Louise Sams

October 2007

Recognizing the universal appeal of news and animation, Turner Broadcasting started expanding its key brands around the world very early on. CNN International made its debut in Europe in 1985, just five years after CNN launched in the U.S. Today, CNN’s 22 branded networks and services are available to some 2 billion people in more than 200 countries and territories. Cartoon Network launched in the U.S. in 1992 and was then rolled out in Latin America and Europe the following year. Today it is seen in 160 countries around the world. As president of Turner Broadcasting System International, Louise Sams is charged with continuing to extend these brands, as well as TNT, Boomerang and more, into additional territories and onto new platforms.

WS: Where do you see growth opportunities in the international channel business, with linear channels, on-demand services, new media, or all three?

SAMS: Internationally, as a general rule, we are still seeing opportunity for growth in linear channels. In Europe, for example, this year we launched TNT in Spain and we are going to launch TNT and Cartoon Network in Turkey early next year. In September, we launched a four-hour block on digital terrestrial in the U.K. called NutsTV [inspired by Nuts, a British weekly men’s magazine], which we’re doing with IPC Media. So those are examples of growth in linear channels. We see similar opportunities in Asia in particular genres, depending on the country and its channel offerings.

At the same time, there are pressures that are coming to bear on linear networks and so we have to have our content on alternative platforms. We have some VOD deals in Europe and Asia, and we are about to have some of the first VOD deals in Latin America. We’ve been on wireless for some time with news and animation content. Turner Broadcasting has always embraced and been at the forefront of new technology. CNN.com is an example of that.

We’re hoping that with more and more proliferation of the 3G phone our video becomes that much more important to the mobile customer, the handset operators and the mobile phone companies.

We’re trying to experiment with content across the different platforms to determine exactly how consumers want to use our content and in what kind of bits and bytes it is most attractive to them.

WS: In what ways are you looking to increase the distribution of CNN?

SAMS: From a linear channels prospect, we have joint ventures in Spain, Turkey, India and Japan, and we continue to look for more opportunities. Those prospects are probably few and far between, in part because there are a lot of strong, local news players and plenty of countries that don’t need a local/international news network. And we have to be very particular about who we partner with. [We have to make sure] they are willing to adhere to the CNN editorial guidelines.

Maybe some of those opportunities would not necessarily be a linear channel, but a website. That’s what we’ve done in Mexico with CNNExpansión.com [a financial news portal done with] Expansión, which is a Time Inc. business publication like Fortune. We have a website and we work with Expansión on the content. Certainly, news is great content for many different platforms. It’s the sort of thing that people want to have access to when they’re traveling, so we’re continuing to enhance our international websites. We re-launched our CNN mobile product in Europe in March of this year and some of what we’re learning from that will be translated to Asia. We are fairly platform-agnostic and are always looking for opportunities.

WS: As Cartoon Network is well distributed around the world, are you focusing more on original programming for some of the feeds, or still on increasing distribution?

SAMS: It depends on the country and the penetration of multichannel television. We are seeing a fair amount of subscriber growth in Latin America. [The region has experienced] five solid years of economic growth and, as a consequence, there is more investment in some of the major markets like Brazil and Mexico. Some of that investment is from telcos and they are competing with cable and satellite. In a country like Brazil where multichannel television has only 9-percent penetration, there’s a lot of opportunity. We’re seeing subscriber growth.

We are looking to create and co-produce more original and locally relevant content for Cartoon Network and for any of our kids’ networks outside the U.S. We’ve watched the international channel business evolve such that consumers are getting more and more particular about the content that they want to watch and they are demanding content that is very relevant to them. So we’ve had success where we have done original programming, whether it’s been in Latin America or for example in India—where we’ve done some original programming for our kids’ network called Pogo. I’ve read a lot about some of the other large media companies setting up local production around the world, so I think it’s a theme that we’re all embracing.

WS: Is the channel business in the U.S. fairly saturated? Are there greater growth opportunities in international markets?

SAMS: Yes and no. We continue to grow well here in the U.S., but certainly there is uncharted territory in the international market. There are an awful lot of eyeballs that don’t live in the U.S. and we should take advantage of that fact. And we should [capitalize on] Turner’s first-mover advantage in a lot of those markets.

WS: What led to the acquisition of Claxson Interactive Group’s pay-TV networks in Latin America?

SAMS: Here was a group of successful channels that are distributed primarily in the Southern Cone. Since Turner has a pan-regional, Latin American business, we saw a huge opportunity to take the distribution of these networks outside the Southern Cone and into the two biggest markets in Latin America—Brazil and Mexico—not to mention the other countries in the northern part of Latin America, where we can grow ad sales together with the distribution. Obviously, there are challenges in that we have to tailor these networks to different markets, particularly in the Brazilian market, where you have to language it in Portuguese and have to take local culture into account. But we’ve successfully launched TNT and Cartoon Network in Brazil, so we felt fairly confident in our ability to take [the Claxson] channels and broaden their reach. It’s not often that a portfolio of good channels comes up for sale internationally, so we saw it as a terrific opportunity to broaden their business.

WS: Would you be interested in launching entirely new brands and what would a new brand need to be noticed in today’s crowded market?

SAMS: Our feeling is that the key is to have compelling content. And obviously a brand has to differentiate itself from the pack and also give the consumer some sense of the brand proposition—the programming that they may expect from the brand. At the end of the day, if we can provide compelling content then we should be able to rise to the top. We’re certainly willing to launch new brands—our joint venture with IPC on NutsTV is an example of that. Pogo is a kids’ channel in India that we launched several years ago and that was a new brand for us. We’re obviously going to have some new brands with Claxson, some of which we may try to take to other regions.

We try to leverage the brands that we have here in the U.S., that’s evident by the launch of TNT in Spain and Turkey, because sometimes some of the creative [on-air design and marketing] has already been done. Those of us in international television know about running on a shoestring and to beg, borrow and steal our colleagues’ work if we can! We’re very opportunistic. When we look at a market and see that there is an opportunity to launch a new channel, if we can make it work as a business proposition, we can put it together very quickly. To launch Pogo—from ideation to its debut—took about eight months. It was crazy how quickly they managed to do everything, including creating the brand and all the creative around the brand, in house. That was a low-cost network and one of the reasons it got greenlit. We are always looking for where a particular demographic may be underserved. That’s part of the motivation behind the launch of NutsTV in the U.K.—it’s a men’s channel and when you look at the lineup in DTT you don’t have too many channels that are targeted to men.

WS: Programming is very important, but in today’s environment a brand carries a lot of weight doesn’t it?

SAMS: I think a brand is important but what is really important is the relationship that we’ve had with a lot of these operators for so long. Latin America’s a great example; we’ve been through hard times with our operators, most recently we had to get through the currency crisis. It’s really a combination of our brands being important and recognizable and attractive to the consumer, not just because they’ve been around for a long time but because they’ve always delivered [what the viewer expects from them]. And that’s important to the operators as well. We’ve got to provide them with a good business proposition when launching new brands, but [the strength our existing brands] certainly gives us the opportunity to have that discussion.