Kelly Campbell, president of Peacock and DTC, NBCUniversal: I’m reminded daily of the importance of a strong team culture to a company’s success. A hallmark of the Peacock culture is encouraging employees across the business to bring forward creative or scrappy ideas that could make a meaningful impact. Whether it’s an unexpected marketing partnership, an original series pitch or a new internal collaboration initiative, we make sure that good ideas are always heard and considered.
Sean Downey, president of Americas and global partners, Google and YouTube: What I learned this year is that when you make great content available for football fans and consumers, including engaging creator content next to great NFL content, the interaction that happens is magical for viewers.
Craig Erwich, president, Disney Television Group: The importance of being flexible and able to adapt to change, which always brings opportunities. In 2023, ABC was able to dip into our unparalleled unscripted vault of classics and launch a brand new iteration of one of our longest-running franchises, The Golden Bachelor, which helped the network reach No.1 in entertainment in the demo in the fall for the first time since 2020.
Rita Ferro, global advertising president, Disney: It’s the importance of saying yes and running toward opportunities. With the velocity of change of what’s happening in our business, you can’t overthink things too much. You just gotta go for it and swing high for the fences. And we’ve done that. We did that with all the technology enhancements we’ve rolled out, everything we’ve done around measurement, everything we’ve done around the rollout of Disney+ around the world.
Kathleen Finch, chairman and CEO of US Networks, Warner Bros. Discovery: Flexibility is a highly underrated professional skill. We now need to serve audiences wherever they’re consuming content, and that’s constantly changing. Staying ahead of new viewer habits requires fast thinking and breaking long-held rules about scheduling, windowing and other facets of production.
Marianne Gambelli, president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships, Fox Corporation: It’s not a new lesson, but one that really shone through this year: It’s all about the team. Surround yourself with the best people—open, genuine, hardworking people. Our team’s ability to be there for each other, in good times and bad, their dedication, their tenacity, their creativity and, most importantly, their kindness show me every day how lucky I am to work at Fox with the best there is.
John Halley, president, Paramount Advertising: We are living in an extraordinary moment as the media business transitions to the future. The challenges are shared by all and are too big to be solved independently. So the working model of media has become centered on collaboration: standards, integration, interoperability, collective vision. The power of industry partnership can move mountains. The absence of it guarantees failure. Go it alone at your own risk.
Alison Hoffman, president of domestic networks, Starz: 2023 certainly reiterated the importance of partnership in this industry. Of course, our creative partners have and will always be unequivocally essential. But we’ve seen a renewed focus on distribution and marketing partnerships among platforms to drive growth and stability for the business and value to the customer.
