfy the TV or
film viewer, and they and they only upset usually upset
the gaming So the worst.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Of all worlds exactly exactly, but now it works. It's
the thing in our business is so execution dependent. Right
when we talk about strategy and we throw around return
on investment and economies of scale, it's just it's really
how you execute the product, and that's primarily driven by
the people who are working on it, right, It's the
creators who work on it, and it's really having a
(21:57):
clear vision around it and what is this is going to
add for the viewer. It's a kind of delight viewers.
So it's making sure that we allow people the freedom
to do that.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Would you say, is there an emphasis on trying to
kind of thread things together? So the Last of Us
Season two is coming out, we have new gaming content
that will complement that or is that more just you
let those things happen organically.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
That's aspirational, so that would we always say things like, oh,
that would be great, we should really do that. But
you know, sometimes things are ready when they're ready, So
it's hard to do that really really well, to do
that perfectly. Disney. I spent a couple of years at Disney.
They do that really well. It's amazing. Well they do that.
We're not that good, but we're you know, we're getting better.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
You spent those couple of years at Disney, were a
really interesting time for Disney.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Right after keep doing interesting things.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Right right after the Box acquisition. That must have just
been a masterclass in corporate integration and how you brought
two formidable organizations together and figured out that must have
been that was boot camp for.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That Hulu, right, And the company went through a lot
and changed its strategy at the same time. So that's
taking on a lot. And then the pandemic happened too,
and the CEO transition, so it was like the most
complicated thing you could ever do.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And a six month strike, you know, just yeah, and
then that later right, let me ask you one of
my favorite one of my new favorite shows is Pop
Culture Jeopardy. Oh good, that's fine, but that is I
know that's been one of the things that you were
tasked with was really looking at existing franchises that the
institutions that are will fortunately Jeopardy. And that's also you know,
(23:36):
that's also fraught because there's a lot of there's a
lot of people that you know that a mediocre version
of pop culture Jeopardy would not reflect well on the brand.
How did you go about sort of figuring out Okay,
here's the iteration that makes sense for Jeopardy. Yeah, that's
the Jeopardy expansion.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, that's right. I mean Jeopardy had had spin offs
in the past, right, So there was a sports Jeopardy.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Rock and Roll Jeopardy. A friend of mine was on.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, and they weren't very good. So you know, one
requirement I've had in Suzanne Pretty and the game show
group do this is it has to be really good,
and we're not doing it. Honestly, we could sell eight
spin offs of Jeopardy tomorrow, tomorrow, today, today, Yeah, I
could do it here if there are any buyers here,
but we're not doing that because our team can't execute,
(24:19):
and we have to make sure because it's too much
and we have to make sure that we that it's additive,
that it brings something new pop culture. Jeopardy has much
younger viewers. Obviously the category there is pop culture. We
do it in a team format because not everyone knows
everything if people are experts at music movies, so we
put together teams so we're doing something different, different host,
(24:42):
same stage, but adapted, right, So we really feel we
can do it well. But it's also the same team.
It's Michael Davies producing, so it's the same team. So
you know, our view has been We've got to do
these things and do them extremely well. Streaming for us
with Jeopardy and Will is a big priority, right they
those shows are in the main shows are in syndication,
(25:02):
and syndication is declining right in terms of the number
of people it gets to. Interestingly, those shows are not declining.
Will's ratings are up this year.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I could pull I could pull a ratings report from
fifteen years ago and they would be, you know, in
a zone of or maybe ten years ago, they would
be in a zone of they are amazing stallwarts of times.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, they're amazing. I mean the shows on a nightly
basis rate the same as the NBA Finals, right, So
it's nine ten million people viewing them every night. So
we but we're missing a lot of the audience. So
we are, you know, out talking to people about potential
streaming solutions for those shows. So I think that'll help
reintroduce them to younger people who actually encounter Wheel and
(25:46):
Jeopardy through TikTok where we're very active, or YouTube. So
you know, we're very optimistic that those franchises have a
very long life. I mean, they're fifty and sixty years old,
and we don't view them as they're past their prime.
We think these things are perennials somewhere.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
MERV Griffin, who created Beehows, is smiling, Yes, smiling. We
are out of time. But I can't put so many
more questions. But I got to ask you the thirty
forty five second version, how does the boy from Ohio
come to be a CEO in Hollywood?
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That's a good question.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
For me, the focus has always been I didn't start
out saying that's what I'm going to do the way
that I've always guided my experience is just trying to
add new skills, and I have an enormous amount of
curiosity I suppose about everything that we do about the
media business and about leading people and about trying to
create a winning business that will last over time. So
(26:41):
it's really just building skills along the way there. I mean,
I suppose before the Fox Disney deal, I had viewed
it as I was going to stay at Fox forever.
But then things happen too, and you just try to
keep growing and you try to keep learning, and then
you find the right thing, like the place that I'm
in now, and you, you know, you do your best.
(27:01):
I suppose, I don't know, I'll come up with a
better answer for you, Cynthia, but that's the best.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
You know what, Honesty is always the best policy. Thank you, Robbie.
We so appreciate your time. Thanks for giving us your
first interview.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with a conversation
between NBC Universal ad sales chief Mark Marshall and NBC
Sports host Maria Taylor. And we're back with a rollicking
session with NBC Universal ad sales chief Mark Marshall and
(27:35):
Football Night in America host Maria Taylor. Marshall is also
no stranger to strictly business. We had a terrific interview
in twenty twenty three, just before the May upfronts. Marshall
is an advertising guy through and through. He's smart, innovative,
and he has a really good sense of humor about himself.
As you'll hear, Taylor teases him more than once about
(27:59):
his chrome dome, and he takes it in the playful
spirit in which she meant it. Their camaraderie is palpable
through this audio. Taylor really impressed me with her sharp
questions about NBC Universal's business future, and folks, let me
tell you, she is even taller than she looks. On
football Night in America, we were grateful that this buddy
(28:21):
act brought our conference some laughs when we really needed them.
Speaker 6 (28:26):
NBC is turning one hundred and the one hundredth anniversary
is something that's going to be celebrated, just like we've
been celebrating SNL's fiftieth and so content is coming down
the pipe that we don't know anything about.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
But you do.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
So can you give us a glimpse into what's to
come as we continue to celebrate the growth of this company.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Yeah, I think it's been fun. We've known we've had
this great lineup that's going to happen in twenty five,
twenty six, and then last year we added to that
with partnering with the NBA and bringing the NBA back
to NBC. So we'll start in the fall where we'll
have Ryder Cup, We'll have Bravo Khan, any Bravo fans here, Yeah,
Bravo con absolutely here in Vegas, and then the NBA
(29:04):
will start, and then in February we have three days
and then Super Bowl, three days of the Olympics in Milan.
Super Bowl, another week of Olympics, NBA All Star weekend,
and then another week of Milan. We should go to Milan, Yes,
let's do that. That'd be good. And then we have
the World Cup in Telemundo next summer. So I had
(29:27):
a lot more hair before we got into this stretch
that we're going to roll through.
Speaker 5 (29:31):
He did not have more hair before this stretch.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Just because you look the other way doesn't mean I
can't hear you.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
He did not have more hair. What would you say.
