Interview Date: May 28, 2025
Interviewer: Stewart Schley
Abstract
Gary Schanman’s oral history recounts a dynamic career spanning advertising, consulting, and leadership roles in the cable and streaming industries. After beginning in advertising with major firms like Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, Schanman transitioned into media consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers, gaining a broad perspective on the rapidly evolving entertainment landscape. His early passion for television led him to pioneering work at startups and then at Cablevision, where he helped drive innovations like interactive TV, addressable advertising, and the cloud DVR—developments that reshaped how consumers experience television. Schanman’s respect for engineers and creatives, combined with a hands-on, collaborative style, positioned him as a key figure in pushing the boundaries of video technology.
Later in his career, Schanman held influential roles at Comcast, Charter, and ultimately Dish Network, where he led Sling TV. At Charter, he played a central role in unifying and modernizing video and advertising products following major acquisitions, helping the company scale and standardize operations. At Sling, he embraced the shift to streaming, introducing customer-focused strategies like simplified offerings, FAST channels, and new engagement features. Schanman reflects on the rise of streaming, competition from services like Netflix, and the industry’s shift from bundled, set-top-box-driven models to flexible, consumer-first platforms. Despite the industry’s turbulence, his enduring passion for TV, innovation, and storytelling remains the driving force behind his impactful career.
Interview Transcript
STEWART SCHLEY: Hello guys, you are in the right place. This is the Hauser Oral History Series presented by Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center. I want to start by telling you all that television used to be pretty simple as a construct. From its inception in the late ‘40s through the heyday of early cable, it was a one-way linear distribution system for channels. If you sat down and the show was playing that you wanted to watch, you could watch it, and if you didn’t, you couldn’t. That all changed, and it changed dramatically, in a hurry, partly because of the contributions of the man who is sitting at my right, Gary Schanman. We are so happy to have you here today. Thank you.
GARY SCHANMAN: Thank you. I’m honored to be here. I appreciate it. It means a lot.
SCHLEY: I’m not kidding that — we’ll get into it, but a lot of the transformation of television and video came under your watch and the watch of people that you were close to in this business. But let’s start a little bit earlier. Your career after undergraduate was in the advertising industry.
SCHANMAN: Yeah.
SCHLEY: Couple of powerhouse agencies — Ogilvy and Mather, Young and Rubicam.
SCHANMAN: Yeah.
SCHLEY: What brought you there?
SCHANMAN: Well, I realized that I like to get my hands dirty, and so after I graduated from Syracuse, I wanted to get, you know, in the mix, and I was always intrigued by marketing and advertising and how that worked. And so it was wonderful. It was great. Because, I mean, I worked crazy hours, I got paid nothing, but I just loved being in that collegial environment, just trying to do everything we can for the clients. So —
SCHLEY: Are you in the city? Are you in New York?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, yeah, I was — well, I couldn’t afford to live in the city. I took a train in from Hicksville — literally, that’s the place —
SCHLEY: Sure. (laughter)
SCHANMAN: — and, you know, and eventually moved into like a $500-a-month apartment. But I loved it. It was great. I learned so much about, you know, basically client service, and that, you know, you don’t go home until the client is happy and normally way after the client goes home. And so to me it — I learned a lot about character and rolling up my sleeves, which is a part of my career, actually. People know I’m able to get things done. I’ve always wanted it —
SCHLEY: Were you a TV kid growing up? Did you love television?
SCHANMAN: Totally. It’s funny. My first memory — one of my first memories was after I had my tonsils out, and my parents set me up in the basement and they said, “We just got cable.” And this was in Massapequa, Long Island, so it was Cablevision, which I ended up working for. And I remember Rocky was on. Like, it was, “Oh my God, I can see Rocky,” and I had my ice cream because, you know, I had surgery, and I just remember I just fell in love with it. And for better or for worse, I’m —
SCHLEY: There you went.
SCHANMAN: — I’m hitched onto the wagon of television and I just think it’s the greatest thing.
SCHLEY: Your second stop, I think was with prominent consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
SCHANMAN: Yeah.
SCHLEY: And there, if I’m not mistaken, Gary, you got to see a big-picture view of the media and the television biz — you had media clients at PwC?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, it was actually a new practice, so we were trying to earn media clients. So what we spent time on — there’s only 15 of us or so — we basically, we analyzed every industry so we can go out and hunt for clients. And so out of it — and this was after business school at Michigan — I knew I wanted entertainment media, but I didn’t know where, and honestly, I didn’t have the guts to just jump in somewhere, so this was great. I learned about the cable industry at the time. This is 1998, this is before Comcast became as big as it was —
SCHLEY: Absolutely.
SCHANMAN: — you know, the music industry. And think about that. That was — Napster was coming out. So analyzing all of these changing worlds —
SCHLEY: Late 1990s, right?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, 1998, ’99.
SCHLEY: Okay, so you’re seeing the whole —
SCHANMAN: All of it.
SCHLEY: — panoply.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and clients were like, “What do we do?” And I’m like, “I’m 27, I don’t know. But don’t tell anyone.” But no, it was — everything was going digital — slowly, but it was happening. It was pretty amazing.
SCHLEY: That’s what I was going to say. The date is important because, if I understand, you didn’t segue directly into the cable business, but you worked in — this was still the boom years for online media, and the early Excite was one of your employers.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, so after I left — I knew I didn’t want to be in consulting, because I wanted to get my hands dirty. Like I said. So that’s the way I’m wired, I get things done. So yeah. I went to a 20-person startup that was backed by CBS at the time called iWon.com —
SCHLEY: iWon.
SCHANMAN: And it was a portal — we were trying to replicate Yahoo, a couple years after Yahoo, but you literally won money, like in a sweepstakes, by clicking around. So we were trying to figure out a way to make that work. It was crazy. It was interesting. I mean, I remember we were trying to keep the servers cool on New Year’s Eve or something, and that wasn’t even my job, but I was all there to help out. But yeah, so to me it was really interesting to learn — what I learned from that job was, once again, hands dirty, only 20 of us. And I learned how to do business development, I learned how to build products. I learned how to work with engineers. And that all kind of shaped me — strategy, product-building, BD — into my next kind of roles over at Cablevision.
