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Canon Club: Issue No. 3
Welcome to the third issue of DEG’s Canon Club Newsletter!
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Congratulations to women who have recently joined or been promoted to prominent positions at our member companies. | |
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Amazon MGM Studios
Lauren Anderson
Head, Brand and Content Innovation
Formerly Head of AVOD Programming and Studios Unscripted
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AMC Networks
Emily Gotto
SVP, Acquisition and Production, Shudder
Formerly VP, Global Acquisitions and Co-Productions
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Filmrise
Jonitha Keymoore
Head of Content
Formerly VP, Global Content Acquisitions
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NBC Universal
Annie Morris
VP, Release Planning
Formerly Senior Director, Release Planning, Universal Pictures
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A+E Networks
Tana Jamieson
Executive Vice President and Co-Head
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AMC Networks
Angela Molloy
SVP, Development & Production, Unscripted, ALLBLK & WEtv
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Disney
Alisa Bowen
President, Disney+
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ESPN
Judy Agay
Senior Vice President of Human Resources for ESPN and Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology
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Fox
Jessica Fang
Executive Vice President, Distribution, Marketing & Strategy
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Warner Bros. Discovery
Stephanie Jackson
Senior Vice President, Ad Sales, Western Region
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Did a female executive recently join or receive a promotion at your company, or were they honored for any industry awards?
Email cayla@degonline.org to recognize them in our next newsletter!
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"If you want to reach younger, diverse, more female-forward audiences, you can find them on social media, which isn’t brand-safe, and you have two seconds to get your message across in the doom scroll. "
- Anjali Sud, CEO of Tubi, on Tubi being a better marketing vehicle than social media platforms for advertisers to reach younger, diverse audiences.
Read more
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Women in DEG: Committee Spotlight | |
It is wonderful to see many women not only participating in DEG’s technical committees, but also stepping up to lead them. These leaders are at the top of their fields, and we are lucky to have them working within the Advanced Content Delivery Alliance (ACDA). | |
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Catalog Restoration Cleanup Subcommittee led by Daniela Bocchetti, IDC-LA
Conventional catalog formats will not always allow content owners to fully preserve the original creative intent and to maximize the catalog’s value. This committee will explore efficient, secure, and future proof tools and formats surrounding the art of restoration of data from archives; and develop educational materials, best practices, specifications, or other materials as the committee sees fit to help bring catalog content to viewers.
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Understanding the MovieLabs 2030 Security Architecture led by Kim Wendt, Amazon Web Services
The purpose of this working group is to help the community understand the security-related topics and how they align with the MovieLabs 2030 Vision security architecture. This architecture is built upon three foundational components: zero-trust architecture, the separation of authorization and authentication, and the distinction between facility-based and workflow-based security.
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Accessibility led by Janet Ritz, Warner Bros. Discovery
The Accessibility Subcommittee aims to help create best practices and standards for accessibility to enhance the user experience in multi-media entertainment. The group will work together to create, educate, and drive the adoption of the standards to help overcome industry challenges in achieving quality content.
All three committees are brand new and are about to start. Please reach out to Bekah@degonline.org if you would like to participate. All participants must be DEG members.
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Recently, DEG's Localization Committee in the Advanced Content Delivery Alliance published their Non-Binary Pronoun and Conjugation Reference Guide. Special thank you to Andrea Riehle, NBCUniversal, for extensively researching and compiling the guide.
Read it here!
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WNBA Reports Record TV Viewership For 2024 Season, Highest Game Attendance in 26 Years
CNBC
The beginning of the 28th season, which started May 14, has been the most-watched on TV networks in the league’s history, according to a release. Across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and CBS, the WNBA is averaging 1.3 million viewers per game, tripling last season’s average of 462,000 viewers. About 400,000 fans attended games in May, the most first-month attendees in 26 years, according to the league. More than half those games were sold out. The league also reported more diverse viewership. The number of people tuning in to games on TV grew 60% year over year among people of color. Viewership in the first week of the season more than doubled for young girls and people under age 35. Read more
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Geena Davis Is Giving Hollywood the Tools to Make Onscreen Diversity Easy — Now It Has to Use Them
IndieWire
One studio Davis’ institute has long worked closely with is NBCUniversal. In 2020, NBCUni’s Global Talent Development and Inclusion (GTDI) started a year-long initiative to utilize the institute’s Spellcheck for Bias program. “One studio runs all of their scripts through what we call Spellcheck for Bias,” she said. “This is a means of looking at scripts before the [films are] made. Certainly, hopefully, before you cast it, maybe even before you green-light something. It’s a combination of machine learning and AI and expert coding. What we can do is take anything that’s in print and look at it and give a breakdown of what it contains, because we all have unconscious biases and cannot see what is actually true many times. This helps you overcome that.” Read more
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Doris Burke, First Woman TV Analyst For An NBA Final, Saluted By LeBron James
Deadline
“My focus is in preparing for the games in front of me. … But I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I am sort of mindful that there is something meaningful here, right,” Burke said. “And the meaning for me would be if, in some way, this assignment makes life for women in sports easier or somehow aids in their process, then nothing could be more meaningful. “Anybody calling their first NBA Finals game would probably be nervous, and I think if I allow my mind to drift too much into that space, it will make that nervousness a little bit worse.” Read more
