Latest / She’s Smart / Elaine Frontain Bryant - EVP and Head of Programming A&E, Lifetime and LMN

Transcript

Elaine Frontain Bryant - EVP and Head of Programming A&E, Lifetime and LMN · She’s Smart

• 0:05
  Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
• 0:10
  On today's episode, I have the incredible Elaine Frontain Bryant.
• 0:15
  Elaine is the executive vice president and head of programming at A&E,
• 0:21
  Lifetime, and the Lifetime Movie Network.
• 0:23
  With a career full of Emmy-winning hits and groundbreaking shows.
• 0:28
  She's the powerhouse behind series like Leah Romini's Scientology in the Aftermath,
• 0:33
  Duck Dynasty, and the number one cable show right now, Gypsy Rose Life After Lockup.
• 0:41
  Elaine is reshaping the TV landscape, blending bold storytelling with cultural impact.
• 0:48
  I'm so excited to have her on the podcast. So get cozy as we connect,
• 0:53
  learn, and laugh together on She's Smart.
• 0:59
  Yeah, because I want to be able to sit back. Yeah, that's your cozy.
• 1:02
  Yeah. I feel cozy. I'm so glad you're here.
• 1:05
  I have to tell you, when we had dinner with your husband and my husband and
• 1:10
  our mutual friend, Dawn, after talking to you at that dinner,
• 1:13
  you were in my list immediately.
• 1:16
  That means so much to me. Thank you. I hadn't even put the podcast out there.
• 1:19
  It wasn't happening yet. I knew I wanted it to happen.
• 1:22
  And I was like, all right, Elaine's on my list. She's on it.
• 1:25
  Well, I have to say, I've been listening to your podcasts, and they're wonderful.
• 1:28
  And I'm very touched and honored to be part of this list, really.
• 1:31
  Oh, I'm so glad. I am. I'm so glad. That makes me so happy. I really enjoyed
• 1:35
  getting to know you through my research and what you do. I'm fascinated. I have notes.
• 1:41
  You have had an extraordinary career in television.
• 1:46
  What inspired you to go into television? I have such formative memories.
• 1:51
  I'm the baby of a big family of six kids, but most of them were off at school.
• 1:56
  And I have such memories of sitting and watching television with my parents
• 2:00
  and seeing how much TV meant to them. We all came together naturally.
• 2:05
  The TV was a very different situation in that moment. It was like you watched
• 2:08
  it when it was on. But Charlie's Angels and Love Boat and Mork and Mindy and
• 2:13
  all of those fun 70s shows really brought my parents together.
• 2:18
  And I was really, really moved by that. And movies, too.
• 2:21
  I didn't know if I wanted to do movies or TV, but my mom loved movies.
• 2:25
  And I have such memories of just being there, our Christmas tradition.
• 2:29
  Was after all the presents and stuff. It was like, what movie were we going to do?
• 2:33
  We rolled out the newspaper and we saw the times and we all went to a movie
• 2:38
  together as a family on Christmas afternoon.
• 2:40
  That is so funny. That's so parallel. That's what we did. Yeah. We would go see a movie.
• 2:45
  In California, where I grew up in San Francisco, we had the Chronicle and they had the pink pages.
• 2:49
  Yeah. And I can see them still to this day. And then the TV Guide,
• 2:52
  how we knew what shows were on. That was the only way we knew.
• 2:55
  But I looked at that stuff and I went, I want to get people to come together to watch things.
• 3:00
  And so I got into entertainment for that reason. So did you go to school for that or did you?
• 3:05
  I did. I have a radio TV film degree. I went to school in Texas where I'm from, TCU.
• 3:11
  But I didn't go to a big film school or anything like that. We made our own
• 3:14
  films. We made our own projects.
• 3:16
  We learned things like scheduling. If you were going to schedule CBS, what would you do?
• 3:20
  And back then it was like you moved magnets.
• 3:25
  You would write a name of a show on a magnet and move it around the way they did.
• 3:28
  It wasn't computer programming, wasn't anything like that. And it was really fun.
• 3:33
  I love that. The strategy of programming, I have always been attracted to.
• 3:38
  What's going to fit where and how is it going to work?
• 3:41
  Right. We call it audience need state. That's a very researched kind of term.
• 3:44
  But why someone would come to this show who might then want to stay for this
• 3:47
  show, who this will speak to them in this show.
• 3:50
  If you like that, it's a very like Amazon, you know, kind of.
• 3:54
  Yeah, it's the original, but that's it. It's like, wow, this flows into this,
• 3:57
  this flows into that. And it makes a whole lot of sense.
• 3:59
  So I'm not a scheduler, but I'm a curator and that's what I do.
• 4:04
  I'm not a maker. I'm not the producer that goes off and makes.
• 4:07
  I work closely enough with them to do that. It really satisfies my creative
• 4:11
  side of things and just really satisfies what I wanted to do when I was a little
• 4:16
  girl, honestly. What was your first job out of school?
• 4:19
  I moved to California and I was in the mailroom.
• 4:22
  But the summer before, actually the summer before I was graduating college,
• 4:28
  so between my junior and senior year of college, I went and I stayed with my
• 4:32
  sister's best friend in California. And she was producing commercials.
• 4:36
  And she sent me up with somebody that she knew that she was not working with.
• 4:39
  And I didn't have a car, so I borrowed another sister's car,
• 4:43
  which was a stick shift, which I did not know how to drive.
• 4:46
  And by the way, there's no GPS. And so it's like the Thomas Brothers Guide or
• 4:50
  the Maps Go Guide. and they would send me out for the simplest task to go pick
• 4:55
  something up and it would take me hours.
• 4:57
  And it was in the hilliest part of LA that they put me in. It was like,
• 5:01
  I might as well have been in San Francisco.
• 5:02
  And I stalled that car and I'm sure I ruined my sister's car.
• 5:07
  Eventually, at some point, my dad had mercy on me and said, give your sister
• 5:10
  a car back and I'll rent you a car for this thing.
• 5:12
  So I worked that summer and it was kind of scary and daunting for all those reasons.
• 5:17
  But I jumped right. I jumped into it, but I didn't know how to drive a car.
• 5:21
  I didn't know how to drive a car. I didn't know LA.