Speaker 6 (29:40):
I mean you kind of touched a little bit on
the NBA rights, But describing just a little bit more
what that means to NBC Universal, especially considering the history
of the NBA and the network.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Yeah, it is. It's fun like it's a bit of
a dream for me for a couple of reasons. One,
I was born in Chicago. I was lucky enough to
be through the Jordan years where we would go out
to a bar to watch them play the Charlotte Bobcats,
and every bar was filled in all of Chicago for
a regular season game. It was unbelievable. And then the NBA.
(30:15):
Then I went to go work for Turner, so I
was there for fifteen years at Turner Sports, and then
when we had the opportunity to get back in the
business with the NBA, I was really excited. And we
also when you think about what it's going to do
for our company is you'll have a game on every
night on Monday Night on Peacock, Tuesday Night, you will
(30:35):
have games on NBC, and then after Sunday Night Football,
you'll transition to Sunday Night Basketball. We did a branding
study that'll be called Sunday Night Basketball, and so it'll
change a complexion of what NBC looks like. It's amazing.
If all of you know, there's a bunch of talk
this week about Live and if you look across NBC
(30:57):
from Morning tonight. On average, seventy percent of all the
hours are live across NBC, so this will even make
that even stronger as we look forward.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
And a part of that deal is also the rights
to the WNBA. And we've seen just like the growth
of women's sports in general. I'm not tall for no reason.
I promise I played a sport back in the day.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
At one you played two.
Speaker 6 (31:17):
Volleyball and basketball. But at Georgia, at Georgia, go dogs.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Who lost it? Notre Dame.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
Yeah, I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
I didn't know if you saw it. That's wanted to
make sure you still don't have hair. Now we're back.
Now we're back, gloves are off. But so a why
you guys thought this was going to be an informative panel.
You were wrong. You are misled the growth of women's sports.
Speaker 6 (31:42):
It's been fun to watch, But how has that changed advertising?
And how do you, guys in what your role is
help to fuel advertisers and the investment that is being
made in women's sports in general.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Well, it's funny. I mean, this whole idea of women's
sports and having a moment Like for us at NBC,
we're like, thank odd Finally, you know, the Olympics. This
was prior to this was the last Olympics. Ninety nine
percent of all the primetime hours that happened in women's
sports were in the Olympics. That means only one percent
(32:14):
was happening outside of those seventeen days. So we're extremely
proud that we played even a small role of highlighting
these great women. But it takes networks, it takes advertisers
to make it happen. And from a network standpoint, in
the Women's World Cup soccer or the FIFA the last one,
we actually went to the marketplace and said women should
(32:35):
get the same price as men from a cost CPM standpoint,
and we got about ninety percent of the way there.
We were thirty six percent of the way there the
previous World Cup. So we closed the gap tremendously for that.
But you also need advertisers to stand up. And I
give a ton of credit you know, to a state farm,
a Lily, a Delta. These advertisers have stepped up in
(32:57):
a big way to really support and highlight it. And
I think all of us that you know grew up
will bring it back to basketball, like Michael Jordan and
Nike Michael Jordan and Gatorade. Those ads were running everywhere,
just like the State Farm ads that are running everywhere
with Kitlyn Clark. It's not just the person that's tuning
in to the games themselves, but it's a person learning
(33:19):
about women's sports and understanding who Caitlyn Clark is because
of their ads that they're seeing.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
I was going to say, is it chicken or the egg?
The investment comes because the fandom has grown, or it
begins with a State Farm or someone saying we're going
to invest and that grows the game.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
I think it's more like we've had women's sports. You know,
we have the LPGA, we have a ton of women's
sports on but it for some reason, there was a
switch that happened with Caitlyn Clark, and it started, you
know with the women's national soccer team as well. But
there's now a consistency that feels like it's not a moment,
(33:53):
feels like it's more of a movement.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Yeah, no, for sure, let's talk about kind of NBC
in prime time. I just like saying it like that
because I envisioned Deon Sanders prime tem and obviously, I mean,
you enter in, you're one hundred year.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
But it's not by one hundred year.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
You're getting older. I'm getting younger. NBC is growing and mature.
Hundred years, yes of anac, not mark mark, not how
long you've been there.
Speaker 5 (34:17):
Yeah, sometimes looks like it, but.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I can hear you again.
Speaker 5 (34:21):
We might should take the show on the road, or
we're going to wrestle.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
I don't know which one. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (34:27):
Give me the evolution of what primetime looks like. How
you guys are building content to make sure that the
viewers enjoy the advertisers respond well to it.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Walk me through some of those decisions.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Well, what are you doing for Valentine's Day? I'm not
asking you out, what are you doing?
Speaker 5 (34:43):
I'll probably be with my Oh that's my wedding anniversary.
I almost forgot.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, well we did forget. It's also SNL's fiftieth anniversary
show will be that night. So the coolest thing I
think SNL, which is in its fiftieth year, is probably
the greatest example of how people consume content today. And
if you look at it, in it's forty seventh year,
it became the number one entertainment show in television. Wow,
(35:08):
which is a crazy to think on linear television. It's
the number one show on social and streaming every day
you wake up and it's the first thing you see
when you stream as well. And so we use SNL,
which is crazy that probably our oldest show, next to
Meet the Press, is kind of our beacon of how
we think about the future. How do you create content
in clips that you can push out in different ways.
(35:30):
So when we're looking at the NBA, NBA which is
this great young, multicultural game, these kids aren't all sitting
down to watch a two and a half hour game.
They want to figure out the highlights. They want to
see what happened the night before. So we have to
program differently. So I think you've seen us lean in
much more to sports, and you're a big part of that.
(35:52):
By the way, if the number one show on TV
is SUN and at football, yes, what's number two?
Speaker 5 (35:58):
It's not Football Night in America, it is your show.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Your show is the number two show in prime time.
You should use that with your agent. Yeah, you use it.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
You don't want that problem?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
No, that's yeah, that's a good call. Let's erase that stuff. No,
but it so I think the NBA we're going to
take that same approach that we did with SNL as well.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
I like that you brought up streaming and how that
kind of changes things. And just from your role and
your vantage point, what has the streaming industry done to
content and just advertisers, the viewership and how you have
to think about the way that you do your job.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Well, I mean it's it's a good question. I mean,
if the average consumer today spends thirteen hours with media,
so in order to look at that number, that's really
scary as a marketer, right, So number one, you have
to find them. You need something that delivers scale thankfully,
and vic Universal does that, reaching two hundred and seventy
(36:57):
three million people every month. But then you have to engage.
Once you find, you have to engage them. And so
what we're trying to figure out in all of these
things is what is the right environment. So if you
go back to two thoy and eighteen, we launched something
that was called Prime Pod. So every first pod across
NBCU was one minute long. That used to be a
(37:18):
three and a half minute pod. We took it down
to one minute because we were testing what was the
right length. If you go on to Peacock right now,
it's one minute breaks and there's five minutes an hour.
So we were starting to learn of what we were
doing in streaming and bring into linear and vice versa
on that because for our first ninety seven years, the
(37:39):
only feedback loop we had was really Nielsen ratings, which
we know aren't exact science. And so now we can
look at it and we're getting the next day. I
can see minute by minute by show what commercials perform better.
Should we have a pharma commercial in the first pod?
Or is a pharma commercial perform better in the third pod?
So all of those things are now part of the
(38:00):
ad experience that we're thinking about.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
Random side question.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
You know the AI content that was built around the Olympics,
so you could have al Michaels basically to you, I
know about.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Whatever you're interested the most.
Speaker 6 (38:11):
You know, So al Michaels has been doing this live
somehow an AI system is creating your highlights for you.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Just how did that work? It was so cool?
