4:00 PM - 5:15 PM
Track A:
Content Syndication Business Models - From Internet to Wireless, Part I
From the start, as much as TV industry, the Net has been about aggregating viewers, gaining market share, and monetizing the user experience. To that end, the concept of licensing, content acquisition, and syndication have become a growing Net business phenomenon. While the content may not function in quite the same way as TV syndication, the value of “site features” from stock information, news updates, and ASP like add-ons to actual “programming,” which might be a pay-per-view event or a long term “content partnership”, syndication and licensing is very much at the core of E-commerce and Net success.
Bill Foulkes, Vice President, Business Development Context Media
Jay Fehnel, Director Business Development, Tribune Media Services
John Little, CEO, Portal Software
Sandy Smallens, Executive Vice President Programming and Content, GetMusic
Shawn Gold, co-President & Chief Strategic Officer, eUniverse
Steven Ramirez, Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, Wild Brain
Tracey Trottenberg-Yuzpe, President, Joe Public Interactive Communications, Moderator
Bill Foulkes, Vice President, Business Development Context Media: Bill leads Context
Media's Marketing and Business Development teams in strategizing the direction of the company's products and business relationships. Previously, Bill was at Telesis/Towers Perrin, a strategy consulting firm specializing in market entry strategies for broadband and telecommunications technologies. At Telesis, Bill's contributions included managing major customer relationships and contributing to the firm's expansion into several new lines of business. Prior to Telesis, Bill managed several brands for The Gillette Company which represented nearly $200M of that company's business. Bill's background also includes time spent serving as an assistant vice president at Waller Capital Corporation, and as an analyst in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department at Morgan Stanley. Bill graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration with an MBA, and earned his B.A. in History from Harvard University. Bill's speaking experience includes such events as RealScreen Summit, iSyndicate Syndication Summit, eMediatainment World, Streaming Media West and Digital Hollywood Broadband.Jay Fehnel, Director Business Development, Tribune Media Services: Jay Fehnel was nam
ed Director of Business Development for Tribune Media Services (TMS) in June, 1998. In that role he identifies and pursues growth opportunities for TMS, through internal start-ups, partnerships, investments and acquisitions. In addition, he manages the company's strategic and action planning process. Most recently, Fehnel played a key role in the development of TMS' business plan to offer electronic program guides (EPGs) to the cable TV industry. He also developed the company's plan for entering the movie data and advertising business. Fehnel evaluates venture investments for TMS, and negotiated the company's investment in Mercury Mail (now Exactis.com), a pioneering e-mail marketing company. In 1997-98, Fehnel served as Senior Manager of Business Development. For three years beginning in 1994, Fehnel served as General Manager of TMS Electronic Information Services. In that capacity he managed the editorial, marketing and customer service functions for Voice News Network, an audio syndication service with 250 affiliates. He also helped launch WebPoint, the first syndicated content service for the Web. In addition, Jay managed the company's business relationships with America Online, Apple Online Services, and other interactive media companies. Fehnel joined TMS in 1992 as a Business Development Analyst. In that role, he led the team that launched US/Express, a weekly entertainment publication, into national syndication. Fehnel is a graduate of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and of Purdue University, where he majored in journalism and broadcasting. He previously worked in marketing for NBC and Katz Television in New York, and the Walt Disney Company in Burbank.Shawn Gold, Co-President and Chief Strategic Officer, eUniverse: As Co-
President and Chief Strategic Officer for eUniverse, Shawn is responsible for overseeing and driving the network’s business strategy, expanding customer acquisition and retention, developing strategic business partnerships, and implementing effective advertising campaigns and affiliate relationships. Regarded as a pioneer in the industry, Shawn joined eUniverse with an 8-year background in interactive marketing and business strategy. Prior to eUniverse, Shawn served as vice president of marketing and communications for ecommerce company WHN. There he built company owned WhatsHotNow.com to more than 1 million visitors a month, while providing ecommerce service to some of the worlds biggest entertainment brands, including The 2002 Olympics, ABC, NBC, Comedy Central, MTV, and Fox. Additionally, he developed partnerships with Yahoo!, Warner Lambert, Pizza Hut, Sony, Columbia/TriStar Lycos, and Maxim. Prior to WhatsHotNow.com, Shawn spent two years at Rare Medium where he served as head of strategic planning. He was responsible for opening the 1st satellite office in Los Angeles as well as creating the inaugural interactive strategies for clients such as Betty Crocker, Pampers, Hot Wheels, Butterfinger and Cheerios. In 1995, Shawn joined Icon New Media, where he served as GM and Founder of the company's advertising/sponsorship division. There he established markets for Word.com and charged.com via sponsorships and content syndication, and built ome of the first Internet sites for cross-promotional tie-ins. Shawn and his group were know for creating the first interstitial ads on the web and for creating an industry-leading, advertising integration system based on time rotation and contextual integration. Shawn started developing interactive content in 1992 as a partner with TouchTunes Interactive, a telecommunications music marketing service in the USA, Japan