Warner Bros. Discovery cable warrior Kathleen Finch is heading into her Super Bowl: the vacation season at Food Network.
“Fans come and we supersize them and super serve them with all this holiday content, daytime content, and primetime stuff,” Finch informed Variety. “We have four big returning series this year, and that’s just talking about Christmas. We start with Halloween, and we started early and had a lot of really great stuff that worked really well and kicked off our strong ratings early in September.”
More than 63 million complete viewers watched Food Network within the fourth quarter of 2022, and Finch is anticipating year-over-year development for this season’s slate, which incorporates new sequence “Selena + Chef: Home for the Holidays” and “The Elf on the Shelf: Sweet Showdown.”
This 12 months, Food Network celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in a humble trend, by persevering with on with its frequently scheduled programming and making little fuss concerning the event, although that doesn’t imply Finch hasn’t personally acknowledged the affect.
“We know that we have taught a generation how to cook,” Finch mentioned. “So many people who are in their 30s or even 40s will say, I learned how to cook from the Food Network because growing up both my parents worked, we ate a lot of takeout, but I learned how to love food by watching Ina Garten. And so much of our mandate at Food Network was not only entertaining people, but was providing a service, was providing something that was useful. It’s the same with HGTV, the same with a lot of our networks, where utility-focused content has been one of our secrets.”
With the period of time David Zaslav and Warner Bros. Discovery brass have spent speaking about Max and HBO (and earlier than that HBO Max), the revitalization of franchises together with Harry Potter, “The Lord of the Rings” and DC, and the success of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” recently, it’s simple to neglect the corporate’s largest enterprise section continues to be its cable networks.
But that reality by no means escapes Finch’s thoughts, as a result of it’s the US Networks chairman and CEO’s job not solely to supervise legacy Discovery manufacturers like HGTV, Food Network, TLC and Turner acquisitions together with TNT, TBS and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim at a time when advert {dollars} are scarce and linear viewership continues to say no, but in addition to make use of these some 20 channels to advertise all the above priorities for WBD.
“She is the kind of collaborator we all dream of and her partnership on the Barbie movie with HGTV’s ‘Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge,’ to Food Network’s promotion of ‘Wonka,’ to the cross promotion of ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’ with Jason Momoa as host on Discovery’s Shark Week, it has been nothing short of game changing for us in terms of the support and reach we were able to garner for each movie across a wide array of audiences,” says Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chair and CEO Pam Abdy, who additionally runs programming at TCM (Finch oversees enterprise ops on the film community) together with Michael De Luca.
When Finch isn’t utilizing her programming slate to again Warner Bros. Discovery’s shot at field workplace success, or to feed streamers Max and Discovery+ a few of their most profitable library titles, like TLC’s “90 Day Fiance” franchise, to assist scale back churn between new streaming originals.
“Max’s success is dependent upon collaboration across the entire company and Kathleen is a fantastic partner,” JB Perrette, CEO and president of WBD’s international streaming and video games, mentioned. “She has fully embraced our streaming mission and the networks’ content has greatly enhanced the service’s breadth and appeal.”
To make that content material that helps serve Max, Finch is essentially targeted on capitalizing on the unscripted star energy that fuels viewership on linear TV. Finch prizes the fandoms of staples like Bobby Flay, Duff Goldman, Drew and Jonathan Scott, Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson, and now Selena Gomez, whose “Selena + Chef” is heading from Max to Food Network for a vacation occasion sequence.
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Kathleen Finch at Food Network for decades,” mentioned Flay, who most just lately renegotiated his cope with the community in 2021. “Through all of the evolutions of both the media and the food industry, Kathleen has been at its core driving creative content and breaking new talent into household names. Although her responsibilities in recent years have expanded to running all US networks for WBD, we constantly meet one on one (over delicious meals of course) to discuss ‘what’s next’ in food and how to keep the Food Network as fresh as possible.”
“Talent development is such a lost art, but her ability to identify and nurture careers across the playing field is magnificent,” Sherrod says. “Kathleen has masterfully inspired the entire culture of creatives at HGTV to bring forth shows that are authentically relatable, diverse, and entertaining.”
Most just lately, she locked down Guy Fieri for an additional three years at Food Network in a deal valued at greater than $100 million. That’s cash nicely spent for the ROI to be present in Flavortown.
“So much of the talent at all our networks are the backbone of what makes our brands so successful,” Finch mentioned. “But Guy is one of those talent that has a very rare gift. He’s one of our very few stars who can bring an audience for his shows over and over and over – meaning his repeats air as successfully as his premieres do. We can stack a night of ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ and fans will flock to the whole night, and they’ll watch the same episodes over and over and over again.”
Finch came visiting to Discovery in 2018 as a part of the acquisition of Scripps Networks (the unique house of the now 30-year-old Food community), the place she was prime programming exec, to develop into certainly one of Zaslav’s key lieutenants within the pre-WarnerMedia merger days, tasked with main Discovery’s 12 life-style manufacturers.
Following the start of Warner Bros. Discovery, Finch was given oversight of just about all US networks, together with the so-called “T-Nets,” TBS, TNT and truTV, and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim.
Those added channels that historically deal in largely scripted fare have seen a number of cancellations and slate shuffles within the post-merger period, and a brand new give attention to sports activities, acquisitions and airing present Warner Bros. movies and sequence, however Finch says “we are definitely still in the scripted business” — revealing a “really exciting scripted project” within the works at TNT that can be introduced “very shortly” — “but we’re being very selective about it.”
“The T-Nets were a little bit different, it was a little bit more of a broadcast model,” Finch says. “We have scripted, we have some sports, we have some reality, we have some shiny floor. So we’ve reined that in a little bit and we’re doubling down on what really works. We’re doing a lot in the movie space, we’re licensing a lot of movies and then packaging them up. Ad sales loves that, it gives ad sales a good opportunity, but also the fans will come and it gives us a good opportunity to promote some of our other priorities coming out of the theatrical team.” She cited TBS and TNT planning to drum up curiosity within the “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” franchise by airing 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and 1971’s “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” in help of Warner Bros. upcoming launch of “Wonka” starring Timothée Chalamet.
And her selections are backed by the person in cost, who fortunately had Finch’s stacked provide of unscripted hits to depend on throughout the current Hollywood strikes.
“Kathleen has an amazing ability to understand what really resonates with viewers – what they want to watch, what they identify with, what touches their hearts and minds – which is why she is such a powerhouse creative and business leader,” Zaslav says.