SCHLEY: Because that respect for the engineering, you had to have it in the future business that you would go into. Not everybody did, and I think engineers who felt like you were invested in their world did care. Right?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I knew what I was good at and what I wasn’t, you know? And if you had asked, like, Stephanie Mitchko or Jim Black, all these people I worked with, I mean, you know, and I had to learn this, but I couldn’t do what they did. So what I try to do is understand what they did, try to help them, in some cases help selling their budgets. Be a storyteller. But, you know, fit things around the edges and help with the design. Help think through — go to market plans and product requirements that were really digestible and executable. And that’s kind of what I learned. So I was never an engineer, but I was part of building a lot of products.
SCHLEY: And almost an advocate for engineers, though, it sounds like.
SCHANMAN: I love it. You know, so they’re very similar to creatives in advertising. You know, and I learned to respect that too. I was not a creative, I was a suit. Right? And so I remember, like, you know, like, how can I help them feel fulfilled in what they’re doing, knowing that they work on their own schedule and what they do? And I had tons of respect, because it’s very hard to take a white sheet of paper and create something out of it.
SCHLEY: And Don Draper it, right.
SCHANMAN: Yeah. Everyone could comment — you know, critics are everywhere. So yeah, when I started working with engineers, I was like, wow, they’re very similar. They’re creative people that have different palettes and tools to manifest things. And so I just want to sit by and help them out. And so — I mean, I’m an aggressive person, I’m passionate and all that, but overall, no, I really have a lot of respect for artists, engineers, and creators.
SCHLEY: And a big part of your professional story relates to a company called Cablevision Systems Corporation.
SCHANMAN: Yes.
SCHLEY: For those who don’t know, who and what was Cablevision Systems?
SCHANMAN: Cablevision Systems was one of the first cable companies, founded by Chuck Dolan, Mr. Dolan. You know, he also was a founder of HBO, right? And it was a company that was I think very forward-thinking in terms of customer service and also figuring out exactly how to market its products in a way that made them more exciting. You know, we were talking before the cameras started about the fact that I think Cablevision at the heart of it was in a very bold, founder-led company that wasn’t afraid of making mistakes, but also was able to — was really marketing-centric versus utility-centric.
SCHLEY: And a lot of the cable industry, to be fair, was utility-centric at the time. Early 2000s, late 1990s.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, totally, it’s — yeah, you get electricity, you get cable, you get all these things, but Cablevision branded themselves, right? They branded Optimum. Right? Companies just — you know, it — Time Warner Cable had Time-Warner Cable Internet. Then they did Road Runner, but overall leading with brand names and making it really easy for consumers to see them as products I think really helped them. And I learned a lot from it. I’m very grateful for my time there.
SCHLEY: Well, and I think part of that productization — what I always thought Cablevision was uniquely good at was blending and packaging products, right, to yield more presence in the home, and ultimately higher revenue for —
SCHANMAN: Yeah. Well, I think — it started with, you know, obviously before my time, which is the, you know, saying, “Okay, well, why would I get cable? How about a local sports network? Right? Let’s build it. Let’s create content for the platform and then bundle all that together. Let’s do HBO, let’s do all of that.” And I think other than in its inception, which was really about a better way to get over-the-air signals delivered to hard-to-reach places, it’s what’s more. So they did a great job with that. And then over time, as more products were built on the platform, you know, right — the broadband was such as — was built on top of it, right —
SCHLEY: Right, right.
SCHANMAN: — and then VOIP for phone, you know, it’s how do you bundle it in such a way that it makes it a must-have across the board? And I think that Cablevision always had the attitude, and then the leaders that went over to Charter felt it was more important to get — versus nickel-and-diming the customers on every product, but to get all the services in the home, right? It was about sharing. And being invaluable to the consumer. And so I thought they did a great job — I learned so much in that time.
SCHLEY: What did you do when you walked through the door for the first time? What was your job?
SCHANMAN: Oh, I was hired as a director of business development and strategy. And so I actually started working on interactive television in 2001, and then I went to work for Gemma Toner, actually, after I worked for Terry Morse on the broadband side to help distribute broadband through third parties. And so I got to work on all those cool things way before its time.
SCHLEY: And Interactive, for instance — was that your choice, or did they assign you, say — or, like, did you take a look around and say, hey, I want to do this?
SCHANMAN: Well, when I first got hired, they had just launched their IO digital television service. So don’t forget, so I was there when — the night it finally launched, and I joined a few months later. So there was no digital TV subscribers. It was analog. And so the question was, that was posed to everybody at the company from the leaders, was — what can we do now with a two-way interactive platform that’s digital? And so we did interactive channels with ESPN, and we did, like, multi-camera views with MSG [Madison Square Garden] —
SCHLEY: Because you could.
SCHANMAN: Yeah. And it was a little — it was slow. It didn’t work that great. There was an HTML-based browser we had on our boxes at the time. There was a Sony box that cost a lot of money, and —
SCHLEY: I remember.
SCHANMAN: So, yeah, I was a part of doing those deals, and then it pivoted over to broadband.
SCHLEY: Despite the impediments and the obstacles you had to kind of surmount, what was fun about that early exploration period?
SCHANMAN: Oh, it was great. I was — well, first of all, Cablevision allowed anyone that was willing to raise their hand to do something interesting. And so, in fact, on the interactive side at one point, I raised my hand to actually build out a classified advertising service leveraging the interactive platform, and they allowed me to hire a team and build a business case and work with the ad sales team, David Kline’s team, to actually sell — We created a multi-platform, interactive TV and website to sell real estate classifieds and automotive classifieds.
SCHLEY: I could get it on my TV or on a piece of —
SCHANMAN: Yeah, if you logged in, you could sync them up and you could save your listings, and we did leads off of that. One-click leads? We sent, I think, a half a million leads from the platform. And so there’s no downside. It was great. I mean, you know, you’re nervous that you’re not going to get it done, and the truth is, I don’t think it lived up to where it could have, because I think the technology wasn’t there, but my God, it was an amazing experience, and I was rewarded for taking a chance, because it was a bold company.