• 5:23
  And I loved it. And yet I was scared. And so when I graduated,
• 5:27
  I had been interning in Dallas. I went to school in Fort Worth,
• 5:30
  which is right next to Dallas.
• 5:31
  And they hired me where I had been interning as a senior.
• 5:36
  And it was a podunk little company selling, if you can imagine,
• 5:40
  a syndicated show where people used to, you know, you'd call up and go,
• 5:44
  hi, I have this kid show, channel 13 involved. Austin.
• 5:48
  And then I'd mail them a tape because that's what we did back then.
• 5:51
  And then we saw if we sold the show and they picked up the show.
• 5:54
  That was never going to be what I wanted to do forever. And my dad called me
• 5:58
  that first summer saying, what are you doing?
• 6:01
  Go back out there. You can always come home. I know you're scared.
• 6:04
  And he drove out with me and I got a mailroom job for $300 a week.
• 6:11
  In L.A.? In L.A., yes. And it was on this lot called CBS MTM Studios.
• 6:19
  They had filmed Gilligan's Island there. But in the moment I was there,
• 6:23
  they were doing a show called 30-something.
• 6:25
  I loved that show. I loved 30-something so much.
• 6:29
  And what I did was I drove a golf cart around and I delivered mail.
• 6:33
  And I flirted with Ken Olin and Timothy Bousfield as much as I could.
• 6:37
  Trying to get in to meet Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. because I thought
• 6:42
  that show was so amazing.
• 6:44
  It was only on for four years, but I worked in a mailroom there and they were
• 6:48
  doing some Disney sitcoms.
• 6:49
  They were doing the Cosby show there. It was a really fun place to be.
• 6:53
  And I eventually got hired. I was only there a couple of months.
• 6:57
  Reading people's mail, that sounds illegal, but I was putting documents that
• 7:03
  weren't wrapped up in envelopes and reading everything that I could and learning and absorbing.
• 7:08
  There are things that people put in mail slots at a studio that are legal documents,
• 7:13
  but it'll be like a call sheet.
• 7:15
  What time should the actors arrive the next day?
• 7:17
  What scenes they were going to shoot? And then something called a production
• 7:21
  report, which was the legal document of what they actually got done the day before, you know?
• 7:26
  And so they would describe the scenes and said, like, I was in the know of what
• 7:31
  they were going to be shooting on 30-something, which was very fun for me.
• 7:34
  I absorbed and learned and then I became an assistant in for a TV show.
• 7:41
  And then I moved over to Disney to work for the production executive that oversaw that TV show.
• 7:46
  Those were fun days. They were shooting a show called Home Improvement.
• 7:49
  I remember that show. And we would go to the tapings every Friday night.
• 7:52
  And it was just so wonderful to see it made.
• 7:56
  Yeah. And know that then it would be in somebody's home.
• 7:59
  And Tim Allen. It was Tim Allen. Tim Allen. I loved Home Improvement.
• 8:03
  You were in such a great moment for television.
• 8:07
  You got to see so many great shows come up. I did. So is there a project you developed.
• 8:14
  From like the beginning where you said, all right, this hits.
• 8:18
  This is going to be a good one before it even premiered.
• 8:21
  And then it went out and you nailed it. Yeah.
• 8:25
  I don't want to sound braggadocious in any way, but there have been a couple
• 8:30
  of biggies that I just kind of knew.
• 8:32
  And I feel very proud of a show called Duck Dynasty.
• 8:36
  So Duck Dynasty came in as a hunting tape.
• 8:39
  The women weren't even in the tape. The mother, Miss Kay, like holds up one
• 8:44
  duck. that she's going to cook that they caught.
• 8:46
  It could have been a History Channel show. It could have been a Nat Geo show.
• 8:50
  I even called my colleagues when it came in at History Channel and I was like,
• 8:54
  don't you want to do this show? Because they were funny and they were hunters, right?
• 8:58
  And I was working at A&E at the time.
• 9:01
  I was the senior vice president. And we're a dual audience.
• 9:05
  So I didn't see the way the show was when it came in as a take as anything that
• 9:10
  could work for both audiences, but that women would have any interest, right?
• 9:13
  So I called my colleagues at History Channel. We're a sister brother network.
• 9:16
  And they're like, no, they had just launched swamp people. And they're like,
• 9:19
  no, we're hunting alligators, not ducks. You know, like ducks are a little small.
• 9:23
  So I dug in with the production company and I found out that the wives were
• 9:29
  beautiful, that they were all in the business, that they all got together for
• 9:34
  like dinners and things, that they had wonderful children.
• 9:38
  And I morphed it into a sitcom, you know, and they were funny.
• 9:43
  They were made for TV. They were ready.
• 9:45
  That is, there's no training on my part of the Robertsons.
• 9:48
  I kind of helped craft what the dinner scene at the end was inspired by the
• 9:52
  Waltons. That was like the morality moment.
• 9:55
  I am totally aging myself talking about Morgan Mindy and the.
• 10:00
  It was a wonderful thing. And through there, we did two pilots at that show
• 10:05
  because it was like guns or guns. Okay.
• 10:09
  They shoot a lot of guns. They look different.
• 10:12
  And my senior management was not sure. And I was like, please give me a chance.
• 10:17
  Please give me a chance. And when it came in, I was like, holy moly,
• 10:20
  not only one was hysterical, but the second one was hysterical. And it was great.
• 10:25
  And the first season wasn't a super hit off the bat, but it grew and grew and grew.
• 10:29
  And then it's really one of the biggest shows ever in cable television.
• 10:32
  I'm really, really very proud of it.
• 10:34
  So I watched that show with Ben, my husband. Thank you. And loved it.
• 10:39
  And I think I told you this story when I was pregnant with my first,
• 10:43
  Easton. We were living in the city.
• 10:45
  And I went to the hospital and they told me I wasn't ready, so I had to go back
• 10:48
  home. And while I was laboring, I watched Duck Dynasty.
• 10:52
  Thank you. The entire time. Did you laugh? I laughed. I loved them.
• 10:56
  And I always wondered, and I'm so glad you answered this question because It's literally on my sheet.
• 11:00
  If the dinner at the very end, I loved how they had disagreements and they had
• 11:06
  business stuff going on and family stuff going on.
