Gary Newman, Chairman, 20th Century Fox Television

Gary Newman has been chairman of 20th Century Fox Television since 2007 and has overseen the television studio with Dana Walden since 1999—with great success. Some of the studio's recent hits include Modern Family, Homeland, Glee, and Sons of Anarchy. Twentieth Century Fox Television also is responsible for 24, Family Guy, and The Simpsons, the latter now the longest-running prime-time show in television history.

Newman began his career as an attorney and worked in the legal and business affairs departments of Columbia Pictures Television and NBC before joining 20th Century Fox Television. After rising to become the studio's executive vice president and top-ranking business officer, he was tapped to run the studio with Walden. Newman's experience and instincts have helped build Fox into a leading supplier of programming to all six broadcast networks. He has also pioneered mobile content strategies, and with Walden he established the practice of releasing series on DVD immediately following the broadcast season—now industry standard practice.

We interviewed Newman in his Century City office where he talked to us about developing new formulas for successful distribution strategies, the different needs of studios and networks in the current environment, and television's "new golden era." Flowing between historical perspective, high-level business strategy, and pointed illustrative details, Newman explored the complexity of the contemporary marketplace with a great deal of nuance and presented a clear—and an optimistic—vision of the digital landscape that content providers are currently navigating in the TV industry.

MEDIA INDUSTRIES PROJECT: You and Dana Walden are chairmen of 20th Century Fox Television. How does that partnership work?

GARY NEWMAN: I tend to focus more of my time on the business and distribution side of what we do, but our philosophy is that either one of us should be able to sit in any meeting and be fully up to speed and lead it, so I end up getting quite involved on the creative side, as Dana does on the business side. As the heads of a content creation company, our primary focus is creating new series, whether it is selecting the writers, shaping pitches, or overseeing projects from the script stage to the editing room and beyond. We work through all the difficulties of production, from hiring talent to negotiating license fees with networks to getting shows launched and pushing the networks to market, schedule, and support our shows successfully.

Once we get a show launched and secured, I immediately turn my focus to the distribution of it, which a decade ago was a relatively simple thing. There wasn't a lot to do in the first four years of a series' life until the network exclusivity period ended and you were free to sell the show into syndication. Ten years ago we were just beginning home entertainment releases of shows, but even that was always after four or five years of production, and sometimes just the pilot or special episodes—no one thought to release entire seasons back then. Now, things have changed so much. We map out and execute our distribution strategies right from season 1 with streaming, electronic sell-through (EST), and releases on DVD. The international distribution of shows, which has always been the province of the studio, has become a more important part of our financial equation. Then there are ancillary businesses that are only applicable to certain shows, whether it is the music of a show like Glee or the licensed merchandise for a show like The Simpsons or Family Guy. Those are businesses that begin right away, and it is up to the studio to manage them.

What do you focus on when you're building brands: the content, the studio, the Fox networks, News Corporation?

I think about branding on a show-by-show basis. I visualize each show as a wheel, with the center of the wheel being content and then the spokes go out to the different platforms. So I think of the brand as the content itself.

Part of what has changed over the last decade is that it is no longer sufficient to focus solely on the performance of a series on the broadcast networks. Performance on other platforms has become more important, and those platforms tend to be the studio's businesses, not the network's. We have gone from being a company that serviced networks to being a company that services consumers. That being said, we can't service the consumer if we can't initially launch a show on the network, so the network is still a big part of the equation. But it is no longer the only part.

The network business is quite challenged right now. I believe retransmission consent fees are going to ease some problems. As the networks get their dual streams of revenue, which is I think an absolute inevitability, then some of the pressure we have been feeling at the studio from the networks will ease. Network executives think our ancillary distribution is harming their ability to go into the advertising community and say, "The only place your clients can associate with Glee, Modern Family, or Family Guy is on our air." That model gave them an enormous premium. I think some of the pressure on us will be relieved because the networks will have revenue coming in through retransmission consent fees.

I can't in my mind picture a business model for studios that doesn't include the network. The network is critical. Our business doesn't work without networks. While the show will always be the brand and the center of the wheel, the network is one of the spokes without which the wheel falls...