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MPA Hires Top-Ranking FBI Official to Lead Fight Against Piracy
IndieWire
Larissa Knapp will be the MPA’s chief content protection officer. She’ll report to Karyn Temple, the Motion Picture Association’s senior executive vice president and global general counsel. Knapp spent 27 years with the FBI, most recently leading its National Security Branch, where she managed a $300 million budget and 2,000 personnel. Previously, she led the FBI’s Security, Training and Human Resources Divisions and Data Analytics. Knapp started her FBI career as an agent handling intellectual property and cybercrimes. Read more
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Inside Reese Witherspoon’s Literary Empire
New York Times ($)
Witherspoon, 48, has now been a presence in the book world for a decade. Her productions of novels like “Big Little Lies,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Last Thing He Told Me” are foundations of the binge-watching canon. Her book club picks reliably land on the best-seller list for weeks, months or, in the case of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” years. In 2023, print sales for the club’s selections outpaced those of Oprah’s Book Club and Read With Jenna, according to Circana Bookscan, adding up to 2.3 million copies sold So how did an actor who dropped out of college (fine, Stanford) become one of the most influential people in an industry known for being intractable and slightly tweedy? Read more
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Women and People of Color Led Streaming Viewership, Box Office Sales in 2023, UCLA Study Says
New York Times ($)
It turns out that women aren’t just driving box office viewership. They’re also driving streaming viewership, according to a new UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report. Earlier this year, the organization found that women and people of color dominated box office sales for the top 20 movies of 2023. The same held true of streaming titles. Nine of the top 10 streaming movies of 2023 were largely watched by women and households of color, which overrepresented viewership. Additionally, when it came to 17 of the top 20 streaming movies by viewership, women represented the majority of viewers. Read more
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Warner Bros. TV Boss Channing Dungey Says Peak TV “Wasn’t Really Great For the Business”
The Hollywood Reporter
“The business is contracting a little bit. There’s going to be fewer overall deals as a result of that, and I think prices are coming down, which is also probably interesting,” Dungey argued.
A Banff veteran, Dungey made an informal conversation appearance at the festival in 2021 soon after being named to head up the Warner Bros. TV group. And in 2018, Dungey was in Banff for a keynote address when serving as president of ABC Entertainment, which was followed by a short stint at Netflix as vp, original series. Read more
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NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley On AI: ‘We’ve Got To Get the Ethics of It Right’
LA Times ($)
Artificial intelligence is “exciting,” but guardrails must be put in place to protect labor, intellectual property and ethics, NBCUniversal Studio Group Chairman Donna Langley said Friday at an entertainment industry law conference. During a wide-ranging, on-stage conversation at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium, the media chief emphasized that first, “the labor piece of it has to be right,” a proclamation that was met with applause from the audience. Read more
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Kira Baca
Chief Revenue Officer
Ateliere Creative Technologies
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Amy Jo Smith
President and CEO
DEG
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Laura Florence
SVP Global Fast Channels
Fremantle
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Daniela Bocchetti
SVP, Client Solutions
IDC LA
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Andrea Kalas
SVP, Archives
Paramount
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The Big Boss is Wearing Friendship Bracelets. How the ‘Universal Language’ of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé is Helping Life at Work
CNBC
Megh McLaughlin was one of three employees sent to Florida on a reward trip by software company Air that included a night at Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour. After the three women attendees got back, McLaughlin created a recurring virtual meeting for them to catch up with each other, with a title themed to the song “Run the World (Girls).” Amani Albertsen organized a viewing for the film version of Swift’s Eras tour, which began streaming on Disney+ in March, at the Austin office of financial technology firm Wise. “I thought we were going to get made fun of,” Albertsen said, before adding that the gathering was widely supported and a “unifying” experience. Read more
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Shakedown Or Fair Shake? How To Get Pay Equity For Women
Forbes ($)
Fair Shake is a newly-released book that is shaking things up in the world of gender equity, with important lessons for leaders. Written by three legal scholars - Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, and Nancy Levit - the book points out that women continue to be discriminated against in the workplace. The book focuses on the US, but the insights resonate globally. While the gender pay gap has narrowed statistically over a long period of time, it is partially due to declining wages for poorly educated men (rather than progress for women). Using examples from Wal-Mart to General Electric to investment banks to medical practices, “Fair Shake” outlines structural issues in the economy and what leaders need to do about them. Read more
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It's Time to Stop Calling Women 'Accidental CEOS'
Fast Company
Self-described accidental CEOs may not intend it, but we can come across like we’re apologizing for or tempering our professional successes—or that our boards or shareholders somehow made a mistake in naming us to the role. Quite the contrary, women CEOs who arrive via circuitous or surprising routes should take great pride in their unconventional backgrounds. Read more
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Women were front and center at this year's Stream TV Show, including DEG's very own Amy Jo Smith. Smith moderated the Insights from Content Distribution Leaders' Roundtable, which featured (from l.) Stingray's David Purdy, NBCUniversal's Amy Geary, Britbox's Liz Spaulding, and Warner Bros. Discovery's Madison Wojciechowski. The group discussed bundling in detail – a subject also covered in the New York Times this week. | | | | |