• 11:08
  But at the end of the night, the end of the week, they sat together.
• 11:12
  They broke bread together.
• 11:14
  They said thanks. They had grace. And that was my favorite moment of the show.
• 11:19
  Again, that was something they always did or was it kind of brought in a little
• 11:23
  bit more? They did it, but we turned it into the kind of summing up the lessons of the week, right?
• 11:29
  So they are a very close family. They are together all the time.
• 11:32
  I'm still in touch with Corey and Willie, and now they're the grandparents.
• 11:36
  And that's super exciting. And they, you know, they do that.
• 11:41
  And they almost do it more like a potluck now because there are so many of them,
• 11:45
  right? The crafting for the show really was just like what Willie's voiceover
• 11:49
  would be as he went around the table and what people learned and that kind of
• 11:52
  thing. That was the crafting of it.
• 11:54
  But they organically did that. They do tend to come together. It was so wholesome.
• 11:59
  I know. And it resonated. It resonated. It really hit, as the kids like to say. It really did.
• 12:05
  I agree with you. And I think one of the really interesting things,
• 12:08
  and, you know, as a programmer, you don't have to like everything that you program, right?
• 12:13
  You just have to have a gut why it's good television, why it's going to entertain
• 12:18
  someone and that people will see themselves in some of these characters.
• 12:21
  And that I think is you wouldn't think that there'd be like a hairy guy,
• 12:26
  you know, but like that was a sitcom that was the father was made fun of at
• 12:30
  all times. That was a Dick Van Dyke kind of trope.
• 12:33
  I developed Sword Wars 2 from the get go. And that was a very,
• 12:36
  I don't know if you ever watched that show. But that show is very different, right?
• 12:40
  But that show came to us and it was like a real world Price is Right.
• 12:45
  And it was a time where Pawn Stars was big and American Pickers was big.
• 12:50
  Again, the History Channel wasn't going to make Storage Wars. And I was like, why not?
• 12:55
  Couldn't predict what was going to be in the lockers. Like I'm sure a lot of
• 12:57
  people think we stopped the lockers. We did not stop the lockers.
• 13:00
  So they couldn't know that there could be historical things. They didn't know.
• 13:03
  But we saw that as the price is right.
• 13:06
  And that production company did such an amazing job. Like every character,
• 13:11
  I'm air quoting, every character has their own theme song. They were coming to the OK Corral.
• 13:16
  We crafted that. And I learned so much by working in the edit bay with the showrunner
• 13:22
  named Jeff Conroy, who created that show.
• 13:25
  When the act break should be. We timed it. It was three acts.
• 13:29
  And so the thing would go up and nobody would see what it was.
• 13:32
  And then they'd have to come back.
• 13:34
  Because I program for TV that still has commercials.
• 13:37
  And not everybody watches TV that way anymore. But I still have to program like that.
• 13:42
  And my makers, my creators have to still pull people through those moments of, please don't go.
• 13:48
  It used to be everybody left, went to the refrigerator, got a Diet Coke and
• 13:51
  some snacks, came back, or a beer, and sat.
• 13:55
  And now you just can't count on that because there's so much,
• 13:58
  I'll watch it later, I'll watch it on demand, I'll do whatever.
• 14:01
  But we still program for what the linear situation is.
• 14:05
  And that's part of the challenge of doing what I do in this moment.
• 14:08
  Yeah, because it's changed so much.
• 14:10
  So I loved the part of Storage Wars when you would watch, and you were wondering, which box?
• 14:15
  I know. Were they, they're thinking about it, they're talking about it, you don't know.
• 14:19
  Then they grab like the ugliest box like
• 14:22
  there's it's going to be all papers it's rotten and there's like a
• 14:25
  treasure inside it was always it was fascinating it
• 14:28
  was fun it was fast such a fun show was there a show
• 14:31
  that you really loved that didn't take off oh there's been so many oh there's
• 14:36
  been so many by the way the ratio of success is very hard yeah okay so i've
• 14:42
  done a lot of biggies I've done Curse of Oak Island and Alone and 60 Days In and stuff.
• 14:48
  I really like paranormal programming.
• 14:51
  And so my very first pilot like 18 years ago that I got to have made on my own,
• 14:57
  like brought into the room, I was a baby programmer, was a show called Paranormal State.
• 15:03
  And my friend had, and this is like 18 years ago, and my friend had the rights
• 15:08
  to this team of paranormal investigators who were students at Penn State, and they really did it.
• 15:14
  And this guy named Ryan Buell had experiences as a child and always wanted to
• 15:18
  help people and believed in it.
• 15:20
  And he had deep Catholic faith and really believed that there is an evil and a good.
• 15:25
  And so, I mean, I actually have chills talking about it. I was so freaking moved.
• 15:29
  The first taping, the first pilot we ever did with him.
• 15:33
  It was a little boy who saw somebody like behind him, you know,
• 15:36
  and it was like, you're so freaked out.
• 15:38
  Anyway, that show was a big hit for us. And from there, I was really amazed
• 15:43
  by kids that have ability that it gets shut down as they do.
• 15:47
  So I developed a show called from my own idea called Psychic Kids, and that did okay for us.
• 15:52
  But about 10 years later...
• 15:55
  A&E had gotten out of the paranormal business, right? Like shows run their course
• 16:00
  and it wasn't working anymore.
• 16:02
  And we decided to bring it back. We decided to bring Psychic Kids back.
• 16:05
  And I thought that it would really hit again because parents love that stuff.
• 16:09
  They hear it. And it's like, is my kid troubled?
• 16:11
  Does she need a psychiatrist or is she maybe seeing something?
• 16:15
  It didn't. Nobody watched it again. We also rebooted Ghost Hunters and brought it back to us.
• 16:20
  It had been on SyFy for a long time and that nobody, I was deeply surprised
• 16:23
  by how rejected those shows were.
• 16:25
  That's fascinating. So I believe in all of that. I believe in those.
• 16:28
  Good. We have a lot of stories. I've seen them. I know they're around.
• 16:31
  The house that we're in right now where we tape, my friend Tyler's house, her house is haunted.
• 16:36
  And I have been in her house helping her with her closet, getting rid of things in one room.