SCHLEY: Talk just briefly to explain — when you say it was slow and a little bit clunky early on, that was a function of what?
SCHANMAN: That was a function of the fact that you have very little memory in the —
SCHLEY: The box.
SCHANMAN: — in the set-top box, right?
SCHLEY: Okay. So it could only do so much.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and eventually it worked with, like, active video networks, etc., and moved a lot of it to the cloud. But, yeah, I would say when we first launched it, it would take 30 seconds for a search to come up. And I was like, “That’s not good,” but we kept working on it, and the team was really eager, and we got it to where it worked pretty well. Then we swapped out the platform years later with active video networks, and it was, you know, snappy. But I think we passed the window at that point of its, you know. Just wasn’t the right time.
SCHLEY: Right. That’s what I wanted to ask you about, Gary. When you were working on this, you were working on this over a cable platform, Cablevision, and then there’s all of these guys in California and elsewhere who are doing things on this thing called the Internet. Did you feel that tension beginning to build?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I mean, I think at some point — and this is when I — you know, later on, when I went back to run the video business for Cablevision, I realized — at some point, we were trying to put everything into one screen. It makes a lot of intuitive sense, but then you start to realize the limits of it. And overall, when devices started to become portable, you don’t really — you don’t need it. I could have a phone, I could check my stats for the game and I could watch it, and so the idea of two-screen, which kind of came out more like past 2009, kind of leapfrogged, in my view, the need for single-screen, and so it was kind of a, you know, it’s a timing thing. But we learned a lot and we were able to apply it to other things, and so it was wonderful.
SCHLEY: It’s sort of like you said though. Not every cable company necessarily could get out of its own way sometimes, because the legacy business was the legacy business, and —
SCHANMAN: Sure. Yeah, totally.
SCHLEY: — why not just continue doing what we’ve been doing, you know?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and I think that some companies out there, and I worked at a few of them, realized that you have to cannibalize yourself to not be cannibalized, a little bit. And don’t be afraid to make mistakes. I always had a lot of respect for Cablevision — this was not on my watch, so I’m not taking claim to it, but I observed it, where they bought the electronics retailer of The Wiz, that, you know, maybe wasn’t a perfect business, but think about what they did. They productized Optimum online, they sold it in little packs, people were able to put it under the Christmas tree —
SCHLEY: It was novel.
SCHANMAN: Novel, right?
SCHLEY: Yeah.
SCHANMAN: And that was distributed in large part through those retailers. And so —
SCHLEY: Nobody Beats the Wiz, right, yeah.
SCHANMAN: That’s right. So those — that’s very visionary, and not everything always works, but look at what they accomplished out of it. And so to me that was great to be a part of all of it and to kind of be able to absorb all of it.
SCHLEY: Right. Because organizationally, not every company is cut from that same cloth. What were your boss — what was a good boss? Like, who — what did you look for in a — freedom, liberation? What was important to you?
SCHANMAN: Well, I think when I was younger in my career I was looking for probably too much. I was looking for some validation about what I was doing and whether it was right, so I was looking for leadership in terms of helping to be firm and help me focus, and that was good, and then allow me to take a chance. So, Pat Gottesman, she allowed me — she promoted me and said, “Run this interactive classified service.”
SCHLEY: Believed in you.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, she didn’t have to promote me ahead of time. And so she helped give me those kind of tools. Gemma Toner really helped. Tony Morse brought me into the company. So a lot of these folks — Kristin Dolan I worked for. These are people that really — they pushed me really hard, but they also expected me to be creative and come up with bold solutions.
SCHLEY: There are two really interesting technology stories I wanted to broach with you, one related to different changes in advertising that were beginning to percolate, you know? It used to be one spot is seen by everybody who’s watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night on ABC or whatever. But things were starting to change, I think, around the time you began to work with Comcast, is that correct? Like, 2007ish?
SCHANMAN: Well, so we started addressable advertising — we started addressable when I was at Cablevision.
SCHLEY: At Cablevision.
SCHANMAN: Right. And I kind of did a boomerang, right? I went to Comcast and then I went back. And so that was really interesting across the board, and that was, like, the vision of the executives, including, by the way, Tom Rutledge and John Bickham, whom I’m very thankful for, with the opportunities they gave me, the freedom they gave me. But when I went to Comcast, Canoe had been discussed — right, the question was “what can we do as an industry to be able to do more digitally as well as through addressable advertising, etc., as a collective industry, to be able to do everything from interactivity all the way to addressable?”
SCHLEY: Again, we had kind of gone through the digital conversion by this point —
SCHANMAN: Yeah, totally.
SCHLEY: — so you could do new things.
SCHANMAN: That’s right. Broadband was highly penetrated.
SCHLEY: Help us with the terminology. What does “addressable advertising” mean?
SCHANMAN: Addressable advertising is — well, the term “addressable” means targeted, across the board. But addressable television advertising, as it was defined, is the ability to take a broadcast spot, which normally would be one spot to everyone, and be able to slice it up into small pieces to be able to do targeting at a household level.
SCHLEY: Within that same 30-second break?
SCHANMAN: That’s right, in the break. And so the way it works is, you have — and there were companies like INVIDI and Visible World that helped enable — you know, helped cable companies enable that. And basically the idea would be that if you were interested in a Honda Pilot and someone else was a better target for a Chrysler, you could slice the spot and send up to five variants to different places. You weren’t able to do what digital addressable is, which is unicast. Which is you get a very specific ad.
SCHLEY: One-to-one, yeah, yeah.
SCHANMAN: That’s on the Internet. But that’s now happening, and we’ve recently launched — we launched that over at EchoStar. That’s basically — it requires an Internet connection directly to the box.
SCHLEY: And I was going to say, how do you look at it — today, you and I summon YouTube videos all the time, and we do get these personal– it seems — it’s no big deal. It just happens as part of the —
SCHANMAN: No. It’s spooky, but — (laughter)
SCHLEY: — part of the fabric. But you had to start somewhere to begin this progress, this procession.