Speaker 6 (38:20):
But now I'm kind of curious how that worked and
how the market responds to something like that.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
It was it was cool. We were in a meeting
with Brian Roberts, our CEO, and the tech team was
showing them this that they had created. So the concept
was al Michaels delivers your custom highlights every morning. And
al Michaels has been on NBC for on and off
for thirty plus years. He didn't need to record one thing.
(38:44):
But we went to him and said, how would you
like to be the first person that has ever done this?
And he was like, I'm all in. I love this.
He's a CNBC junkie, so he's like AI, He's like,
I want to be involved in this. So when we
saw it and they were showing it to Brian and
I was like wait a minute. I was like, this
is who built this? Like how does this work? And
(39:05):
they were like, oh, it's there was a company out
of Israel and then it's built on a Microsoft instance
and I was like, well, I'm going to take it
to Microsoft and Microsoft was all in on it. So
that's how that one came to life. And al Michaels
loved it and every morning he would tell me how
we did in basketball team USA won again. But it
(39:25):
is crazy that they took thirty years of his voice
and you could not tell the difference when you would
watch the highlight.
Speaker 5 (39:31):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 6 (39:33):
Another big innovation that's coming in announcement that was made
as Universal Ads walk us through what it is essentially
and why right now is the time to launch something
of this nature.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
So if you think about all of us traditional media companies,
we probably have in the area of let's say, ten
thousand advertisers. Meta has ten million advertisers, partly because they
have a self service tool that allows any advertiser to
be able to go on and use a credit card
and buy an ad. For us, we didn't have that
(40:07):
easy button for premium video. So we announced today with
Comcasts and Freewheel, with multiple other publishers that we will
have that easy button that's going to be created. So
you know, what town.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Are you in Atlanta?
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Or what's your favorite pizza place?
Speaker 5 (40:23):
Jets Jets.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Okay, so now Jets Pizza can go on and buy
a Sunday night football spot in their market.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
That's cool.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, So that's what it is, huh.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
And it's not just NBC Universal.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Nope, it's so Paramount, Warner Brothers, Direct TV, Roku, Paramount
am I saying the same one Paramount as well. So
we're excited and it's a collective and it's looking at
the industry as really a brand and how do we
deliver premium video to these advertisers that didn't have access
(40:59):
prior to programmatic.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
Okay, we've talked about the strengths, the innovation, some of
the new technologies. Give me the challenges that are kind
of facing advertisers as we continue to brave into this
new frontier.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
Well, I think it's just it's hard to find your
customer right now. I think a lot of times people
are trying to make a decision between do I do linear,
do I do digital streaming, do I go into social?
All of them have their pluses and minuses. So last
year at CES, we rolled out what we called one
platform Total Audience, and what that is is linear and
(41:33):
digital in the same optimizer with the set top box
data from comcasts in the middle. Now you can buy
against an advanced audience. So we've actually come out with
four different categories that we've done it. It's been dramatically
different and effective for advertisers in the middle of the funnel.
That's what we see. So TV has always got credit
at the top of the funnel, and you know, the
(41:55):
digital companies have got credit at the bottom. We know
that doesn't work perfectly, but the middle of the funnel
is where premium video is really proving it's worth. So
we're continuing to test on that. And then what we're
adding on top of that is the creative learning. So
now we have we for the past eleven Super Bowls,
we have all of the ads that have run, so
(42:18):
we can actually take an ad and you could give
us a storyboard, we can run it through this search
optimization or not search. It's an optimization engine, and we
can tell you against these four KPIs of how it's
going to improve, and then we can provide feedback as
well to say less voiceover more brand will deliver a
(42:39):
higher result, and it's been unbelievable successful. So now we're
taking that which was more manual. We're going to deliver
that into one platform, total audience, and it will be
driven by AI as well, So all of that will
now be part of our everyday targeting process.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
What do you think as pretidingly you have a crystal ball,
it can be the sphere.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Like in my head. Yeah, I've heard a lot of cracks.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
Very shiny. I wasn't going to say anything. We should
have dusted it before.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Chris, I need HR. We're hr.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
I'm gonna lose my job. Like we're gonna be like you.
There's no flight for you home. You will not be
on Sunday Night Football. We'll see you later.
Speaker 6 (43:17):
But if you had a crystal ball and you could
tell us what we would be talking about a year
from now at CS here with variety, what would it
be the focus of our conversation.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
I think, uh, the power of live. I think we've
we kind of talked about it last year because we
knew the Paris Olympics were going to be special, and
I think Peacock was a great example of you know,
and I credit to you in the production team. We
got back to telling stories. And I think we when
(43:48):
the we had the games that were in Asia, we
were like, great, we can have all sports, all sports,
all sports. We lost our storytelling. So I think we're
going to get back into more of that storytelling of
what we have and the canvas we get to tell
the stories about over the next you know, fifteen months
are unparalleled. So I keep saying to the team, we're
going to have the greatest seven hundred and thirty days
(44:09):
that any media company has ever had. Before. Yeah, it's
a sad that you won't be part of it. It
was too easy.
Speaker 6 (44:19):
You guys still want me to have my job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (44:23):
What are you most excited for the next seven hundred
What do you say seven hundred and seven.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
And thirty thirty days? I'm excited for. I think we've
never had a Olympics, a Super Bowl, and an NBA
All Star Game fall within the Olympics, all on the
same network. I think that's going to be great. Yeah,
we got a lot of traveling going back and forth,
so we go San Francisco, Super Bowl, Milan, back to
(44:49):
LA for for NBL.
Speaker 5 (44:51):
Sir, your hair is going to be on fire.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Oh you lose?
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Like this right?
Speaker 6 (45:00):
Well, I appreciate the conversation, Mark, I appreciate having had
a job shameless plug watch Sunday Night Football.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't
forget to tune in next week for another episode of
Strictly Business.
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Littleton, co editor in chief of Variety. Today's guests
are Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja and a separate
conversation with Mark Marshall, NBC Universal ad Sales chief, and
(00:31):
NBC Sports host Maria Taylor. Both conversations were held on
January eighth as part of Variety's annual Entertainment Summit at
the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. At Variety, we
love starting the year off strong with a day long
event that is part of the biggest tech and media
conference of the year. We were proud to land the
(00:53):
first interview with Ahuja since he took the reins as
CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment from Tony Vincent Acquera, who
is no stranger to Strictly Business. But this year everything
at CEES was harder as our event happened as devastating
wildfires were raging in Los Angeles County. I was born
(01:13):
and raised in Pasadena. Fire danger is a fact of
life in California. I've never seen anything like this level
of destruction, pain, and anguish. Dear listeners, please hold good
thoughts for the tens of thousands of fire victims out there.
And as I record this on January fourteenth, it is
(01:35):
definitely not over. The fire situation, not surprisingly, is the
first thing that Ahuja and I discuss in a conversation
about leadership and the studio's future. Like the pandemic a
few years ago, the LA firestorm has put into sharp
relief the importance of strong leadership in times of uncertainty
(01:55):
and crisis. That conversation is coming right up after this,
and we're back with a conversation from cees with Sony
Pictures Entertainment CEO Rabbi A Hooja. Well, thank you Robbie
(02:16):
for being here, and I want you to know, folks,
this is Robbie's first interview as CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment,
So we are honored.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's true and thank you and actually my first week
in this role.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes, and mother nature has thrown you some curveballs here,
not to belabor it, but you know you are now
and this is actually we're talking about issue, you know,
leadership and you ascending to the CEO post again. You know,
a tough call. Uh. You were saying to me that
you made you made some decisions about the studio. Lut
(02:53):
can you talk about what you're doing?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I mean, obviously, this situation, which I'm sure everyone is
familiar with or at least as much as you can now,
is very fluid. So starting yesterday into today, our you know,
thoughts were obviously with our employees in this situation. You
think safety first, right, and you want everyone to be okay.