• 16:41
  And I walked in and I could feel it. I could feel the presence.
• 16:47
  And I was like, Tyler, she is here. It's an older woman who lives upstairs, a ghost in her house.
• 16:52
  Is it one of the Coley's? I don't know. It could be. Who knows?
• 16:55
  We don't know who it is. We got to figure it out. We got to research it.
• 16:57
  Okay. Note to self. Research that one.
• 16:59
  And I said, Tyler, she's here. I said, I'm just going to talk to her for a second
• 17:02
  and then we'll continue.
• 17:03
  And I said, ghost, whoever you are, I'm sorry I'm in your space.
• 17:06
  I will be here for an hour.
• 17:08
  I won't touch anything but Tyler's clothing. And then I will leave. And it dissipated.
• 17:13
  The feeling dissipated.
• 17:15
  One hour on the dot. I kid you not.
• 17:19
  The feeling came back in wow so you have some ability to
• 17:23
  really feel that energy and i looked at tyler and i went and we're done
• 17:26
  she doesn't want me here anymore we're done not gonna piss her off
• 17:28
  she also wants that clothes she don't be and they're all vintage we were done
• 17:31
  in charleston and we went to magnolia plantation and there was a group of seven
• 17:37
  of us and three or four of the girls went where the enslaved barely lived and
• 17:42
  they came out of that so messed up yeah they're So like the energy was not okay.
• 17:47
  They were like trembling. It was awful. So I had to call my sister who is this
• 17:53
  sense of, I don't even know, world, being, universe.
• 17:56
  And she taught us all how to brush the spirits off of us.
• 18:00
  Really? So we're standing in the middle of, I didn't have to do it,
• 18:03
  but I'm doing it with them.
• 18:04
  She sent us a video of it. And she was like, okay, guys, here's what you do.
• 18:09
  And she's going through this series where you brush.
• 18:11
  So nobody stays with you and attaches to you and you leave. You tell it,
• 18:15
  like, I'm good, please leave. Like, she had a whole prayer that you do.
• 18:19
  So I do a lot of white light, literally top to top.
• 18:23
  Toes on my own self whenever I'm worried or travel. I do it on my kids.
• 18:30
  My daughter drives now and goes out at night and I literally just vision it.
• 18:35
  I do believe in all of that and protective forces.
• 18:39
  I have never been as sensitive to detecting spirits, but Genevieve was when
• 18:45
  she was young and really dismisses it now.
• 18:47
  Would hate me to even say that if anybody was going to hear that that she knew
• 18:50
  but she was oh she saw things or would be like mom did you just call my name
• 18:55
  you know and it's a gift you know and then it shuts down even though I asked
• 19:02
  her not to shut it down but she definitely the house we we had a home in Rhinebeck
• 19:05
  our upstate weekend home,
• 19:07
  her mean her demeanor would change she would kind of cock her head like this
• 19:13
  and I was like what we're not alone and I was like is it grandma is it papa
• 19:17
  is it my cousin Patrick and she's like.
• 19:20
  No it's it's the man he says it's his house
• 19:22
  and we bought a house
• 19:26
  from an 80 something year old man and it was 10 years later it makes sense and
• 19:29
  i was like jim i have chills which makes me think it's true and i was like jim
• 19:33
  i'm so sorry we fucked up your garden yeah it's such a beautiful garden but
• 19:38
  she would just go do you see faces there like i do and i was like no but it's okay You're not unsafe.
• 19:44
  And it's a blessing that you see them and just tell them hello.
• 19:48
  But she is not, you know, now she doesn't. But it was more, she saw less than
• 19:53
  she heard. She heard a lot.
• 19:55
  I hope that she grows back into it. Yeah. I really do. Because you could tap
• 19:58
  into it. I tapped into it further, just allowing it to.
• 20:02
  I'm going to send you the pilot from Paranormal State because,
• 20:05
  you know, again, it's old, but it's fascinating.
• 20:07
  And, you know, the thing is, that is hard to translate to television sometimes.
• 20:11
  So, right? So it's like you can sense authenticity and you can also sense,
• 20:18
  oh, that's just a music cue and that's just – and did they really move – did
• 20:21
  that cabinet door really open?
• 20:23
  You know, that stuff, people have a high BS meter, right?
• 20:27
  And so telling paranormal authentically, I think, is – which is what we always try to do.
• 20:32
  We also brought the emotional into it. So ours was about parents trying to help
• 20:37
  children who were plagued when the world didn't believe that they were plagued
• 20:41
  by whatever they were seeing or feeling.
• 20:44
  Or it was almost like we do a show called Intervention. It was almost like an
• 20:48
  intervention type thing. We healed these people by coming and doing this investigation.
• 20:53
  It wasn't just, it wasn't, Ghost Hunters didn't go as emotionally, you know, deep that way.
• 20:58
  But that stuff, I was sad that it didn't work coming back.
• 21:01
  But, you know, there's always a time and a place. And who knows,
• 21:03
  in a couple of years, they will
• 21:05
  try it again. It could definitely happen again. I'll put you on the show.
• 21:08
  Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I would just love to be a part of it and listen to it.
• 21:11
  So you have these big streaming giants now like Netflix.
• 21:16
  And obviously when we were growing up, because the Waltons, there's a joke in
• 21:20
  my family that we all go to bed at night and we say, good night,
• 21:22
  Timmy. Good night, Mary. Good night, Johnny.
• 21:24
  So I'm with you on that. You've not aged me. I am with you on that. I do the same thing.
• 21:28
  How has this new streaming part of our life changed for you and how you program
• 21:36
  and put things out there?
• 21:38
  Because I binge watched Gypsy Rose, which I want to talk about,
• 21:42
  but I'll talk about that next on Hulu because I have Hulu and I get all the
• 21:47
  channels, the cable channels because we cut cable.
• 21:49
  Thank you very much. Right? I know, right? This is terrible.
• 21:52
  Hi, you know, programmer for all of life's I mean, I don't have cable.
• 21:57
  So we watch it through Hulu and I'm sure there are many others that do that.
• 22:00
  So how are you navigating that with ad dollars and this and that? It's hard.
• 22:04
  That's the hardest challenge. So my job is, first and foremost,
• 22:08
  get people to come to Lanier, but to pick shows that people will watch wherever they will watch it.