SCHANMAN: Yeah. And the idea was, you know, and even today, well, it’s pretty much teetering right now, but TV advertising is the dominant form of advertising in terms of the spend — it was a $70 billion business. And so the idea was, if you can figure out a way to target on that platform, that’s where your money’s made. And even today, DirecTV, Charter, Comcast, obviously Dish, EchoStar, they sell hundreds of millions of dollars in addressable advertising.
SCHLEY: In addressable. Okay. So it’s a thing.
SCHANMAN: Which —
SCHLEY: I mean, it’s a business.
SCHANMAN: No, it’s a big part of those PNLs.
SCHLEY: The other adjunct of that subject is, what was the role of these imperfect but more advanced set-top boxes? What could they do for advertising in terms of measurement and qualification, and how did you leverage that infrastructure?
SCHANMAN: I mean, look, set-top box data was this huge idea that everyone had because of the two-way nature of what we had. And so I was proud to be a part of a number of companies’ efforts to be able to collect and mine that data. And that data is used — you know, it’s either resold to Nielsen, etc., across the board, or it’s used to do advanced targeting, which a couple of the companies I worked at did a great job of helping advertisers find their audience.
SCHLEY: Yeah. It always sounded like such a panacea, but again, you had to anonymize the data, but the cable company did know what that box was tuned to at any time, right?
SCHANMAN: Totally.
SCHLEY: That was the theory behind it.
SCHANMAN: I mean, yeah, in most cases. Some cases, not everyone was connected or not, but on the cable side, it was. Satellite side, it took them longer to get there.
SCHLEY: Right, okay.
SCHANMAN: But yeah, cable, I mean, we had fully two-way-enabled — every digital TV subscriber, we had two-way enablement and we had set-top box data. So we knew what they were watching, all anonymized —
SCHLEY: For sure, for sure.
SCHANMAN: — now it’s privacy-protected — it’s very powerful.
SCHLEY: When you did boomerang — this is a subject that has always fascinated me, so to be able to talk to someone who was there is a big deal.
SCHANMAN: I was at almost every C company except for Cox.
SCHLEY: Except for Cox, right. So when you boomeranged back to Cablevision, you guys worked on and devised something that was utterly revolutionary. And we called it the Cloud DVR. Can you just give a quick elevator of what that thing was and what it did?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, so it was originally — the Network DVR, that was the idea, and then it was officially internally called the Remote Storage DVR. And yeah, I mean, this was a vision that the leadership had, as I say. We have now this two-way capability, so we can do VOD and other things, right? They do advertising, but, you know, something that we should be able to store anyone’s content that they choose up in the cloud. And it should be more of a service versus a product overlay. If you think about TiVo and replay TV, it was basically a third-party consumer electronics device that was shoved on top of a service.
SCHLEY: Three hundred more dollars, whatever —
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: — and you had to push the buttons yourself.
SCHANMAN: That’s right. Why can’t we do it, right? Why can’t we do it? Now, clearly we offered DVR, but why can’t we do it in such a way that it allows for a lot more flexibility and dynamism across the board and can allow us to have a very thin set-top box, which is cheaper, and be able to store everything up in the cloud? And it was way ahead of its time, because at the end of the day, at that time, cloud storage was expensive. But if you follow Moore’s Law, it was eventually going to get very efficient.
SCHLEY: Right. But even as the economics progressed, the very idea was brash. There was a lot of bravado behind the idea of —
SCHANMAN: Yeah, we were sued. I mean, we were sued.
SCHLEY: Sure.
SCHANMAN: So, you know — and this — and I want to give a credit to Stephanie Mitchko’s technical brilliance, Jim Blackley, Rich Neil — they were the technical leaders behind this; apologies if I left anyone else out. And I ran the business and the product. And so we had to bring it to market. But I remember we were waiting for the day where the Second Circuit ruling to see whether we can do it legally.
SCHLEY: Because who sued you? Everybody? (laughter)
SCHANMAN: Everyone, pretty much. I think all the —
SCHLEY: Everybody in the television —
SCHANMAN: All the programmers did it. This was an example of kind of holding back the future, right? Fighting the future. Because they were worried about their advertising dollars and things like that, and what we were able to prove, and obviously the lawyers were able to prove, was that we are doing this on behalf of the consumer.
SCHLEY: Just making it more convenient.
SCHANMAN: That’s right. We’re an extension —
SCHLEY: Exactly.
SCHANMAN: — of consumer electronics, up in the cloud. And that led to huge advances across our industry.
SCHLEY: Absolutely.
SCHANMAN: And so I’m really proud that we were able to actually bring it to market, get it to scale —
SCHLEY: Resolve the legal questions —
SCHANMAN: Yes, and make it work. Because —
SCHLEY: And make it work.
SCHANMAN: — we were nervous about how it would work and how it would scale.
SCHLEY: Legally, did we lean a little bit on that 19-mid-‘80s Betamax decision as part of the argument for being able to fairly do this? You’re not an attorney, I know —
SCHANMAN: Yeah. No, no, that played a role in it. There are a number of things we were able to do, I believe, in the ruling to allow us to be justified in doing it, but primarily the basic point was that we are not — we are not violating our content agreements by taking control of the content. We are enabling a customer to do —
SCHLEY: Exactly. Who already has rights.
SCHANMAN: — that already can do — all right, it’s fair use. It’s a fair-use right.
SCHLEY: Thank you. Right. Right.
SCHANMAN: That’s what they said. So they already have their TiVo or their other device. We’re just doing it for them. So there were requirements that they had to expressly give permission, that we couldn’t buffer it for over a certain amount of time so it looks like we were storing it as VOD.
SCHLEY: Interesting.
SCHANMAN: And so these things, we had to deliver, which was really hard to do, and it’s a credit to the tech team that we made it work.
SCHLEY: Do you remember where you were when the court decision that enabled this to happen came down?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I was in my office. I got a call, we gotta do it, let’s launch it — we gotta launch it in six months.
SCHLEY: Wow. What did you call it? Did it have a prod– an Optimum name, or was it just network DVR?