Some people are not right. Some of our employees have
lost homes, many are displaced. But then there are other
(03:16):
parts of the city that are okay. You know. We
find that in our case, the decision is do we
close our lot? Our lot has its own power, and
it actually is in some ways a refuge for some people.
So we've strongly encouraged people to work from home, but
are keeping a lot open as a refuge or if
people are close enough and feel it's okay to come
(03:38):
to work. I don't think we're going to get much
work done today, even if people work from home. It's
just too difficult of the situation. But you're right, Cynthia,
it's a it's a classic decision that goes right to
the top of you know, you have to pull meaning
from the fog and try to figure out what to do.
The good thing is, you know, ultimately a lot is
made of who makes the decision. But there are a
(04:00):
lot of very good people, and.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I have a lot of sound need yees to go
to you who've.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Been through these situations before. And then of course you
talk to colleagues too, right, other studios that are close by,
so you sort of in that sense crowd source a
lot of the information so that you can make a
good decision and hopefully you make the right one.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I have long suspected that the Hollywood studios have kind
of that red phone that Commissioner Gordon used to have
in Batman, where where you can all kind of if
you need to communicate with each other on an emergency basis.
But well, your studio a lot is about fifteen minutes
from my house, so I am definitely hoping that everything stay,
everything stays calm in that area.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Never so happy to be in the flatlands, yes, But
to that point, was there when you woke up yesterday
and today and saw this magnitude of it was?
Speaker 5 (04:49):
It was? It was there.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
A moment of like, wow, the buck stops with me
now I'm the CEO.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I suppose I was well prepared for it, so I
kind of assumed that was the case. So, No, it
wasn't surprising at all. And honestly, that happens a lot, right,
It's just the question the size of the decision, whether
it's a small thing or it's something like this that
actually is very serious that in most people's safety. Right,
it's not just money, which is very important, but it's
(05:17):
a very different kind of decision.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, and the metrics aby which those are made are different.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Well, let's talk about it sort of staying on that
kind of big picture level. You have been with Sony
since early ish twenty twenty one, Yes, and what would
you say? You know so, and you've been a key
part of real you know, Sony has really been through
a transformation the last seven years under your predecessor, Tony Vincequero,
who is a friend to Variety for many years. And
(05:48):
in talking I know that you're kind of coming in
with if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Yes too, that's correct, right, I mean we're doing very well. Right, So,
there's no need to go and be revolutionary, and it's
more look like every strategy needs to be refreshed, so
it's more of an evolutionary thing. I think we need,
right is just to continue to evolve and add to
our capabilities and lean into places we're growing. Rahul was
just here right Crunchy rolls a high growth, high growth business,
(06:16):
so it's just doing much more there. He talked about
some of the things that we're doing with Ghost of
Tsushima with Solo leveling, So within that segment, that's what
we're doing. But each of our segments has a unique
strategy that we lean into.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
And you've been been a key architelp to be a
key architect for that. So this is truly as many
people observed, a rare, truly seamless transition of manage.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, I think it's good. It's a credit to Tony
first of all, right in thinking about the importance of
succession and doing it in a very deliberate way. Right.
I spent time last year as COO, so that was
a gradual process. Our parent company at Sony, this was
an important thing to them and they were helpful in
the transition. So it can be done right. It doesn't
(07:03):
seem to be done done right in our town often enough,
but it can be done right. So look, I think
it's worked well so far.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And Sony obviously Sony for you know, within the industry,
it is now well known that Sony you know, very
deliberately sort of staked out a strategy of you know,
being a content provider, a content hub, but not going
sort of full bore into into streaming services, with one
big exception of crunchy Roll, which has been you know,
(07:33):
quite a success story and sort of riding that wonderful
wave of anime. Part of that is, as you are
a creator of content, you know, focusing on delivering content
for other platforms you really I know that that puts
a lot of pressure on the studio to think about
you know, the classic where's the puck going? Yes, the
nature of consumption is changing. Everybody in this room knows that,
(07:55):
the generational change in the way the audience wants to
consume that. Can you talk on the high level, how
do you wrap your arms around that? How do you
try to you know, sort of figure out where you
want to steer people where you want at your resource?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, Well, the first thing is just strategically. We Arms
Dealer has been used to talk about us a lot,
and that's true. For part.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I was trying that to be so violent.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It's true for part of our business. We're an independent studio.
It is Hollywood, and we sell content to people. But
the way that I think about it is each of
our segments, it's they're actually the same segments every media
company has. We have a film studio, we have TV studios,
we have direct to consumer and crunchy role, and we
have an experiences division now, so we have the same
things everyone else has. The difference is we do each
(08:38):
one uniquely and differently to what everyone else does. In film,
we are theaters first. The theatrical bar is the highest bar.
You know, in total we're content focused. The theatrical bar
is the highest bar. So we are theatrical first and TV.
We are the arms Dealer. We're an independent studio that
sells to others. That's the highest bar. It's not internal sales.
(09:01):
We've got to sell to other people, so we've got
to have the highest standards in direct to consumer. Our
view and this preceded me. You know, Tony did this,
and when I was on the outside, I thought it
was a great decision was not to do what everyone
else was doing a general entertainment streaming service, but instead
to focus on a particular area where we could be different.
(09:24):
And anime is a fantastic one and crunchy Rolls been
enormously successful. We've just started on experiences and there we've
done some licensing of ourp to others, but we also
bought Alamo Draft House, which is a dine in theater chain,
which is a very different kind of theatrical experience, and
from that we're going to build more IP based things.
(09:45):
So that's the way we think about it. We're content focused.
So then as part of what you just asked Cynthia
is so how do you think about the big trends
in the business right And you're right, some of the
big trends are new platforms, YouTube and TikTok. We have
the third biggest YouTube chainannel in the world with our
India business because YouTube is so big in India, so
(10:05):
big with kids, so it's really about identifying places where
those platforms are particularly big. We have a kid's YouTube
channel we've just launched very early days, but we'll do
more there with gen Z gen Z's could consumption habits
very different to older generations, right, very very different. Anime
(10:25):
was a perfect example of that. It's primarily a gen
z Jen Alpha product. There are some millennials who also
get Crunchy Rol, not too many xers, but but you
know that's how we lean into that. And then we're
also very hard at work at building on our franchises,
which you know we heard a little bit about in
the prior panel, but very hard at work on that.
(10:48):
Example there Karate Kid. We have a Karate Kid movie
coming out in May. So famously Karate Kid was a movie,
TV show and Cobra Kai now back to movie. So
you know we're pro act actively working on franchise as well.