• 22:14
  And then there are other people's jobs to make sure that we monetize wherever they see it.
• 22:19
  And you hope that it's a virtuous circle that then they will come back, right?
• 22:25
  Gypsy Rose is an example of a recent Lifetime show that is very,
• 22:29
  very young. So is Dance Moms, right? Yeah.
• 22:32
  Dance Moms is gangbuster on Hulu, as is, you know, Gypsy, the down download
• 22:37
  to own where people like go to Apple or whatever and buy it and own it that way.
• 22:42
  Those young girls are never going to come and get, you're not even getting cable.
• 22:47
  So they're not going to come and get cable, but they're going to know it's lifetime.
• 22:51
  And, and as long as we can monetize the content, but it is very hard. It's harder.
• 22:56
  We used to be in a hundred million homes per A&E, and now we're in like 60 million
• 23:00
  ish people are cord cutting. And yet,
• 23:03
  You know, our business model is that while we do not own our own streamer,
• 23:08
  it's not like we're Oxygen, but we have Peacock or Bravo and we have Peacock.
• 23:11
  It's not like we don't have that.
• 23:13
  But we do have a relationship with Hulu because we are half owned by Disney. Okay.
• 23:18
  And we have a great relationship with them. And so they air most of our things.
• 23:22
  And it's all branded. You know that it's Lifetime, right? We have our own,
• 23:25
  Amy has its own thing, Lifetime History.
• 23:27
  Everybody's got their own little placard. And then we monetize on all these
• 23:30
  fast channels. And so the amazing part of the business model that our founders
• 23:35
  really did is that we don't just license things.
• 23:39
  We own the majority, like 99% of our content.
• 23:42
  And so we can put it wherever we want to do it. And we do monetize it that way.
• 23:48
  So what's the difference between a show that's licensed and not licensed?
• 23:51
  So license would be like, I rent it. I'm renting it. I don't own it.
• 23:55
  I'm renting an apartment. I don't buy my house. Okay. Is there an example of
• 23:58
  that? Sometimes we try to do a co-production with, because we like a show with
• 24:03
  the UK, let's say, and we think it'll work.
• 24:05
  But we can't use it everywhere because somebody else controls the rights.
• 24:09
  We don't own the IP, the copyright. We don't. We just, we have it.
• 24:12
  But for the most part, we fully commission and we own everything.
• 24:15
  And so we have participants who are the makers, the producers get some part
• 24:21
  of that, right, after we profit around the world.
• 24:24
  But we have networks around the world where the content goes.
• 24:27
  But it is hard. It is a challenge. Sometimes it feels, well,
• 24:31
  viewing habits have changed so much.
• 24:33
  I'm actually glad that streamers are dropping weekly more and more.
• 24:36
  A lot of shows I watch, I get pissed off because I'm like, what?
• 24:39
  I want to watch them all right now. And it's like, ugh, I'm only,
• 24:42
  you know, it's like one a week.
• 24:44
  I watch a lot of shows that are just dropping once a week, which I'm glad at
• 24:47
  least people are doing that because it's not like you spend all weekend unless you wait.
• 24:51
  If you do that, you can go to lifetime.com or aane.com or history and watch
• 24:55
  that, all of them anyway.
• 24:56
  But it is not easy. So we've had to, we get paid from our affiliates,
• 25:02
  our deals with the Comcasts and those people, the carriage deals, right, those people.
• 25:07
  And then the ad dollars. And as those numbers shrink, we just have had to find
• 25:13
  revenue elsewhere. And so-
• 25:15
  The end line there is that we own the content.
• 25:19
  We make content people want to watch. We'll pay for it. We will get paid for
• 25:22
  it somewhere else, you know? Yeah.
• 25:25
  I binge watched the prison confessions of Gypsy Rose. Yes.
• 25:31
  That was when she was in jail. That was when she was in jail.
• 25:33
  I can see how it was Cable's number one show.
• 25:37
  Yeah. I could not take my eyes off of it. I had to know what happened.
• 25:41
  I was fascinated by it. The same thing happened with Leah Remini with The Scientology.
• 25:49
  It was like, we all have wanted to know about this. We all have been so curious about this.
• 25:54
  Now we get like this little peek into that.
• 25:58
  Fascinating. How, and there are more, but how do you stay on top of it?
• 26:03
  Because you have really hit some big ones.
• 26:06
  Where do you, how do you find it? Because you really have a knack for it.
• 26:10
  Honestly, that's harder these days because of the streamers,
• 26:14
  because they have a lot more money to throw at things.
• 26:16
  And that is a challenge, I'll be honest. Gypsy Rose, there's a woman that I
• 26:21
  work with named Laura Flurry who had been working for a long time.
• 26:25
  She actually was working with another producer named Melissa Moore who had a
• 26:31
  relationship with Gypsy for years.
• 26:33
  Melissa herself, her father, was a serial killer. And so she actually has spent
• 26:38
  her life working with people who have been in and around crime and specifically
• 26:44
  parental or familial criminals.
• 26:48
  And so she reached out with a lot of empathy and understanding that you can
• 26:53
  imagine to Gypsy and got in with Gypsy.
• 26:56
  It's only because of my colleague Laura's relationship with this producer that it landed with us.
• 27:02
  And it's amazing. And then, you know, the thing we chose to believe is that,
• 27:07
  and there had been very successful movies.
• 27:09
  People had done docs and movies before without her, okay?
• 27:13
  So we chose to believe that people would really care to see the true story.
• 27:16
  You think you know the story, but you don't. That's a hallmark.
• 27:19
  That's something you hear me say like five times a day.
• 27:21
  You think you know the story, but you really don't. The bet that we also took
• 27:25
  was that they were going to care.
• 27:27
  The audience was going to care once she was out, right? So now she's out and she's pregnant.
• 27:31
  And which man is she with? That's a very different, you know,
• 27:33
  I started the word need, the conversation with the need state.
• 27:38
  That's a very different need state. That's not just a crime thing.
• 27:40
  She's in jail. Is she going to get out? When's she going to get out?
• 27:43
  Is she going to get paroled?
• 27:44
  Now it's like, what does Gypsy's hair look like? And what boy is she going to be with?