SCHANMAN: No, we just called it DVR. And then we had a DVR Plus, I think — we went back and forth, what we were going to call it. And so we launched basically — the version that was built by the tech team that had the same interface, it was a SARA interface, and we just launched it, and then about — we got it out there, and then about six or eight months later we launched a new interface that allowed us to take advantage of some of the capabilities of the platform.
SCHLEY: Okay. And based, Gary, on what you said about the Cablevision way before, did you charge? Was it a monthly fee to have access to this capability?
SCHANMAN: We didn’t charge additional. I mean, we did have a DVR fee, that was the cost for the device.
SCHLEY: Yeah, no, but —
SCHANMAN: No, we didn’t — that wasn’t —
SCHLEY: The approach.
SCHANMAN: — it wasn’t its own — we didn’t have it as its own RGU, as its own revenue-generating unit. Even when we launched VOIP — and I wasn’t a part of the launch there, but I managed the business for a brief period after — it was never about optimizing the price for phone. We never went to market — and this is a credit to John Bickham and Tom and Kristin and everyone — we never went to market with the goal of, like, “Okay, now we can make a fortune here and charge what Verizon charges.”
SCHLEY: Absolutely. Yeah.
SCHANMAN: Or a little less. We said, no, we want share. And so even for our commercial business, I believe that we charged — because this is a while back — I believe we charged the same rate that we charged for residences for phone, because we wanted share. And so it was really, I think, brilliant.
SCHLEY: I do too.
SCHANMAN: And then over time you build your base. I think when I left Cablevision, the voice business, I think we were the largest provider of residential phone service in the New York Tri-state area, which is crazy.
SCHLEY: And I’m not inviting you to toot the Cablevision horn too much–
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I worked at other places.
SCHLEY: But had you guys not done that, I wonder if the rest of the cable industry would have taken a different path. It’s conjecture.
SCHANMAN: I don’t know. I don’t know. I think that, look, there are a lot of very successful companies that had different strategies that were more RGU-driven, but we had a blended stats model that combined everything in a bundle — I remember we did that — Jim Nuzzo worked on that model, and that’s what we pushed to market. So it was less about the individual products, but there were companies out there that, you know, they were optimizing caller ID upsell for five bucks and all these other things. And I think ours was more all-in.
SCHLEY: You’re right, you did work for other companies, but I think it’s a great story. And you guys ultimately won an Emmy award for the network DVR console, right?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I think — yeah. I don’t even know if my name’s on it, but I do know that Rich, Stephanie, and Keith, who worked on my team, are listed, and yeah, I mean, it’s amazing.
SCHLEY: Well, no mean feat to win a freaking Emmy, right?
SCHANMAN: No, I think it’s amazing, and I think it’s just a point of pride to be able to be a part of that. And then also, I don’t know if you want to go there yet, but one of the other things I’m really proud of for — at Cablevision was, you know, when the iPad launched.
SCHLEY: Yes. What do you do with it?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, what do we do with it? And at that time, we knew very well where things were moving, and we knew that we had to provide access to our services on other devices for consumers. And so we had launched a remote control on an iPhone, things like that.
SCHLEY: I remember, yeah.
SCHANMAN: And Patrick Donahue led that effort, and, he was very visionary. But what was great is, we decided that we were going to launch our complete service, every channel, etc., on an iPad.
SCHLEY: Just like it’s a TV set.
SCHANMAN: Just like a TV set.
SCHLEY: In the home.
SCHANMAN: An additional outlet. That’s what we called it. And so Tom Rutledge and the team said “Let’s do it,” and so I think about a year after the iPad launched, on April 1st, we were the first MVPD to launch our complete replicant service on an iPad. Time Warner Cable had done I think a limited number of channels — they had negotiated that. We actually decided not to negotiate up front with programmers. We felt we had the inherent right to do that.
SCHLEY: You already have the agreement to distribute these services and this programming —
SCHANMAN: On our network. On our network. And our broadband network is our network.
SCHLEY: Yeah, yeah.
SCHANMAN: And it was a little — the conversations were tough, but the truth is, we were able to do it, and as a result, I think a quarter of our base within like ten months were using one of our devices to watch TV. It was very cool.
SCHLEY: Okay. And Gary, what was important — again, I keep going back to these parallel developments, but people by now, like Netflix I think, are doing something very — or they’re planning soon to introduce an iPad multi-device offering. You had to be conscious of that, and you knew that this was the way the world was going, right?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, well, overall—Look, we also had challenges, because the truth is, you know, I guess I joined in the generation where we started to realize we had to compete, right? And part of the problem, and I think the reason why services like Netflix and other services emerged so successfully, wasn’t just the content. It was easier to use. And the truth is, we had legacy set-top boxes with legacy guides.
SCHLEY: Interfaces were poor.
SCHANMAN: Interfaces were not good. And so to be able to launch on a new device allowed us to create a new interface. And we did a couple of revs, and a number of people did that. But to me, it was about giving customers what we believed they were going to want. And I think sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss.
SCHLEY: But that new interface was sort of liberating, right? Because it got you —
SCHANMAN: It’s amazing.
SCHLEY: — out of the confines of the old set-top environment.
SCHANMAN: I mean, up, down, left, right, okay. Like, that was digital television. And that was amazing when it came out, but it wasn’t enough. And so, yeah, to be able to do swiping and tapping and watch while doing, you know, multitasking and all that stuff, that was stuff we all got to play with. And it was amazing. And I think we launched on seven different devices, different things — we were on, like, Microsoft and —
SCHLEY: Xboxes, for instance? I don’t know if that was in — maybe not yet.
SCHANMAN: No, that was when I was at Charter. So we’ll get to that.
SCHLEY: Okay, but I don’t want to let slip a point you just made, that you were of this generation of cable people that grew up in a competitive era. That’s not a trivial thing. In the early 1990s and mid-‘90s when various DBS, or satellite TV services, were launching, some people started to take notice and say, hey, they’re going to steal away our traditional television.
SCHANMAN: Sure. That’s right.