So it's taking our mission, which is content focused, pursuing
a differentiated strategy, but leaning into those trends in each
(11:09):
of those businesses.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Interesting that Alamo draft House, when you you know, the
assumption is that you're a studio, you're buying a theatrical chain,
but you're really seeing this as an experience, is in
addition to enhancing your film distribution.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yes, that's right. We the two are managed separately, so
the Alamo Draft hoos does not report into the theatrical division,
so they work together as any theater chain would work
with a film studio. But that's not how we were
thinking about it, that we're just going to exhibit our
own films. That wouldn't work at all.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Robbie, your background prior to coming to Sony was largely
in television.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
What was you know in coming into Sony and coming
into the CEO job. You know a lot of big
picture thinking about about film. I know that you led
the Alamo Draft House acquisition, so that was, you know,
obviously a strategy. What for you was the learning curve
in film? The business were less familiar with.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
It's still happening. It's uh yeah, Obviously film is close
enough to television that you have some familiarity with it,
moving pictures, actors, stream right, exactly, exactly. Understanding the mechanics
of the business is actually not the hardest part. The
people becomes the harder part, right. I think that's even
true in television. If one is new to television, you
(12:22):
can understand the business relatively quickly after a couple of years,
for sure, but it's really knowing it at a much
deeper level like you do. Cynthia so in film it's
you know, I think that's the next part of the
journey there. But I do know the business, right, and
I think we've got fantastic colleagues. And Tom is the
best teacher in the world.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Tom Rothman who runs with an iron fist. No, I
mean Tom Rothman, one of the most successful and seasoned
executives out there and one of the biggest champions, one
of the biggest champions of the box office. But you,
I mean you all. You know in the Pandemic and
everything that there was a lot of experimentation, but you
have very much. Sony has very much committed to the
(13:03):
theatrical experience.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yes, we think there's a lot of value in it.
We also think it's a good business, right, It's it's
the best way to make a movie big. And when
a movie is big in theaters, it's almost always big
in streaming. But the opposite is not true. Some movies
that are good for passing time in streaming won't work theatrically.
So the theaters really provide the highest bar.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Absolutely, I'm going to just another small elephant in the
room that I'm going to raise here. I know that
there has been a lot of a lot of press
about a little matter involving a movie called It Ends
with Us that was distributed by Sony, and it has
been obviously, it's been the talk of Hollywood, and I
just want to I just want to acknowledge that Sony
was the distributor. It has it has exploded into litigation,
(13:48):
and I understand that it's that this is a you know,
a very touchy topic. I also wanted to to note
that in that case, Sony was the distributor, not the
producer of the problem. And so not not asking you
about the specifics of It Ends with Us, but how
how are you, how do you how are you thinking
about navigating those kinds of relationships. There are some, you know,
(14:11):
some cases where Sony is the bank role and the
develop the very germ of the development idea starts with you.
And in some cases projects come to you correct in partnerships,
and you know, sometimes those can be fraught.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So it's true we play a different role in each situation,
more so in film than TV. Right, I think that's
true in the case of It Ends with Us. I mean,
for one, I wasn't personally involved with it right out.
My focus was on the TV side, and I don't
know any of the people on a personal level. But
also correct Cyndia, the litigation and so on. I want
to be respectful of the parties and not wouldn't be appropriate,
(14:45):
I think to say anything on that. But yeah, the
situations are different depending on what role we play. That's true.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Do you and it's an interesting question obviously film that
you know there's often higher costs and other other factors
global distribution, But do you and to I mean, do
you know overseeing the TV business, do you anticipate a
world where there might be more partnerships coming in in television?
There might, certainly there are co productions, but even like
investment in the same way that film sometimes a film slate,
(15:14):
it may even a major studio film slate will bring
in some outside investment. Do you see that happening?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I don't necessarily see slate financing. I mean I think
of anything, it'll go farther away from that. The last
panel talked about how p and ls for shows. I
think Barry was saying it the p and ls for
shows don't exist anymore, so that makes slate financing very difficult.
Apart from if you're doing it with us, So I
don't think we'll see that, but there may be a
(15:39):
change in how it works, right. I think the traditional
cost plus pricing is kind of where streamers have gone.
I'm not sure that's always the best idea. With very
standard terms, standard premiums, with arrange standard licensed terms of
they own the show for the life of the show,
plus an additional ten years.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
It makes it kind of hard for us studio to
make a little money on it.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, right, you become really a producer, right, So it
becomes very difficult. And we have said to streamers will
make it for less of a premium, but we want
it back faster, so we'll believe in the success of
the show. I think the streamers, while there's an intellectual
openness to that, they haven't quite gotten there. I get
asked that question all the time. Have you guys made
(16:22):
progress with that?
Speaker 3 (16:23):
And the internet is not really It seems that there's
been sort of a dawning realization of the importance of
having that those incentives aligned, and sometimes in a cost
plus model where the streamer plays a pays the production
costs plus a ten or twenty percent you know, profit
bonus for a studio that still doesn't that that's not
(16:43):
swinging for the fences like you know, it's when Sony
distributed Seinfeld and you know, watch the Stack of Cash.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Correct, I love correct. Yeah. So I do think some
of those things will evolve. I think we've just been
through this huge gold rush, right the peak TV thing,
and a lot of the business practices got skewed, and
I think some of them will be completely new and different,
but some will return to normal because they just don't
make sense right. So I think we'll see that over
(17:11):
the course of the next say five years.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
You have taken the helm at a very interesting time.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
It's always an interesting our business.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Let's talk a little bit. One thing that has been
very noticeable and you know, lots of on screen expressions
of it. But Sony has been very focused on kind
of bringing the parts of Sony together more than they
had in the past, especially Sony Music, especially Sony PlayStation content.
That that initiative helped produce a little show called The
(17:38):
Last of Us, which is coming back in April. As
we learned from the Sony presentation on Monday, and that
was that was news that was devoured by Variety readers
within seconds of it going up on our site. That
is always such a measure of just how quickly people
gravitate to news. So yeah, rest assured. Season two, there's
(17:59):
a lot of antis the patient. But can you talk
about how that has you know that not just around
the Last of Us, but other other projects and I
know there's a number of things in the hopper, How
that has you know, fostered collaboration, how that has created
opportunity by adding you know, one plus one plus one
to equal five or six.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, it's interesting because it's maybe people won't believe this,
it's really organic. It truly is, right. I mean, there's
some something of a push in the sense that we
put people together so they meet each other.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Buy them lunch.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yes, we feed people and put them in a room.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
So there is that.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And then in the case bless you, and then in
the case of in the case of PlayStation there is
a group called PlayStation Productions that focuses specifically on that.
So there are people who follow up continually. So there
is a little bit of a push, but it is organic.
Right at the parent company level. There isn't a you
(18:56):
must work with each.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Other, nobody's picking okay this title this time.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
No no, and what's good. The only way it really
does work I think, I think very strongly is the
creator has to be deeply involved. So you know, when
we were talking about Ghost of Sushima and working across
the company, it's you really have to have in that
case Aniplex be the guiding light on the creation, or
(19:20):
in the case of Last of Us Naughty Dog and
Neil being deeply involved, because you have to have somebody
who really lives it and feels it. Otherwise, if each
group is kind of doing their own thing, it can
be a bit of a mess. So you know, we
work that way, but we don't have like a committee
that you know, forces people to do things and says
(19:41):
there must be four collaborations this year. We don't do
any of that. So it's it. You know, this is good.