• 27:49
  And people care. Some people hate Watch, believe me. But she did her time.
• 27:53
  But she did kill her mother.
• 27:54
  And it's really been fascinating to see this. But I love that. You think you know that.
• 28:00
  And then we peel back the layers and really go there. And Leah Remini, same thing.
• 28:03
  Going Clear had been a very successful doc on HBO. and nobody was brave enough to do the series.
• 28:11
  Scientology is scary. You know what I mean? And they'll come after you.
• 28:14
  And I can't tell you the stories on the podcast, but when we're off,
• 28:17
  I'll tell you some stories.
• 28:18
  But it's not every advertiser wants to be around it. So it was a high risk show
• 28:22
  to go for, but she was so authentic and had such a mission.
• 28:26
  And Mike Rinder did as well, that we were like, all she's doing is driving around
• 28:30
  telling stories. That was kind of amazing that that many people really stuck with it.
• 28:35
  And she still, God bless her, she still is. We're working with her right now on something else,
• 28:39
  but she is still so involved in just helping people and the cause of people
• 28:45
  getting out or connecting with their family that they've been disconnected from
• 28:49
  and things like that. She's remarkable.
• 28:51
  I'm not a crime watcher, but A&E could be described as a crime network,
• 28:56
  but that doesn't mean I don't know what a good story is, Right.
• 28:59
  But and people love crime. They love it. They love it. All my friends do.
• 29:03
  And I definitely and frankly, these Lifetime movies are hard for me to watch
• 29:08
  because a lot of them start with a young girl who is abducted or something and
• 29:12
  they'll make it right. Like we don't do the ones where they don't make it.
• 29:15
  But I'm the mother of two young girls and I choose not to watch that for entertainment myself.
• 29:20
  But I have to spend a lot of time in there. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges.
• 29:24
  I ran History Channel for many years and it's a lot of time. I'm
• 29:28
  I am snake phobic, like phobic, phobic on a level like can't open a book.
• 29:34
  And if there's a snake phobic on a level, like if it's on the TV and I don't know what's coming.
• 29:38
  And a lot of snake, a lot of snakes are in pitches when you're doing something like swamp people.
• 29:43
  Now they have a whole show on swamp people, the snake invasion or serpent invasion.
• 29:47
  If my team would not tell me the time code, or if there was a snake in the tape, they have to warn me.
• 29:54
  First of all, most people know not to put a snake in the tape that they send
• 29:57
  me, even if it's set in Louisiana, you know?
• 29:59
  Wow. So anyone who sends tapes to you that want to promote, do something.
• 30:03
  Yes. They know. Don't put the snake in it. The team tells them,
• 30:06
  do not put the snake in it.
• 30:07
  It's a little easier on A&E, but history, it was really hard.
• 30:11
  I did a show called Alone that is still on history, but we were like up in British
• 30:15
  Columbia and I was like, there's no snakes up there. I love a good Alaska show.
• 30:20
  But I literally I'm like, you could get fired.
• 30:26
  If you don't, if you don't know, I mean, I have thrown coffee up like, it is a problem.
• 30:32
  So it's funny to be able to know what people will like, even if you can't stand it,
• 30:38
  you know, and those are just two examples of living in crime,
• 30:42
  knowing that that is satisfying, and knowing that you can help make the story
• 30:46
  as resonant as possible.
• 30:48
  And a lot of times people learn because these are based on true stories.
• 30:51
  And it's the cunning and smarts of the women that get themselves out of the
• 30:54
  situation that is pretty amazing.
• 30:56
  And the other stuff, people just love survival and nobody cares about snakes
• 30:59
  the way I do. Oh, it's fascinating. Can you share anything?
• 31:04
  That you are currently developing, Dr. Pimple Popper.
• 31:07
  Has that been announced? It has. I read about it. So there is one on here that
• 31:10
  hasn't been announced, but it is on your site.
• 31:12
  And I did read about it on the Daily Mail, which is such a great form of news.
• 31:18
  Exactly. You can be sure those sources are correct. So Dr.
• 31:22
  Pimple Popper, I have watched Dr. Pimple Popper. You have? Oh, but from YouTube.
• 31:28
  I am fascinated by the grotesque things like that. Really? Yeah.
• 31:32
  I can't turn away from it. I need to see what comes out, how much of it comes
• 31:36
  out. This is so disgusting. I'm sorry, guys. This is me. This is my truth.
• 31:40
  I just – and I think that also there's something about what she's doing to help
• 31:44
  change people that you get lost in the gore and the, like, science of it.
• 31:49
  Not even science of it, but, like, how is that living in someone's body? I know.
• 31:52
  But at the end of the day, she's doing it because it's literally helping someone, changing their lives.
• 31:58
  I can't imagine living with something on your face that's growing that – I mean,
• 32:02
  I just think it's fascinating.
• 32:03
  Can you tell us a little bit about that series that's going to be happening?
• 32:07
  So it's very similar to the other series.
• 32:09
  First of all, she's maybe the nicest woman I've ever met in my life.
• 32:12
  And everything you just said really encapsulates why and what.
• 32:16
  She is so touched by helping people and that people come from around the world
• 32:22
  to her because they believe that she's the only one that can help them.
• 32:25
  And that's the power of television, too.
• 32:27
  She's the daughter of a dermatologist. So she's been in this her whole life
• 32:32
  and she is deeply passionate, but it is all about the people.
• 32:35
  I would say one of the really fun things that we're doing in this is that she
• 32:39
  has some young female protégés that she's really training.
• 32:42
  And they're just some great characters. And that is going to be something that
• 32:45
  you'll see new. It will be very similar.
• 32:47
  It'll be the same kind of life-changing, you know, one big story and a couple of small stories.
• 32:52
  But really seeing the office more and how the protégés work is really how we've
• 32:56
  kind of made it our own. Does she teach them how the process?
• 33:00
  Because the skill that has to go into that. You can't do this.
• 33:03
  I mean, how many times are we told as girls, sorry, and boys,
• 33:05
  I tell my son now, Easton this, I'm like, sorry, Easton, don't pop it.
• 33:09
  Don't pop it. It's like hot compress.
• 33:12
  Well, now they make those adorable little patches, those little stars.