and New Zealand. There he created and implemented tie-ins between telecommunications carriers, record labels, music retailers, and consumer package goods companies like Keebler, Chevy Camaro, and Gatorade. Shawn attributes his success to "a fascination with understanding how people consume and communicate with interactive media." He took notice of the interactive world during Time Warner’s interactive TV tests in Orlando, FL in the early 90's and he knew it was inevitable. Shawn received a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and Statistics from Syracuse University. He lives in Southern California with his wife.John Little, CEO, Portal Software: John Little founded Portal, one of the first Internet start-ups, in 1985 with the premise that a ubiquitous network was about to emerge that would transform a radical change in business. Mr. Little foresaw that this network would be accessed on a daily basis by millions of people worldwide, and would inevitably drive new kinds of applications and services as well as unique methods of revenue generation. One of the industry’s market visionaries, Mr. Little predicted that this network, later to become the Internet, would require a business infrastructure to support this new environment. Portal developed a customer management and billing platform, Infranet®, to meet this need. With a software solution years ahead of the Internet market, Mr. Little evolved Portal into one of the country’s first providers of Internet access, while he continued to use and enhance the software. In 1996, as the ISP market began to build momentum, Mr. Little transitioned the company to focus exclusively on developing and marketing Portal’s customer management and billing software for providers of Internet services. After starting Portal, Mr. Little led the company to its initial public offering on May 6, 1999, which was one of the top ten IPOs of the year. Today, Portal’s technology now serves as a platform for the Internet economy and is enabling and supporting radically new applications and business models. Prior to founding Portal, Mr. Little provided strategic marketing and engineering consulting services to a number of companies, including Knight Ridder, AT&T, Raytheon, Dow Jones News Retrieval, Ricoh, JVC, and Sun Microsystems. He played a pioneering role in the development of many of the online systems developed by these companies. In June, Mr. Little was named Northern California's Year 2000 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the e-software and services category. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University.
Sandy Smallens, Executive Vice President, Programming & Content, GetMusic LL
C: Responsible for the creative development, production and delivery of content across GetMusic—including its genre-based channels as well as its television programming—Smallens oversees GetMusic’s Production, Design, Editorial and Live Events teams. Smallens is also the supervising force behind the company’s premier programs and shows including The A List with Anthony DeCurtis, Absolute Zero (co-produced with Mondo Media), The E-Coustic Sessions, HOT or NOT, Videolab and more. Prior to GetMusic, Smallens served from 1997 as Senior Vice President of Programming at SonicNet (now a division of MTVi), where he oversaw creation, development, and delivery of content. He joined Prodigy in 1996 as Vice President/General Manager of Content, and from 1993 to 1996, he was Senior Director of Multimedia for Atlantic Records, where he launched one of the first major label Web sites. Before his tenure at Atlantic, Smallens accumulated over seven years of experience with music in several different capacities, including founder, bassist and vocalist with Giant/Warner Bros. punk-pop band Too Much Joy, freelance media writer for Spin magazine and various labels and producer of the first interactive, floppy-disc press kits for The Cure, Gumball and SonicNet BBS, to name a few.Steven Ramirez, Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, Wild Brain: Steven Ramirez provides the strategic direction for Wild Brain’s marketing and new business efforts. His responsibilities include developing brand strategy, creative advertising, promotions, public relations, licensing/merchandising, and corporate identity. Ramirez also leads the company’s partnering initiatives. In this role, Ramirez is responsible for initiating, optimally structuring, and driving to closure Wild Brain’s business development and strategic alliances worldwide. These alliances enable Wild Brain to diversify and deepen its business offerings, and will allow it to build incremental revenue streams with strong EBITDA contribution to the bottom line. Ramirez also manages Wild Brain’s relationships with distribution partners such as Yahoo and Cartoon Network. Ramirez has spent the last ten years in the entertainment industry. He joined Wild Brain from Collaborative Media, publishers of the popular etown.com consumer electronics Web site. Prior to that, he worked at New Line Cinema where he was VP of Marketing. At New Line, Ramirez led the Sell-Thru Video department and was responsible for DVD, VHS, and Internet marketing. He developed highly successful advertising campaigns for such films as Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me and Rush Hour. Ramirez also worked closely with DVD hardware manufacturers, and other Hollywood studios, to develop joint promotions that made the DVD format the most rapidly accepted new consumer electronics technology of all time. Ramirez was formerly an executive with the International division of Warner Bros., overseeing sales, marketing, and business strategy for filmed entertainment. He got his start in the industry in the Executive Management program at 20th Century Fox International. Ramirez has been widely quoted in the media including CNN, CBS, National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and Video Business. Ramirez holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He also earned his Bachelor’s degree from Berkeley in Political Science.