SCHLEY: And they did, absolutely. But more interlopers came on the scene —
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: — beyond satellite television. Netflix and other folks.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I mean, we started competing with the people we were paying and partnering with. I mean, right now it’s incredible, the amount of competition within — you know, co-opetition that exists is beyond.
SCHLEY: Co-opetition, yeah.
SCHANMAN: And I think a lot of us missed Netflix. I think we believe that — I mean, the truth is, Netflix grew on the back of a broadband infrastructure that they never paid for.
SCHLEY: Thank you very much.
SCHANMAN: And content deals with programmers that were trying to kind of get a little extra — a few extra shekels, because honestly, we weren’t partnering well. You know, it got to the point where, right, it was a perceived zero-sum game. In the past, like you said, before, it was overly competitive, it was great. We all grew with — you know, the distributors grew with the programmers. And then over time it was a little bit fraught.
SCHLEY: But I always wondered, did it feel like getting jilted by a girlfriend or boyfriend? Like, these are “your” channels, and look, now they’re being sold to the other guy down the block?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and it became the negotiating play. Like, why would I pay you for your content when you’re also licensing it here, and you’re doing this and whatever? And then, you know, of course the programmer would say, “Well, you need to pay me for my value, otherwise I’m going to go somewhere else.” So there was a lot of that.
SCHLEY: Yup. It’s business.
SCHANMAN: There was a lot of that. It’s still that way. I mean, the truth is, it would be nice to see, and I’ve talked about this recently with CableFAX and people like that, which is that it would be nice for us to be able to, for programmers and distributors to truly work together to create something unique and better. It’s hard, though, because now programmers are — you know, they have their own direct-to-consumer services, they need to invest in that side, and so it’s —
SCHLEY: It’s tricky.
SCHANMAN: — it’s really tricky. But I love it, I mean, to a fault.
SCHLEY: (laughter)
SCHANMAN: I love this industry. I think it’s amazing. And I’m very blessed to be a part of it.
SCHLEY: Take me, if you would, to Charter Communications circa 2014 or so. What’s the story there?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, so the story there was, I knew, obviously — most of the leaders that left Cablevision, they went over there. So Tom, John, Jon Hargis, Scott Webber, I mean, tons of folks all over there went over there to basically take Charter out of bankruptcy. And I actually had left running the video business and broadband stuff, where I had worked for Kristin Dolan, to go work over in the ad sales division for two years. And I helped them scale up their set-top box data efforts. I helped them scale up their basically operationalizing addressable — I ran traffic and operations and pricing and all of that. But yeah, I got a call at one point, it said I should talk to Rich DiGeronimo up there, who ran all product, and see if there’s something for me — John Bickham called me about — actually, Hargis called me about that. And so I went over to Charter in 2014. And it was really great. It was a very interesting company, because I knew the playbook, right, because I — Tom and John had the playbook. I knew how that worked, right, about the RGUs and the units, everything we’re trying to push —
SCHLEY: And the share argument and —
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and I knew I knew how to build products and I was pretty good at it. You know, I had done all digital — I had done a lot of things that they wanted to do. And so yeah, I moved out to Denver to work there, and I spent six years at Charter. It was wonderful.
SCHLEY: Doing many different things, I do believe, right? Because you worked on, again, video product but also some advertising strategy stuff?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, so the model that seemed to work really well, because David Kline both worked with me and was a mentor to me at both Cablevision and Charter, was that my team actually did product development for the advertising business as well as the video product.
SCHLEY: Right.
SCHANMAN: And that was good, because — and that wasn’t the case at Comcast, and I noticed that. What was really good about it, and I still recommended it when we did it when I actually went over to EchoStar and Dish, is — advertising never gets the priority. So there’s two ways to work it. One is for them to scream around the edges and try to get things through, which never worked, because the video business says “I don’t care about you.”
SCHLEY: “I’m bigger than you and I don’t care about you.”
SCHANMAN: “And I don’t care, advertising is annoying.” Or what you do is you just agree, let’s both — merge it together. And as a result, maybe the advertising initiatives were number four on the priority list, but they got done. And so I was really proud of that. So yeah, so I worked on a lot of those products, which we fully scaled addressable over at Charter to, I think, close to 14 million households. All of that work we were able to take care of.
SCHLEY: And when the big combination happened, the Time Warner Cable/Bright House combination, when was that and were you part of that restructuring?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, totally. So I joined in 2014. We were kind of a lot of B & C markets, right? Like, I think we had St. Louis, etc. And actually, before I joined the company I asked John B. about that and he was like, “It’s inevitable.” And then what happened was, as soon as I arrived, Comcast came in, and they were going to acquire, and I don’t know if you remember, there was Great Land, which was going to be part of the Insight Systems, and it was going to be a mess.
SCHLEY: I do remember, and —
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and so we were ready to do this weird hybrid where we’d have 8 million subs and they would have the rest, and thankfully, it failed.
SCHLEY: Yes, it did.
SCHANMAN: And pretty soon after, Charter swept up with a deal that was good for everyone, got Bright House as part of the mix —
SCHLEY: Changed the cable world. Absolutely.
SCHANMAN: Totally did. And actually, I’m really — I was proud to be a part of it, because, you know, John and Tom had a vision to basically run the playbook we had, not mix every idea that was possible, like, just execute. And the truth is, within like six to eight months, we had unified all pricing and packaging across the platform that I helped work on —
SCHLEY: Incredible.
SCHANMAN: — and within two years we had all of our products on the same platforms.
SCHLEY: One thing behind the scenes people don’t understand is how hard it is to do that symmetry, because sometimes you’re different technical platforms in one market to another.
SCHANMAN: Totally. Yeah, I mean, Kit Mayo played a — she ran customer care and she had to unify all of our building platforms, and, you know, you have a choice. You can leave it like that. You could also leave subcultures, or you can say, “This is how we’re going to work.” And it didn’t work for everyone, but I’m telling you, it worked for the shareholders, and it was a unbelievably impressive feat. I was glad to be a part of it, and I learned a lot. I learned a lot about, at some point, you can’t just worry about everyone’s feelings. You have to do what you think is right for the business, and you have to have everyone aligned. Because otherwise you’ll tear yourself apart. And so we knew where we were going, and the company did it. It’s a massive, massive credit to the leaders that I worked for.