• 33:14
  I've used those patches every once in a while.
• 33:16
  So it's fascinating to see how she's doing it in a scientific and medical way to get it.
• 33:22
  I mean, these are obviously bigger pieces that are coming off of the person. Okay.
• 33:25
  Can you tell us when that's coming out sometime? Late spring.
• 33:28
  Okay. So fun. Every night I read the Daily Mail, which is the best source of news.
• 33:33
  Maybe it shouldn't. I love it. It's juicy. It's so juicy and salacious.
• 33:37
  And half the time it talks about Florida, which where my husband is from. My sister-in-law.
• 33:43
  He's a Florida man. He is. My sister-in-law used to be a defense attorney in Florida.
• 33:47
  And every once in a while, she would send me these articles about the craziest
• 33:53
  ass stories that happened in Florida. She's like, this is my client.
• 33:57
  Oh, my God. Wait, could she send them to me for TV?
• 34:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, really? She would be amazing. So I will connect you.
• 34:06
  And all of a sudden pops up a story about Jennifer Love Hewitt.
• 34:10
  Right. And I'm reading, I'm like, oh, wait, Lifetime, wait, this is great. And then you are quoted.
• 34:16
  And I guess she wrote a book about her mom. Her mom had passed.
• 34:19
  And the movie is called...
• 34:22
  A Holiday Junkie. A Holiday Junkie. And it premieres on December 14th. She's adorable.
• 34:27
  She wrote this. She directed this. She owns the whole thing.
• 34:31
  She's almost in every scene with her husband.
• 34:34
  Oh, that's her husband. It's her husband is in it with her and they have adorable chemistry.
• 34:39
  And it's really interesting. Most holiday movies don't go into dealing with
• 34:43
  grief in the holiday, right?
• 34:45
  It's all romance and love. And you get that from this and you get all the beauty
• 34:49
  of all the adorable Christmas stuff.
• 34:51
  She's a holiday decorator that comes in and meets like he's,
• 34:55
  I think he's the handyman and very good and sexy.
• 34:58
  And they get together and that's her husband. but she is missing her mother
• 35:02
  and it was her mother's business and she brought that authenticity in.
• 35:05
  In. And so there are some real scenes that really go there. And you hear that all the time.
• 35:10
  You get fed it on Instagram or people who post it, like people are missing people
• 35:14
  on the holidays and the holidays bring that out.
• 35:16
  And so to bring that into a Christmas movie, we thought was really great,
• 35:20
  especially was so authentic to Jennifer.
• 35:22
  She's been such a great partner for us over the years. She's wonderful.
• 35:25
  And to see her step into this creative role was really wonderful to see.
• 35:29
  I'm a huge holiday movie fan. I watch every one of them. This,
• 35:34
  I think, will really hit home to so many people.
• 35:36
  I love the fluff and we're in
• 35:37
  Scotland and we're meeting the man who chops down trees. It's fantastic.
• 35:40
  But there's also, there is this amount that you, if you've lost someone,
• 35:44
  it could be whether it's a parent or a spouse or a child.
• 35:47
  Yeah, it adds another layer of depth. It really does. So when you're actually
• 35:51
  looking at the month of January for programming, how do you set that all up?
• 35:56
  How do you know what goes where and everything else? Well, other people smarter than me help me do that.
• 36:01
  So I don't pick the night, even though we started this conversation where that
• 36:04
  was like one of my favorite classes when I was in college, we know when things will be ready.
• 36:09
  We aggregate like things. For instance, in January for A&E, we have a bunch of new series coming.
• 36:16
  And January is a lot of people watch TV in January. It's dark.
• 36:20
  It's cold. The holidays are over. They're not going to parties.
• 36:22
  It's called the high hut level time.
• 36:25
  Houses using television.
• 36:28
  Old school. So you try to get a lot of good premieres on in January.
• 36:32
  As a matter of fact, January 1, people like a lot of stuff and they just watch
• 36:36
  in a lot of January into February.
• 36:38
  Not as much sports, certainly football playoffs, but the fall is just awful
• 36:42
  to try to program around between the election and the news and all the sports
• 36:48
  that are happening in the fall. It's really hard.
• 36:50
  You just go, wow, what a gangbuster week if we do this on a Wednesday and that
• 36:56
  feeds into a Thursday and we
• 36:58
  have two new premieres on a Thursday and then that feeds into our Friday.
• 37:00
  So you just kind of plan. You see what's ready in there and what are similar
• 37:04
  needs dates, what are similar programs.
• 37:07
  We have marketing saying, but it's true, bring them and keep them.
• 37:11
  And so we do promote to the next show, right? And A&E and Lifetime and History,
• 37:16
  we don't really have the financial ability to buy a lot of off-air programming promos.
• 37:24
  You're not going to see a Super Bowl ad probably for any of our brands.
• 37:27
  We can't spend that money. So our best thing is our sites and apps.
• 37:32
  Hulu diverts people back and our own air. You know, that is still the smartest.
• 37:37
  So it's like when you come in, if you're going to come in and check in when
• 37:40
  Gypsy Rose is coming back, which is in March, by the way.
• 37:43
  And so you know when you do that then i want to
• 37:46
  feed you the next thing and then i want to feed you the next thing that
• 37:49
  you're going to like but it's that whole premise yeah i think after gypsy rose
• 37:52
  they had storage wars popping up on hulu oh they could have yeah something like
• 37:57
  when you know you're done with the series and they go oh try this oh try this
• 38:00
  one that's the one that popped up next huh you said this before i like that
• 38:05
  the series are coming out week by week now.
• 38:07
  It's when we were kids and you're waiting for the next episode to come out and
• 38:10
  you don't know what's going to happen until you watch next week.
• 38:13
  But we're in such a fast-paced world. Our kids are like inundated with these fast things.
• 38:19
  I know. All right now. I like the slow. I like the let's wait for it.
• 38:22
  There's like that gratification that comes in later, right?
• 38:25
  And I like that. I think so too. And when you find a show that you love and
• 38:30
  somebody else loves, you can get lost for 20 minutes talking about it with somebody.
• 38:35
  I've heard you talk about it with your other guests. It's like you could talk
• 38:37
  about the royal family if that's an interest that you have. Anytime you find a shared interest.
