Anne Sweeney

January 18, 2010 World Screen
This article originally appeared in the MIPCOM ’09 issue.
 
Disney Channel’s series continue to resonate with kids, from newer shows like JONAS and Sonny with a Chance to the longer-running hits Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place. These live-action shows, so popular with the tween set, are complemented by the hilarious silliness of animated titles like Phineas and Ferb, as well as a string of original movies. Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group, talks about creating stars and franchises.
 
WS: The number of stars that keep coming up through the Disney Channel ranks is impressive: from Miley Cyrus and the Jonas brothers to Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. All of them sing and act and dance—they are “triple threats,” as the jargon goes. Is it by design that you have such multitalented stars or is it a coincidence?
SWEENEY: It’s two things. Great credit goes to a woman named Judy Taylor, who is head of casting for Disney Channel. She does have a phenomenal eye, as do Gary Marsh [the president of entertainment at Disney Channels Worldwide] and Rich Ross [the president of Disney Channels Worldwide]. Together, they are my triple threat! But we also have a company that has terrific resources, and when we start talking to kids about a role in a television series or a movie, finding out that they play an instrument, or they write or sing, prompts the next conversation, which is with Hollywood Records or with our film studio. This is where Rich Ross has been phenomenal. He has been the person who has literally walked everyone across the lot, across the yard, down the street, to make sure that every division was aware of the great talent that was coming through our door. As a result, you can see Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, the Jonas brothers, Corbin Bleu, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, and the list just goes on and on. It’s having the mentality of really getting to know your talent, getting to know what their hopes and dreams and desires are and then being able to facilitate a relationship with other divisions, that has served everyone well.
 
WS: Would you take one of the Disney Channel franchises and explain how you have taken it across platforms to serve kids in as many ways as possible?
SWEENEY:The one that comes to mind is Phineas and Ferb. It’s an animated series and we are seeing amazing resonance with kids that has started to translate into a very successful consumer-products program. We have strong viewing for Phineas and Ferb, not just on Disney Channel, but on Disney XD as well—which used to be Toon Disney and was rebranded on February 13. We’re seeing strong viewing on Dis­neychannel.com and Disneyxd.com. It’s also a show that has moved extremely well across our VOD platforms, iTunes, mobile phones, and it’s one of the key games that is driving unique visitors to the Disney.com site.
 
WS: When you are creating a franchise, do you think of the international audience as well?
SWEENEY: Oh, absolutely. When you run a global business, you have to think globally, and the international marketplace has been a part of every conversation and every plan for every project from the beginning. For example, Latin America was one of the strongest markets for High School Musical (HSM), and EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] has continued to grow the Hannah Montana and the HSM businesses throughout the year. For the London premiere of Camp Rock, we had the rollout plans that really set the stage for the rest of the world and for the way we treated franchises like this going forward. And we maximize not only our channels but also the free-TV windows that are available to us.
 
WS: How successful has the rebranding of Disney XD been?
SWEENEY:So far very successful. What has been so smart about XD is that it was conceived of as a multiplatform brand. And while it showcases a great mix of live-action and animated programming, it is hyper-targeting boys. It really focused in on their quest for discovery, accomplishment, adventure, as well as sports and humor. Phineas and Ferb fits very easily into [the brand]; so does Zeke and Luther, and then movies, everything from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. And the ratings have really validated the strategy. July was the most-watched month ever in the network’s history, and that includes all of the years that it was Toon Disney.
 
WS: Tell me about the Friends for Change initiative.
SWEENEY: That is a wonderful Walt Disney Company initiative. It’s a multiplatform environmental initiative that really helps kids help the planet. Twenty-nine of our stars participate in the outreach messages. It debuted on Disney Channel and XD and Radio Disney and Disney.com. “Reg and pledge” (register and pledge) is the slogan, and kids get to vote on how The Walt Disney Company will parse out $1 million in donations and what causes we’re going to invest in, covering our four key areas: climate, water, waste and habitat. And “Send It On” is the anthem, which is off the charts on iTunes—the downloads have been absolutely phenomenal.        
 
WS: Is television still where viewers sample a program first, or is that changing?
SWEENEY: The good news is that TV still rules by a mile. People have really increased the hours of TV viewing from last year, more than they increased viewing online. Probably the biggest contributor to this is the DVR, because it has provided viewers with so much convenience. And homes with DVRs watch more prime-time television than homes that don’t have DVRs.
We’ve found that people use abc.com to catch up on episodes that they missed. It’s interesting to note that the average age of the person watching our shows on abc.com is about 15 years younger than a person who would watch the shows on ABC in prime time.
 
WS:Does Hulu skew even younger?
SWEENEY:Hulu has a different audience than the audience we get for abc.com. The Hulu audience is more of a casual viewer, generally more male. We know that the abc.com audience, while younger than the ABC audience, is older than the Hulu audience.
 
WS: Bob Iger announced some time ago that there are plans for a Disney-branded site that would make movies, TV shows and games available to consumers on a subscription basis. What can you tell us about that?
SWEENEY: There is a subscription-service model that the company has been working on for movies. It’s still very much in the development stage and Bob has talked about it publicly, but we haven’t announced exactly when it’s going to launch, nor have we announced exactly how the subscription service will work.
 
WS: Would a Disney-branded site be preferable to joining Comcast and Time Warner’s broadband service TV Everywhere, which gives access to premium-TV content to viewers who are already paying for cable or satellite?
SWEENEY: We have always been platform agnostic. When it comes to TV Everywhere, I’d say we are looking at it with a healthy amount of skepticism. First, we don’t want to do anything strategically that is going to put our multichannel business at risk or in jeopardy. The cable operators are very valuable partners to us. That said, though, we really have questions about the viability of what they are currently discussing, and our worry is that it is going to create issues for the consumer that could end up doing more harm than good. We don’t know whether or not this is going to work. We don’t know how consumer-friendly it’s going to be. We remain open-minded, but I think it’s also important to realize that, when we are talking about Disney and a subscription service, our product is extremely valuable and our brand is extremely valuable as a service to multichannel distributors. And we know that it is valuable to the consumer, and we should be paid appropriately for it.
 
WS: How are advertisers responding to people viewing online?
SWEENEY: In May of ’06, we invited ten advertisers and ten broadcasters to do a test for 60 days. We said, We’ll put our shows online and we will share everything that we learn with you. And that was a very good and smart way to begin advertising online with partners we consider very valuable to the company.
We created Ad Lab to look at the impact of interactivity in online ads, the effect of changing the creative process across the pods, and how we would run the creative. We are working with some of our clients and we’re testing a pretty wide variety of formats and creative executions, so we can go back to advertisers and say, This works extremely well, we know it is going to deliver for you, we know people will remember the product or have a high intent to buy.
 
WS: What types of advertising work best?
SWEENEY: We did a test to look at live ads. We focused on our late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live and we found out that when we pair a live ad with a traditional 30-second spot, it is much more effective than the traditional 30-second spot airing alone. So if Jimmy does a live ad and then we roll the ad, exactly the same sponsor, exactly the same product, unaided recall virtually doubles. It goes from 26 percent to 47 percent. And there is a double-digit increase in purchase intent as well.