It's collaboration without bureaucracy. So everybody feels good about it
and leans into it.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
And you know, the proof is definitely on screen.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
Yeah, do you uh?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Has there been sort of just general benefits and people
kind of even just getting to know their colleagues and
people at Sony Pictures knowing a little bit more how
things are the priorities of Sony Music. I would imagine
in any organization. I've always found communication gaps are the
biggest are usually the source of all problems. Is that
communication gap? So if you're fostering a lot more communication.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, absolutely so people also understand your business. What matters
to you? What do you care about? You know? For
our music colleagues, for our PlayStation colleagues, it's if we
do a TV show and it features you know, your talent,
or it features your IP, how does it help you?
You know, we don't really know. So should we go
fight for a bigger premium on a smaller platform, for
(20:41):
example with PlayStation, or do we go to the biggest
platform and not care so much about that? To be honest,
we're still learning a lot of that, right, We're still
relatively early in a lot of this. But by having
that open dialogue we figure that out and then you know,
competitively we're ahead of people. It becomes our unfair advantage
that for us is you know, is a real positive
(21:03):
from a business point of view.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
I mean, the amount you know, Hollywood has I think,
especially in the last couple of years with the Last of
Us and other things, become aware of just the amount
of time that people spend playing video games. There is
such a love and connection to that content that can
be tapped.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Isn't it. It's funny, Cynthia, because five years ago people
would have said there's no way, right, is.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Every video game adapt takee Yeah, most of them have
been really poor and they didn't satisfy the TV or
film viewer, and they and they only upset usually upset
the gaming So the worst.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Of all worlds exactly exactly, but now it works. It's
the thing in our business is so execution dependent. Right
when we talk about strategy and we throw around return
on investment and economies of scale, it's just it's really
how you execute the product, and that's primarily driven by
the people who are working on it, right, It's the
creators who work on it, and it's really having a
(21:57):
clear vision around it and what is this is going to
add for the viewer. It's a kind of delight viewers.
So it's making sure that we allow people the freedom
to do that.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Would you say, is there an emphasis on trying to
kind of thread things together? So the Last of Us
Season two is coming out, we have new gaming content
that will complement that or is that more just you
let those things happen organically.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
That's aspirational, so that would we always say things like, oh,
that would be great, we should really do that. But
you know, sometimes things are ready when they're ready, So
it's hard to do that really really well, to do
that perfectly. Disney. I spent a couple of years at Disney.
They do that really well. It's amazing. Well they do that.
We're not that good, but we're you know, we're getting better.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
You spent those couple of years at Disney, were a
really interesting time for Disney.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Right after keep doing interesting things.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Right right after the Box acquisition. That must have just
been a masterclass in corporate integration and how you brought
two formidable organizations together and figured out that must have
been that was boot camp for.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That Hulu, right, And the company went through a lot
and changed its strategy at the same time. So that's
taking on a lot. And then the pandemic happened too,
and the CEO transition, so it was like the most
complicated thing you could ever do.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And a six month strike, you know, just yeah, and
then that later right, let me ask you one of
my favorite one of my new favorite shows is Pop
Culture Jeopardy. Oh good, that's fine, but that is I
know that's been one of the things that you were
tasked with was really looking at existing franchises that the
institutions that are will fortunately Jeopardy. And that's also you know,
(23:36):
that's also fraught because there's a lot of there's a
lot of people that you know that a mediocre version
of pop culture Jeopardy would not reflect well on the brand.
How did you go about sort of figuring out Okay,
here's the iteration that makes sense for Jeopardy. Yeah, that's
the Jeopardy expansion.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, that's right. I mean Jeopardy had had spin offs
in the past, right, So there was a sports Jeopardy.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Rock and Roll Jeopardy. A friend of mine was on.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, and they weren't very good. So you know, one
requirement I've had in Suzanne Pretty and the game show
group do this is it has to be really good,
and we're not doing it. Honestly, we could sell eight
spin offs of Jeopardy tomorrow, tomorrow, today, today, Yeah, I
could do it here if there are any buyers here,
but we're not doing that because our team can't execute,
(24:19):
and we have to make sure because it's too much
and we have to make sure that we that it's additive,
that it brings something new pop culture. Jeopardy has much
younger viewers. Obviously the category there is pop culture. We
do it in a team format because not everyone knows
everything if people are experts at music movies, so we
put together teams so we're doing something different, different host,
(24:42):
same stage, but adapted, right, So we really feel we
can do it well. But it's also the same team.
It's Michael Davies producing, so it's the same team. So
you know, our view has been We've got to do
these things and do them extremely well. Streaming for us
with Jeopardy and Will is a big priority, right they
those shows are in the main shows are in syndication,
(25:02):
and syndication is declining right in terms of the number
of people it gets to. Interestingly, those shows are not declining.
Will's ratings are up this year.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I could pull I could pull a ratings report from
fifteen years ago and they would be, you know, in
a zone of or maybe ten years ago, they would
be in a zone of they are amazing stallwarts of times.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, they're amazing. I mean the shows on a nightly
basis rate the same as the NBA Finals, right, So
it's nine ten million people viewing them every night. So
we but we're missing a lot of the audience. So
we are, you know, out talking to people about potential
streaming solutions for those shows. So I think that'll help
reintroduce them to younger people who actually encounter Wheel and
(25:46):
Jeopardy through TikTok where we're very active, or YouTube. So
you know, we're very optimistic that those franchises have a
very long life. I mean, they're fifty and sixty years old,
and we don't view them as they're past their prime.
We think these things are perennials somewhere.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
MERV Griffin, who created Beehows, is smiling, Yes, smiling. We
are out of time. But I can't put so many
more questions. But I got to ask you the thirty
forty five second version, how does the boy from Ohio
come to be a CEO in Hollywood?
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That's a good question.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
For me, the focus has always been I didn't start
out saying that's what I'm going to do the way
that I've always guided my experience is just trying to
add new skills, and I have an enormous amount of
curiosity I suppose about everything that we do about the
media business and about leading people and about trying to
create a winning business that will last over time. So
(26:41):
it's really just building skills along the way there. I mean,
I suppose before the Fox Disney deal, I had viewed
it as I was going to stay at Fox forever.
But then things happen too, and you just try to
keep growing and you try to keep learning, and then
you find the right thing, like the place that I'm
in now, and you, you know, you do your best.
(27:01):
I suppose, I don't know, I'll come up with a
better answer for you, Cynthia, but that's the best.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
You know what, Honesty is always the best policy. Thank you, Robbie.
We so appreciate your time. Thanks for giving us your
first interview.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with a conversation
between NBC Universal ad sales chief Mark Marshall and NBC
Sports host Maria Taylor. And we're back with a rollicking
session with NBC Universal ad sales chief Mark Marshall and
(27:35):
Football Night in America host Maria Taylor. Marshall is also
no stranger to strictly business. We had a terrific interview
in twenty twenty three, just before the May upfronts. Marshall
is an advertising guy through and through. He's smart, innovative,
and he has a really good sense of humor about himself.
As you'll hear, Taylor teases him more than once about
(27:59):
his chrome dome, and he takes it in the playful
spirit in which she meant it. Their camaraderie is palpable
through this audio. Taylor really impressed me with her sharp
questions about NBC Universal's business future, and folks, let me
tell you, she is even taller than she looks. On
football Night in America, we were grateful that this buddy
(28:21):
act brought our conference some laughs when we really needed them.
Speaker 6 (28:26):
NBC is turning one hundred and the one hundredth anniversary
is something that's going to be celebrated, just like we've
been celebrating SNL's fiftieth and so content is coming down
the pipe that we don't know anything about.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
But you do.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
So can you give us a glimpse into what's to
come as we continue to celebrate the growth of this company.