• 38:42
  But I think movies, TV do that. And it's so subjective because I don't really
• 38:48
  Bravo Housewives programming.
• 38:50
  But I know some of the characters and I'd be interested why.
• 38:53
  And, you know, everybody just has an opinion.
• 38:56
  But when you have a shared experience with someone, I think it's huge.
• 39:00
  And when it's a ginormous shared experience where so many people are talking
• 39:03
  about it in the world, that I feel deeply honored that people invite us into their homes.
• 39:09
  And it really, I pinch, even on bad days, frankly, you're reminding me because it is hard right now.
• 39:14
  So to end on a positive note, to think of the little girl that I was and how
• 39:20
  touched I was by the people that made the shows that spoke to me and my mom and my dad,
• 39:26
  to be part of that in any way, to think that people are inviting us into their
• 39:31
  homes, I'm very honored.
• 39:33
  I really am. Yeah. And you're kicking ass.
• 39:36
  You are so kick ass. Guys, two pages of bio.
• 39:40
  And I mean, all of it is, I don't know if I have a three minute intro for you on this.
• 39:46
  So I ask every guest to the same three questions.
• 39:49
  What is something you've changed your mind about recently?
• 39:53
  Not very intellectual, but banana bread. Never liked banana bread.
• 39:57
  And now my daughter, my 17-year-old daughter just made it with chocolate chips
• 40:02
  in it. And I'm like, I'm all in.
• 40:05
  Have you never had it with chocolate chips? No, I never have.
• 40:07
  It's the only way I make banana bread. Well, here. You could have changed my mind a long time ago.
• 40:11
  Now with baking time, I'm going to bake you a loaf with chocolate chips. That's amazing.
• 40:17
  Em, what is the most random thing on your bucket list?
• 40:21
  This is a funny one. My sister's done it. I want to stay at an ice hotel.
• 40:25
  Yes. Have you heard of those? Yes. So there's one in Quebec that's beautiful.
• 40:29
  Old Quebec is remarkable. It's only open like a couple of months of the year. Cold as hell.
• 40:35
  But you go in, they give you these cool little things. It's not like you're
• 40:39
  going to have sexy time with your husband.
• 40:42
  You're going to freeze your ass off. You're freezing your ass off.
• 40:44
  But you go in, they give you a room like next door at the hotel too.
• 40:47
  And I'm like, how cool is that? And we did dog sledding recently,
• 40:50
  but I would do that again because the dogs are so amazing and you're in the
• 40:54
  – it's so quiet and you're in the pristine country.
• 40:57
  So I kind of want to do an isotel. Where do you go dog sledding?
• 41:00
  We were in Canada called Mont-Tremblant. Yes.
• 41:05
  I have never been. But – It's wonderful. Another friend went up there last year,
• 41:10
  her and her husband, and they loved it so much. They wanted – they're trying
• 41:12
  to plan trips so the kids can come.
• 41:14
  We brought the kids. Yeah. It was really cold. I was with a friend who didn't
• 41:18
  ski and was at the spa with me at the same time.
• 41:21
  That sounds awesome. And Chris took the kids with the other dad.
• 41:24
  And it was like, yeah, we'll see you back here. We'll have the wine ready.
• 41:27
  Did you fly up or drive? We flew to Montreal, and it's about two hours from
• 41:31
  Montreal. And a drive from there. Yeah.
• 41:33
  Oh, that's on my bucket list. It's an adorable village town.
• 41:38
  And you can dog mush. You can do a ton of stuff there. But they don't have an
• 41:41
  ice hotel. It's like silent in the woods.
• 41:45
  And there's like icicles on the trees. I mean, it was cold, but they wrap you
• 41:49
  up. It was a beautiful experience. Magic.
• 41:51
  Yeah. Oh, that's on my bucket list. I want to do that. The last question is,
• 41:56
  what is one piece of advice you would give your younger self?
• 41:59
  I would say slow down all these dates and expectations of by the time I'm 30, I must do this.
• 42:08
  Don't matter. You know, I had to make a movie by the time I was 30.
• 42:12
  I did. I produced a feature film by the time I was 30.
• 42:15
  Had to have my children by a certain age. That didn't happen.
• 42:17
  Life changed, you know, and it's all fine.
• 42:19
  And I don't even remember the why that I had to.
• 42:24
  And so I would give myself a little grace to just enjoy the ride a little more
• 42:28
  and know that it's going to be okay.
• 42:30
  It's what I tell my daughter now going through things. It's so easy to say to someone else.
• 42:35
  And she's a senior, right? Yes. She got into her. She got her first good safety.
• 42:40
  And so now we can kind of breathe while we're waiting for like the biggies.
• 42:44
  But that was, you know, I'm telling myself the same thing. It's like,
• 42:48
  it's all going to be okay.
• 42:49
  Wherever you go is going to be fine. But hard to hear that when you,
• 42:52
  she's like me, she has a plan for her life and she knows what she's going to
• 42:56
  be and this is part of it. And you want that ambition.
• 43:00
  Oh, gosh, yeah. Yeah. But the timing doesn't have to be it.
• 43:04
  I didn't think I'd launch a podcast at 45. That's right.
• 43:07
  And I was a stylist for 15 years. Yeah. I made that happen. I did that.
• 43:12
  And here we are. I knew 45 was going to be a good year.
• 43:15
  There was something in my bones. When I turned 40, I was like,
• 43:17
  no, this isn't it. This isn't it for me.
• 43:20
  45 is going to be it. And all of a sudden, it became it. Look at you.
• 43:23
  Without even realizing it. But I knew it. I'm like, oh, I'm just getting started.
• 43:27
  Like, who knows what's next? We are so thankful. We are so thankful that you're just getting started.
• 43:33
  And I'm getting started. Thank you for having me on that. Oh,
• 43:35
  God, I'm so glad you were here. And I'm glad the studio wasn't cold.
• 43:37
  I usually leave it like Letterman and it's freezing in here.
• 43:40
  Well, you are very warm, so you would have warmed me. I would like get heated
• 43:44
  up. Thank you. Okay. I'm welcome. Yeah. This is so fun.
• 43:49
  Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. You can find a new episode every Thursday. Bye.