Marc Juris

TV Real Weekly, February 06, 2008

Executive VP and General Manager

truTV

In a classic TV story, Marc Juris got his start working at CBS as a page. He was immediately hooked on the business. “From the minute I stepped in there, I just knew I loved television,” he says.

Jobs weren’t plentiful in the beginning. The birth of cable, however, quickly opened opportunities and Juris took advantage, starting with CBS Cable. Though CBS Cable was later shut down because the company felt there was no future in the industry, the syndication business emerged as a fertile player in the TV market. Juris decided to make the jump to syndication and marketing. There, Juris learned how shows are sold to consumers. “That really helped me later on when I started to create shows, because I understood that you have to create shows you can sell to the public,” he says. The combination of working on both sides helped round out Juris’s skills as an executive, he says. It gave him a deeper understanding of programming and marketing, which he says are “really hard and not mutually exclusive.”

While working in syndication, Juris was troubled by having little say in how—or how much—programming was marketed. “I wanted to get back into cable, because in cable, you can nurture and grow programming concepts,” he says. Juris began working for AMC, a channel owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, where he found cable to be “a very comfortable place,” he says. “It allowed for creative exploration particularly in non-fiction, which was before the proliferation of all these non-fiction series,” Juris says. While still at Rainbow, he was tapped to help turn MuchMusic USA into what ultimately became the music cable network fuse. Groundbreaking marketing put Juris and the network on the map. Juris soon caught the attention of Court TV executives Henry Schleiff and Art Bell, who were looking to reinvent the network and “push it to the next level.”

At the time, Court TV was known for legal coverage and prime-time mystery shows such as Forensic Files and North Mission Road. Juris was tapped to refresh the look and feel of the network, giving it new graphics and a new voice. “We started to add shows to increase our unrealized reach potential, to bring in different kinds of viewers and expose them to our mystery programming,” he says. “This is how we started to develop a different kind of programming experience.”

In May 2006, Time Warner—which previously owned 50 percent of Court TV—decided to buy the remainder of the network. Court TV was placed under the umbrella of Turner Broadcasting System. With Turner as its base, the network planned a complete re-brand. As of January 1, the network became known as truTV. Aimed at an audience that has been dubbed “real engagers,” truTV is offering a gamut of non-fiction programs that include Most Shocking, Ocean Force, Speeders, Body of Evidence and Murder by the Book.

In his role as the executive VP and general manager of truTV, Juris focuses on “how to create involved, meaningful, truly engaging, immersive entertainment experiences.” The network has increased its audience share by 16 percent since the re-branding and is rolling out new series, including the recent launch of The Real Hustle, which follows a trio as they swindle unsuspecting New Yorkers. Later, truTV will launch Black Gold, which is set to explore the world of America’s oil prospectors, or wildcatters.

The channel’s success is just one thing Juris finds satisfying. “I love the, ‘Hey, why don’t we try�fill-in-the-blank,’” he says. “Everyone mobilizes, we pull it off and it works! It’s when you hear back from the consumer—and it was just sort of an off-handed idea or maybe a deeply researched idea—but to have an idea and the fact that it turns into something tangible and touches people is really, really satisfying.”

—By Kristin Brzoznowski