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Yeah, I think it's been fun. We've known we've had
this great lineup that's going to happen in twenty five,
twenty six, and then last year we added to that
with partnering with the NBA and bringing the NBA back
to NBC. So we'll start in the fall where we'll
have Ryder Cup, We'll have Bravo Khan, any Bravo fans here, Yeah,
Bravo con absolutely here in Vegas, and then the NBA
(29:04):
will start, and then in February we have three days
and then Super Bowl, three days of the Olympics in Milan.
Super Bowl, another week of Olympics, NBA All Star weekend,
and then another week of Milan. We should go to Milan, Yes,
let's do that. That'd be good. And then we have
the World Cup in Telemundo next summer. So I had
(29:27):
a lot more hair before we got into this stretch
that we're going to roll through.
Speaker 5 (29:31):
He did not have more hair before this stretch.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Just because you look the other way doesn't mean I
can't hear you.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
He did not have more hair. What would you say.
Speaker 6 (29:40):
I mean you kind of touched a little bit on
the NBA rights, But describing just a little bit more
what that means to NBC Universal, especially considering the history
of the NBA and the network.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Yeah, it is. It's fun like it's a bit of
a dream for me for a couple of reasons. One,
I was born in Chicago. I was lucky enough to
be through the Jordan years where we would go out
to a bar to watch them play the Charlotte Bobcats,
and every bar was filled in all of Chicago for
a regular season game. It was unbelievable. And then the NBA.
(30:15):
Then I went to go work for Turner, so I
was there for fifteen years at Turner Sports, and then
when we had the opportunity to get back in the
business with the NBA, I was really excited. And we
also when you think about what it's going to do
for our company is you'll have a game on every
night on Monday Night on Peacock, Tuesday Night, you will
(30:35):
have games on NBC, and then after Sunday Night Football,
you'll transition to Sunday Night Basketball. We did a branding
study that'll be called Sunday Night Basketball, and so it'll
change a complexion of what NBC looks like. It's amazing.
If all of you know, there's a bunch of talk
this week about Live and if you look across NBC
(30:57):
from Morning tonight. On average, seventy percent of all the
hours are live across NBC, so this will even make
that even stronger as we look forward.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
And a part of that deal is also the rights
to the WNBA. And we've seen just like the growth
of women's sports in general. I'm not tall for no reason.
I promise I played a sport back in the day.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
At one you played two.
Speaker 6 (31:17):
Volleyball and basketball. But at Georgia, at Georgia, go dogs.
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Who lost it? Notre Dame.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
Yeah, I don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
I didn't know if you saw it. That's wanted to
make sure you still don't have hair. Now we're back.
Now we're back, gloves are off. But so a why
you guys thought this was going to be an informative panel.
You were wrong. You are misled the growth of women's sports.
Speaker 6 (31:42):
It's been fun to watch, But how has that changed advertising?
And how do you, guys in what your role is
help to fuel advertisers and the investment that is being
made in women's sports in general.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Well, it's funny. I mean, this whole idea of women's
sports and having a moment Like for us at NBC,
we're like, thank odd Finally, you know, the Olympics. This
was prior to this was the last Olympics. Ninety nine
percent of all the primetime hours that happened in women's
sports were in the Olympics. That means only one percent
(32:14):
was happening outside of those seventeen days. So we're extremely
proud that we played even a small role of highlighting
these great women. But it takes networks, it takes advertisers
to make it happen. And from a network standpoint, in
the Women's World Cup soccer or the FIFA the last one,
we actually went to the marketplace and said women should
(32:35):
get the same price as men from a cost CPM standpoint,
and we got about ninety percent of the way there.
We were thirty six percent of the way there the
previous World Cup. So we closed the gap tremendously for that.
But you also need advertisers to stand up. And I
give a ton of credit you know, to a state farm,
a Lily, a Delta. These advertisers have stepped up in
(32:57):
a big way to really support and highlight it. And
I think all of us that you know grew up
will bring it back to basketball, like Michael Jordan and
Nike Michael Jordan and Gatorade. Those ads were running everywhere,
just like the State Farm ads that are running everywhere
with Kitlyn Clark. It's not just the person that's tuning
in to the games themselves, but it's a person learning
(33:19):
about women's sports and understanding who Caitlyn Clark is because
of their ads that they're seeing.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
I was going to say, is it chicken or the egg?
The investment comes because the fandom has grown, or it
begins with a State Farm or someone saying we're going
to invest and that grows the game.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
I think it's more like we've had women's sports. You know,
we have the LPGA, we have a ton of women's
sports on but it for some reason, there was a
switch that happened with Caitlyn Clark, and it started, you
know with the women's national soccer team as well. But
there's now a consistency that feels like it's not a moment,
(33:53):
feels like it's more of a movement.
Speaker 6 (33:54):
Yeah, no, for sure, let's talk about kind of NBC
in prime time. I just like saying it like that
because I envisioned Deon Sanders prime tem and obviously, I mean,
you enter in, you're one hundred year.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
But it's not by one hundred year.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
You're getting older. I'm getting younger. NBC is growing and mature.
Hundred years, yes of anac, not mark mark, not how
long you've been there.
Speaker 5 (34:17):
Yeah, sometimes looks like it, but.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I can hear you again.
Speaker 5 (34:21):
We might should take the show on the road, or
we're going to wrestle.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
I don't know which one. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (34:27):
Give me the evolution of what primetime looks like. How
you guys are building content to make sure that the
viewers enjoy the advertisers respond well to it.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Walk me through some of those decisions.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Well, what are you doing for Valentine's Day? I'm not
asking you out, what are you doing?
Speaker 5 (34:43):
I'll probably be with my Oh that's my wedding anniversary.
I almost forgot.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, well we did forget. It's also SNL's fiftieth anniversary
show will be that night. So the coolest thing I
think SNL, which is in its fiftieth year, is probably
the greatest example of how people consume content today. And
if you look at it, in it's forty seventh year,
it became the number one entertainment show in television. Wow,
(35:08):
which is a crazy to think on linear television. It's
the number one show on social and streaming every day
you wake up and it's the first thing you see
when you stream as well. And so we use SNL,
which is crazy that probably our oldest show, next to
Meet the Press, is kind of our beacon of how
we think about the future. How do you create content
in clips that you can push out in different ways.
(35:30):
So when we're looking at the NBA, NBA which is
this great young, multicultural game, these kids aren't all sitting
down to watch a two and a half hour game.
They want to figure out the highlights. They want to
see what happened the night before. So we have to
program differently. So I think you've seen us lean in
much more to sports, and you're a big part of that.
(35:52):
By the way, if the number one show on TV
is SUN and at football, yes, what's number two?
Speaker 5 (35:58):
It's not Football Night in America, it is your show.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Your show is the number two show in prime time.
You should use that with your agent. Yeah, you use it.
Speaker 5 (36:08):
You don't want that problem?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
No, that's yeah, that's a good call. Let's erase that stuff. No,
but it so I think the NBA we're going to
take that same approach that we did with SNL as well.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
I like that you brought up streaming and how that
kind of changes things. And just from your role and
your vantage point, what has the streaming industry done to
content and just advertisers, the viewership and how you have
to think about the way that you do your job.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
Well, I mean it's it's a good question. I mean,
if the average consumer today spends thirteen hours with media,
so in order to look at that number, that's really
scary as a marketer, right, So number one, you have
to find them. You need something that delivers scale thankfully,
and vic Universal does that, reaching two hundred and seventy
(36:57):
three million people every month. But then you have to engage.