SCHLEY: Some hard decisions, for sure, I’m sure, along the way.
SCHANMAN: Of course, of course.
SCHLEY: I was going to ask you that, before we segue to a really interesting chapter for you professionally — what made for a productive work culture? I mean, what would you — you know, for maybe people who are beginning their careers, what do you look for? What works and what doesn’t?
SCHANMAN: Yeah. So I’ll take passion ten times out of ten.
SCHLEY: Really.
SCHANMAN: Passion. Curiosity is really important. People that have a desire to win — it’s actually why I think I fit in at Dish, because it’s a winning culture. No, I like people that are really eager. That came from my experience in advertising. You know, you gotta show up. I mean, the biggest relief I had when I started working in advertising is that no one was going to ask me how smart I was. Right? They were just, “You gotta show up. We got work to do.” And most things are not rocket science, okay?
SCHLEY: Fair.
SCHANMAN: So I tend to be a player coach. I tend to — especially now in my career, I highly enjoy bringing people up and helping give them the confidence to take chances. But to me, I think it’s really important to have passion. I also think at a high level, you need to have psychological safety, so the ability for people to fail —
SCHLEY: To make a mistake?
SCHANMAN: — to make a mistake. That’s important. Not every company does that, and I always try to bring that into the culture. But you also need analytical rigor. People have to be prepared.
SCHLEY: Okay.
SCHANMAN: So if you mix those things, right. So you basically have creativity and passion, but some analytical rigor, surrounded by psychological safety, to me that’s what you need.
SCHLEY: Okay. That’s a great formula, by the way. The passion part tends to be infectious, though, right? Like, you —
SCHANMAN: Totally, I’m still passionate — I have so much energy.
SCHLEY: — you live off of that.
SCHANMAN: Like, I still get excited, just talking about this. Like, I love building things. You know, I’ll be excited till I die.
SCHLEY: I have to talk to you about online video and a service called Sling TV.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, totally.
SCHLEY: Sling TV, if I’m not mistaken, was the first of what became a parade of —
SCHANMAN: The virtual MVPs.
SCHLEY: — virtual multi-channel video program distributors. What was a VMVPD in the first place?
SCHANMAN: So it’s funny, I was at Charter when they launched.
SCHLEY: When Sling launched.
SCHANMAN: When Sling launched. And I remember, we all — we had to just — we had a heart attack.
SCHLEY: Really?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, because we were like, wait a minute, this is — why don’t we have those deals, right? So it was like that too. But it was basically, wait a minute, now people don’t need a set-top box, they don’t need it installed. They can download an app on a platform, and there’s this package that’s not everything everyone wants, but it was 25 bucks or 20 bucks for 13 channels, including ESPN.
SCHLEY: Not the worst proposition ever.
SCHANMAN: Not the worst. And so it was really incredible. And then six months later, I think DirecTV launched their product, and then a year later YouTube launched a product. And so now we have — you know, now it’s a sizable part of the market, and YouTube’s killing it in terms of share while traditional MVPDs are declining.
SCHLEY: You talked about the operational advantages of running video over someone else’s broadband network, but what was in it for the consumer? Why would people make that switch, cut the cord on cable and go to a Sling TV or a DirecTV stream or whatever it was?
SCHANMAN: (laughter) Because I think a lot of cable companies forgot the business they were in, and they were in the business of leasing set-top boxes.
SCHLEY: Yeah.
SCHANMAN: And they’re in the business of charging for HD.
SCHLEY: Mm-hmm. It’s what we were talking about earlier.
SCHANMAN: You know, right. And at some point, I just want to pay what I’m paying, no taxes, additional fees, not paying for four set-top boxes in my house, and I want to be able to quit when I want. And so the empowerment that Sling enabled, and still does, you know, is this ability to actually reset and build a good relationship with the customer. And to not be just another cable company, or another satellite company, right? And so I think that was the appeal, and it makes a lot of sense. Also, think about it: I could — not that you’d want this, but I could have my whole household be able to use it. I could watch it whenever I wanted. There wasn’t a lot of strings attached, and —
SCHLEY: It was a less friction-laden relationship.
SCHANMAN: No, it was completely — it was basically a very customer-empowered model. And it’s — and Netflix is that way as well, right? You know what you’re getting, you pay for it, that’s all you pay for it, and either you like it or you don’t and you can quit any time. And it’s really important. I mean, we tried to do that at Charter, by the way, and not a lot of people are aware — what we did with Charter was we actually created some streaming-only packages.
SCHLEY: Yes, you did.
SCHANMAN: And we did those, and we were comfortable — this is very interesting — at Charter, we were comfortable actually in some cases not even requiring a set-top box.
SCHLEY: Yeah, crazy.
SCHANMAN: And so that was really useful as well. It wasn’t the same as over-the-top rights, but it was an ability for us to allow people to maybe get a Roku app, and not have to get a set-top box. And that was a big debate, because it was — what business are we in? Are we in a content distribution business, or are we in an infrastructure box business?
SCHLEY: A box business? Yes.
SCHANMAN: And at the time we made the decision at Charter, I think that our — it’s possible that our set-top box leasing revenue was pretty close to Netflix’s total revenue. So you’re giving up something.
SCHLEY: Yeah, it was not meaningless.
SCHANMAN: So — but you know something? Customer always wins.
SCHLEY: I get it.
SCHANMAN: But anyway, and then Sling obviously took it to a whole other level. I’m proud to have been able to lead that business.
SCHLEY: Yeah, I guess I was just going to ask, what drew the passionate Gary Schanman to Sling TV? Like, what did you see as the possibility there?
SCHANMAN: So I left Charter in 2019 and I started my own consulting business. And I basically started to build, I built a 25-person kind of contract employee organization, and we did business development strategy work, but we also started building apps, streaming apps, for companies that needed video solutions. And so that was really cool, and so I started to do that. So I always loved TV. And I actually had an opportunity to — I was going to actually do a project with Sling to actually help them figure out their FAST strategy, and right before I was ready to sign, the person that was president of Sling left, and so I —
SCHLEY: Okay. There you go.
