Janet Stilson

Our Fish Eat Fish World

Can you believe that some sharks have around 300 teeth? Or that every so often a shark gets pregnant without a male around? Those are just two of many facts I learned while writing about Discovery Channel's Shark Week, which has been riveting audiences for 24 years now, and gets underway July 31.

The big mama shown here is named Curly, the "star" of a new Shark Week special called Jaws Comes Home (Photo Credit: Discovery Channel). I really like that show.

My article will appear in a magazine called Delight!, which just published the first story I wrote for them, about Travel Channel's Man V.Food Nation series. You can access it here:  Download Delight - Man V FN - June 11

The primal world of sharks puts me in mind of the media industry, where companies are constantly shape shifting in hopes of climbing up to a higher rung on the food chain. I've been listening to many media deep thinkers in the last few months talk about how the business is evolving.

The Importance of Being Funny

Last week I had a chance to hear an old acquaintance speak, Gerry Laybourne, perhaps best known for her longtime reign at Nickelodeon, and her hand in creating Oxygen Media. Gerry was speaking at a Producers Guild of America function, and made a number of remarks that are still resonating in my mind.

In speaking about the many obstacles faced by people creating content these days, she said, "You can't just be creative about the content anymore. You have to be creative about the business." And when asked about how women can be successful when working within a male-dominated company, she commented that "humor helps, and confidence helps -- and just liking people."

And it came to me, when she said that, how I've always been most attracted to leaders with a sense of humor, among those people with whom I've worked. They've helped make the whole process fun.

While I've never worked with him, I get the sense that humor is one of the reasons why Josh Sapan has had such a long tenure at the top of Rainbow Media, home of AMC, the Sundance Channel, IFC and WE tv. I interviewed Josh (pictured here) recently for a cover story in The Financial Manager, and then saw him in Nashville at the Media Financial Management Association's annual conference -- where he gave a speech laced with his trademark self-deprecating humor.

While my interview with him was far from hysterical, it did give me some insights into some of Rainbow's more go-it-alone strategies -- such as debuting feature films in video on demand on the same day they're released theatrically. As Rainbow's IFC Entertainment now distributes the largest collection of indie films in the world, that is of some consequence. 

You can read the entire article here: Download TFM - Sapan - May-June 2010

The Erotic Grandma

Shirley Rohn-Saito isn't your typical grandmother. She runs a erotic channel for women called Inpulse TV,  and she's right proud of it, too.

"When I grew up in the '50s and '60s, we lived in the sexual dark ages," says Rohn-Saito, whose pictured (left) with InPulse's other founder, Kimberly Wilson.

Now, Rohn-Saito wants Inpulse send a vibration of sexual energy through the female universe.

It's fascinating to discover why the leaders of adult channels decided to veer off the mainstream track into the bad-boy and bad-girl fringe. I set out to find out what made them do it in a series of profiles that recently published in CableWorld magazine. Along the way, I also wrote about the dilemma adult programmers face, in trying to market their services in tandem with the cable and satellite distributors.

Adult programming makes a huge amount of money. I'm talking over $1 billion in on-demand revenue this year alone. But the revenue split for adult content suppliers is razor thin -- and some, like Inpulse, have yet to build a name for themselves.  So finding better ways of getting the word out to the public without raising conservative hackles could give them one heck of a voluptuous growth curve

To learn more, you can check out my articles here:

Download cw_adult_081307.pdf

The Last of the Indies

Dig deep down into an early strata of clothing in the drawers of a reporter who has covered the television industry, and you are likely to come up with semi-petrified T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of defunct TV channels. That is, unless the journalist is a ruthless throw-that-stuff-out kind of person like me.

Remember The Daytime Network? Video Jukebox? The Entertainment Channel? The fight for survival has led hundreds of fledgling cable channels around the world to merge and rebrand. Others passed on. Almost to a channel, those independent, entrepreneurial ventures that managed to stay on the slippery ice, away from the dangerous waters of death, did so because they obtained the backing of a mammath media companies. In that way, they were able to attain the kind of leverage needed to gain distribution on cable systems and other multichannel platforms.

Getting that backing is now the goal of Henry Schleiff, CEO of Crown Media Holdings and its Hallmark Channel. Schleiff is nothing if not persistent, and a maestro of humor and salesmanship. So it was most instructive to hear his pitch when we sat down for an interview recently. Not only is he looking for investors, but he's also trying to strike much better deals with cable operoators. Schleiff has an interesting set of unbalanced dynamics at play. Hallmark has garnered impressive ratings from original movies and other well-chosen fare, such as March of the Penguins, pictured above. Other channels with similar ratings have achieved much better fees from operators than Hallmark, largely because they have the leverage. Hallmark's making mere pennies for every subscriber in its universe.

I don't think Hallmark's going to remembered as a defunct channel that springs to mind when some loser reporter cleans out his drawers. But it is at a stage one could call critical. How's Schleiff sweet talking the channel out of its state? You can get a sense of it from my story, which appeared in the May/June issue of The Financial Manager, right here:

Download tfm_schleiff_0607.pdf

March of the Penguins image copyright: 2005 Bonne Pioche Productions/Alliance de Production Cinematographique

Harlem on My Mind

About a year and a half ago, this white girl moved to one of the most treasured African American communities in the United States -- central Harlem. I did so with trepidation, holding the guiding hand of my beloved Creole companion, David.