Once you find, you have to engage them. And so
what we're trying to figure out in all of these
things is what is the right environment. So if you
go back to two thoy and eighteen, we launched something
that was called Prime Pod. So every first pod across
NBCU was one minute long. That used to be a
(37:18):
three and a half minute pod. We took it down
to one minute because we were testing what was the
right length. If you go on to Peacock right now,
it's one minute breaks and there's five minutes an hour.
So we were starting to learn of what we were
doing in streaming and bring into linear and vice versa
on that because for our first ninety seven years, the
(37:39):
only feedback loop we had was really Nielsen ratings, which
we know aren't exact science. And so now we can
look at it and we're getting the next day. I
can see minute by minute by show what commercials perform better.
Should we have a pharma commercial in the first pod?
Or is a pharma commercial perform better in the third pod?
So all of those things are now part of the
(38:00):
ad experience that we're thinking about.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
Random side question.
Speaker 6 (38:03):
You know the AI content that was built around the Olympics,
so you could have al Michaels basically to you, I
know about.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Whatever you're interested the most.
Speaker 6 (38:11):
You know, So al Michaels has been doing this live
somehow an AI system is creating your highlights for you.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Just how did that work? It was so cool?
Speaker 6 (38:20):
But now I'm kind of curious how that worked and
how the market responds to something like that.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
It was it was cool. We were in a meeting
with Brian Roberts, our CEO, and the tech team was
showing them this that they had created. So the concept
was al Michaels delivers your custom highlights every morning. And
al Michaels has been on NBC for on and off
for thirty plus years. He didn't need to record one thing.
(38:44):
But we went to him and said, how would you
like to be the first person that has ever done this?
And he was like, I'm all in. I love this.
He's a CNBC junkie, so he's like AI, He's like,
I want to be involved in this. So when we
saw it and they were showing it to Brian and
I was like wait a minute. I was like, this
is who built this? Like how does this work? And
(39:05):
they were like, oh, it's there was a company out
of Israel and then it's built on a Microsoft instance
and I was like, well, I'm going to take it
to Microsoft and Microsoft was all in on it. So
that's how that one came to life. And al Michaels
loved it and every morning he would tell me how
we did in basketball team USA won again. But it
(39:25):
is crazy that they took thirty years of his voice
and you could not tell the difference when you would
watch the highlight.
Speaker 5 (39:31):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 6 (39:33):
Another big innovation that's coming in announcement that was made
as Universal Ads walk us through what it is essentially
and why right now is the time to launch something
of this nature.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
So if you think about all of us traditional media companies,
we probably have in the area of let's say, ten
thousand advertisers. Meta has ten million advertisers, partly because they
have a self service tool that allows any advertiser to
be able to go on and use a credit card
and buy an ad. For us, we didn't have that
(40:07):
easy button for premium video. So we announced today with
Comcasts and Freewheel, with multiple other publishers that we will
have that easy button that's going to be created. So
you know, what town.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Are you in Atlanta?
Speaker 4 (40:20):
Or what's your favorite pizza place?
Speaker 5 (40:23):
Jets Jets.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Okay, so now Jets Pizza can go on and buy
a Sunday night football spot in their market.
Speaker 5 (40:31):
That's cool.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, So that's what it is, huh.
Speaker 5 (40:34):
And it's not just NBC Universal.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Nope, it's so Paramount, Warner Brothers, Direct TV, Roku, Paramount
am I saying the same one Paramount as well. So
we're excited and it's a collective and it's looking at
the industry as really a brand and how do we
deliver premium video to these advertisers that didn't have access
(40:59):
prior to programmatic.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
Okay, we've talked about the strengths, the innovation, some of
the new technologies. Give me the challenges that are kind
of facing advertisers as we continue to brave into this
new frontier.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
Well, I think it's just it's hard to find your
customer right now. I think a lot of times people
are trying to make a decision between do I do linear,
do I do digital streaming, do I go into social?
All of them have their pluses and minuses. So last
year at CES, we rolled out what we called one
platform Total Audience, and what that is is linear and
(41:33):
digital in the same optimizer with the set top box
data from comcasts in the middle. Now you can buy
against an advanced audience. So we've actually come out with
four different categories that we've done it. It's been dramatically
different and effective for advertisers in the middle of the funnel.
That's what we see. So TV has always got credit
at the top of the funnel, and you know, the
(41:55):
digital companies have got credit at the bottom. We know
that doesn't work perfectly, but the middle of the funnel
is where premium video is really proving it's worth. So
we're continuing to test on that. And then what we're
adding on top of that is the creative learning. So
now we have we for the past eleven Super Bowls,
we have all of the ads that have run, so
(42:18):
we can actually take an ad and you could give
us a storyboard, we can run it through this search
optimization or not search. It's an optimization engine, and we
can tell you against these four KPIs of how it's
going to improve, and then we can provide feedback as
well to say less voiceover more brand will deliver a
(42:39):
higher result, and it's been unbelievable successful. So now we're
taking that which was more manual. We're going to deliver
that into one platform, total audience, and it will be
driven by AI as well, So all of that will
now be part of our everyday targeting process.
Speaker 5 (42:55):
What do you think as pretidingly you have a crystal ball,
it can be the sphere.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Like in my head. Yeah, I've heard a lot of cracks.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
Very shiny. I wasn't going to say anything. We should
have dusted it before.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Chris, I need HR. We're hr.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
I'm gonna lose my job. Like we're gonna be like you.
There's no flight for you home. You will not be
on Sunday Night Football. We'll see you later.
Speaker 6 (43:17):
But if you had a crystal ball and you could
tell us what we would be talking about a year
from now at CS here with variety, what would it
be the focus of our conversation.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
I think, uh, the power of live. I think we've
we kind of talked about it last year because we
knew the Paris Olympics were going to be special, and
I think Peacock was a great example of you know,
and I credit to you in the production team. We
got back to telling stories. And I think we when
(43:48):
the we had the games that were in Asia, we
were like, great, we can have all sports, all sports,
all sports. We lost our storytelling. So I think we're
going to get back into more of that storytelling of
what we have and the canvas we get to tell
the stories about over the next you know, fifteen months
are unparalleled. So I keep saying to the team, we're
going to have the greatest seven hundred and thirty days
(44:09):
that any media company has ever had. Before. Yeah, it's
a sad that you won't be part of it. It
was too easy.
Speaker 6 (44:19):
You guys still want me to have my job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (44:23):
What are you most excited for the next seven hundred
What do you say seven hundred and seven.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
And thirty thirty days? I'm excited for. I think we've
never had a Olympics, a Super Bowl, and an NBA
All Star Game fall within the Olympics, all on the
same network. I think that's going to be great. Yeah,
we got a lot of traveling going back and forth,
so we go San Francisco, Super Bowl, Milan, back to
(44:49):
LA for for NBL.
Speaker 5 (44:51):
Sir, your hair is going to be on fire.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Oh you lose?
Speaker 3 (44:56):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Like this right?
Speaker 6 (45:00):
Well, I appreciate the conversation, Mark, I appreciate having had
a job shameless plug watch Sunday Night Football.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review
at Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music. We love to hear
from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign
up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't
forget to tune in next week for another episode of
Strictly Business.
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