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March 12, 2009

Sly Fox

It’s one of the ego games of Hollywood that movies are held in some higher esteem than broadcast… even though broadcast has been a bigger business for many years now.

It is another oddity that we tend to think of movie executives as exclusively movie executives… or television execs as television execs, etc. And there is some foundational truth to that. If you are a “television person,” you can’t just flip over to the film business and be expected to understand all the nuances of the movie world. But this distinction pretty much starts and stops with the hands-on creative execs at studios, where it’s about talent relationships and knowing what the people you are doing business with really want and really don’t want and really need and really don’t need.

But executives can be executives first and “of the industry” second. There are great CEOs who will get into businesses they can never really understand or that really are not a good fit with their set of philosophies. And there are people who just know how to fit it, even though that skill set is sometimes circumstantial and short-lived. But a great CEO understands what he or she doesn't understand... and more importantly what they must understand and what they never really need to understand. They choose. And the rule by using the assets they have, not by fighting them.

Peter Rice has had a wider range of responsibilities at Fox for years and years than the media has covered or even realized in many cases. In particular, he’s had his fingers in the internet purchases and he has always had ongoing involvements with some of what was going on at the big studio. For all of his success, Peter has always been very, very quick to respond to even smirky comments about ascending over Rothman and Giannopoulos with a very earnest explanation that they are his bosses and that he works for them and respects their position.

It is my belief that Rice’s long-term play has never been to become a studio chief where half the movies he has to make every year he wouldn’t see himself. His play is to become the next Peter Chernin to The Next Murdoch.

How do you do that? You learn EVERYTHING about every part of the company. You don’t just have corporate ideas… you have history and hands-on knowledge. You learn the craft of painting inside and out before you become a stylist.

So what part of Fox hasn’t Mr. Rice already mastered? Broadcast… which in the new structuring, seems to be a pretty wide reaching affair. Let’s not forget that there is a lot of change coming in what a television network is and will be. And Rice will be right in the middle of all of that. If you think he is simply taking Gail Berman’s old role over, I think you will turn out to be shockingly wrong.

This also speaks to the lack of changes at Fox Searchlight. Rice, more than any executive in town, treated his division chiefs like true partners. Utley and Gilula, with Claudia Lewis in tow, have bought movies before Rice has seen them and been central to most all of his choices as The Boss at Searchlight. His trust has been absolute and so the stability there, which was likely a part of the deal he made to change jobs, makes perfect sense. Now the trio is Nancy, Steve and Claudia, instead of a power quadrangle. Will Rice be missed. Sure. But like any truly gifted executive, he built his division to be capable of not only going on without him, but thriving without him. And it will.

If there is an odd or negative spin to come out of this, it is not for Fox, but for Viacom, where the television and film divisions – and the cable entities with them – remain inexplicably split to the detriment of both.

“Filmed Entertainment,” whether theatrical or broadcast, is the singular future of the entertainment side of these companies. It is time to start understanding that in new and aggressive ways and that, to my eye, is what this for at Fox signals.

Posted by dpoland at March 12, 2009 03:24 PM

Comments

Posted by: Harley at March 12, 2009 05:54 PM

Posted by: steamfreshmeals at March 12, 2009 06:19 PM

Posted by: Triple Option at March 12, 2009 07:07 PM

Posted by: IHeartThatCurtis! at March 13, 2009 01:27 AM

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