What have I learned? Well, when I sally forth into the hood by myself, I'm not treated as an invader and symbol of gentrification as I had feared. Instead, I am met with gentle smiles and a few shout outs when I wear my blue suede cowboy boots. I may look like Olive Oyle next to the Harlem Globetrotter types at the YMCA, but nobody seems to care. And it's such a pleasure to work out to funk and jazz instead of the Top 40 stuff piped into most of the gyms around town.

Despite white breads like me moving into the hood, central Harlem is very much a proud Black community. It has a culture like no other. Its people are united by a need to demand respect and an identity that manifests itself in little ways -- like the soul food joints and really fabulous hats you can buy on the street -- and large, like the Arthur Schomberg public library, a repository of documentation on the African diaspora in the Western hemisphere.

So when Cable World magazine asked me to write a story about African American television channels, I did so with special interest. What I discovered was that most channels that cater to a Black audience aren't available in many homes. They are struggling to gain the attention of cable, satellite and telco distributors, and it's unclear when most will gain critical mass.

They are also challenged by networks in other genres that are debuting an increasing number of shows with Blacks in primary roles, such as Lil' JJ, pictured here, who is the star of Nickelodeon's new show Just Jordan (Photo credit: Chris Cuffaro, Nickelodeon). Good news for Blacks; but a dicey situation for Black-focused channels.

As my stories for Cable World make clear, the reasons why African American channels aren't getting more exposure are both very plain, and very subtle. But in a day and age when all multichannel distribution platforms are struggling to gain larger subscriber bases, my money's on the ones that recognize the opportunity that can be capitalized upon in serving this segment of the audience in a more meaningful manner.

Here are some links to my Cable World feature and some sidebars:

Download cw_afr_amer_main_2_sides_020507.pdf

Download cw_afr_amer_channel_roundup_020507.pdf

The Raucous, Lusty, Gritty Side of Rome

Suppose your a ravishing royalty type in ancient Rome and your main squeeze is a brutal, hunky member of the Roman senate. You're all dressed up, with one foot out the door to a funeral, and he demands a little sampling of your sexual prowess. How do you react?

Well if you're Polly Walker, playing Atia of the Julii in the HBO series Rome, you assume a dismissive air and order your German scullery maid to spread her legs, as if a tiresome child had just asked for an extra pudding. That's her, pictured here with said hunk, Mark Anthony, played by James Purefoy (photo credit: Franco Biciocci).

That kind of texturing is why I find Rome so entertaining. And it was fascinating to talk with some of the movers and shakers behind the scenes -- along with the charming actor Ray Stevenson -- for a story I wrote that was recently published by Screenz magazine.

HBO and its producing partner, the BBC, created one of the world's largest sets, at Rome's Cinecitta studios, and endowed every aspect of this sweeping $100 million epic with a sense of historical accuracy. It's ancient Rome like you've never seen it before. And the second season just began a few weeks ago.

You can read all about it in the download of my story below. I've also included another story I wrote for the latest issue of Screenz, which gives other ideas on how TV programming can help vaporize the doldrums as the odd weather patterns continue.

Download screenz_rome_0107.pdf

Download screenz_whats_on_0107.pdf

Born to be Porn

One of the most intriguing stories I've written lately has been about the adult programming business -- a.k.a. porn channels. Don't watch 'em myself. But I've always known they were like a bag of gold down the backwaters of cable television operations. And if there's a backwater to explore, I'm there. So when Cable World approached me with the story assignment, I couldn't resist.

No matter what you might think of adult programming, put on your business nose and consider these few things I didn't realize until I started the reporting process: there are razor-thin margins for adult channels doing business with cable and satellite operators; a number of top adult executives have been sent packing in the recent past, and adult content outstrips every other program category, when it comes to revenues in the video-on-demand space. That's thanks to babes like Jenna Jameson (pictured), who has her own VOD channel courtesy of Playboy Enterprises.

You can get the inside skinny here:

Download cw_adult_1206.pdf

A New Magazine, and One Tough Grandma

Last week, as I was biking back to my apartment in Harlem after a glorious bike ride in Central Park, I heard a gun shot. It turns out that one of my neighbors was the victim of a street robbery. Somebody tried to steal her jewels. But this grandmother -- who rides around the hood in a motorized wheel chair with a little lap dog at her feet -- was nobody's fool. She pulled out a revolver and shot the thug in the elbow. Just so happens she was on her way to target practice.

Once again, I was reminded that there's a reason for old sayings, like "Timing is everything." They actually are very sound.

I love stories like that -- people on the street, you and me stuff. So when I get a chance to sink my teeth into a great consumer-press story, it's always a pleasure. That delight was heightened in recent months when I took part in the launch a new magazine called Screenz by writing two articles, which you can access at the end of this posting.

One sent me on a sleuthing adventure to answer the question, "How do you become a reality TV star?" And the other is a series of pint-sized pieces on some of the new shows on cable channels. (It's not so me-and-you-ish, but was still fun.) Among the upcoming programs is a new space fantasy series on Nicktoons called Skyland, which is pictured here. (Photo credit: Nicktoons). 

Screenz comes from the good folks at Lundwall Communications in Denver, which is publishing it on behalf of the cable company Charter Communications. It's a glossy consumer magazine, and aims to help Charter's subscribers learn more about what television has to offer.

Here are the two stories:

Download screenz_reality_0906_a.pdf

Download screenz_fall_highlights_0906_a.pdf