SCHANMAN: — I met with Erik Carlson, who was the CEO, and I said, you know, “Do you want me to run this?” And, you know, after he got over the fact that I was a cable guy —
SCHLEY: Uh-huh. Well.
SCHANMAN: I took it over. And it was this wonderful opportunity to take this really amazing brand that I had competed against to be able to figure out how to grow it.
SCHLEY: And I guess I should explain, if we didn’t mention it, Sling was owned by a company called Dish Network, which was a principal competitor in the satellite TV space.
SCHANMAN: Totally, right, that’s who I went to work for.
SCHLEY: Exactly.
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: And so what did you do, day one on the job? What do you — like, where do you start, you know?
SCHANMAN: I just looked at a lot of research and I tried to figure out why we weren’t bigger. And there were some organizational things I noticed. There was also the fact that I think we were very confusing to consumers in the market, because we were like a Rorschach. People saw what they thought we were, and then they would get the service and say, “Wait a minute, I thought you had locals. Wait a minute, I thought you had this or that.”
SCHLEY: Oh, okay.
SCHANMAN: You know, everyone wants a free lunch, so they’re like, “Wow, $35,” or whatever the price was at the time —
SCHLEY: Sign me up.
SCHANMAN: — “and I can get TV?” And they’re like, “Well, you don’t have this, this, or this.” So pretty soon we developed a strategy called Goldilocks, which was basically about us being able to — like, we’re not for everyone. We weren’t a cable or satellite replacement, we were a substitute. Sorry, an alternative.
SCHLEY: An alternative. You were willing to concede that.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, totally. And then we helped — we did a lot of really cool stuff. We launched a FAST service, we launched a rewards program, launched games — A whole bunch of cool things we were able to launch over the last three years to create a lot more engagement, and engagement grew. So our subscribers were relatively flat, but the time spent went through the roof, it was really great.
SCHLEY: Talk if you would about the atrocity of churn in this business. Like, it’s really hard, right?
SCHANMAN: Oh, it’s really hard. Be careful what you wish for, you know? It’s funny, a lot of the programmers, you know, they put a lot of their eggs in the direct-to-consumer bucket, which I have tons of respect for —
SCHLEY: I know.
SCHANMAN: — but do you know something? It can cost you —
SCHLEY: Good luck, my friend.
SCHANMAN: — it could cost you 20, 40, 60, 90, 100 dollars to get a subscriber, and they don’t have to stay with you.
SCHLEY: Right. Yeah. It’s —
SCHANMAN: And they go.
SCHLEY: — easy in, easy out.
SCHANMAN: Yeah. And so the real key in my view is to get better subs up front. To be honest and straightforward– figure out who they are, what they want —
SCHLEY: Okay.
SCHANMAN: — you know, as opposed to just throwing money like spaghetti at the wall. But yeah, churn’s really hard. Churn is — look, putting a set-top box in someone’s home is a great guarantee of low churn.
SCHLEY: You’re there.
SCHANMAN: You’re there.
SCHLEY: Yeah.
SCHANMAN: And it’s like, ugh, do I really want to go through this? And now it’s not a great way to endear yourself —
SCHLEY: Understood.
SCHANMAN: — to customers, but it’s effective.
SCHLEY: It’s a necessary evil.
SCHANMAN: Right.
SCHLEY: I wanted to ask about this in this context — as a cable guy who’s now an online video guy —
SCHANMAN: And satellite TV, too.
SCHLEY: — and a satellite TV guy, you played all edges here. Was there resentment in the cable business that all of these newcomers were kind of riding on the back of intensive capital investment you had put into building these broadband networks?
SCHANMAN: Sure, I think — like, I think Netflix was a good example, like I said, that they were built — there was a bit of arrogance on our part about, like, well, you know, they’re building on our platform, and they’re getting deals where they can around the edges — yeah. I think we were — yeah, I think we were pretty annoyed.
SCHLEY: Well, what are you going to do?
SCHANMAN: But what are you going to do about it? And so I think it was always better for our industry to have open, you know, basically open net neutrality across the board. Now, some would disagree and say you need quants and other things in general for VOIP and things like that, but — And net neutrality was, I think — perverted the definitions and different people use it the way they need it.
SCHLEY: I totally agree. I totally agree.
SCHANMAN: But overall the idea of allowing people to build an application and launch it and run it on broadband is why we have a lot of innovation in the world.
SCHLEY: And it was probably inevitable anyway.
SCHANMAN: Of course it is. You can’t fight the future.
SCHLEY: Yeah. Did you ever think you’d see the day, though, when, whether it’s cable or satellite TV, these multi-channel torrential downpours of channels, would start to erode? Both those businesses would start to lose their traditional customers? I didn’t.
SCHANMAN: I started seeing it in 2014.
SCHLEY: Okay. Even then.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, because you were starting to see people making economic decisions that were saying, “I don’t know if I need all that. I don’t know if I want all that.”
SCHLEY: Because we got a little expensive with cable TV and satellite TV.
SCHANMAN: It was extremely expensive. And our only way to grow for a while was just to raise prices. And the experience did not match that. And I always had a lot of respect for Comcast with X1 — I think it was a really great experience and interface in what they did. But it was too late. I think that, just like when you get charged for water out here — which, by the way, is a fortune compared to New York — you know, you think, “Well, that should be free.” Like, in your head, right?
SCHLEY: Yeah. No, I know.
SCHANMAN: And I think there was a generation of people that just built resentment against multi-channel cable — like, “This should be free.” And I think over time, once they had an opportunity to untether a bit, they were excited for the opportunity, because it was — and still is in a lot of cases; well, not as much anymore — but it was the best value in entertainment.
SCHLEY: Yeah, absolutely.
SCHANMAN: For decades.
SCHLEY: Right.
SCHANMAN: Like, you could spend $140 a month, peak, and get movies and TV shows and all this kind of stuff, but what wound up happening was, the value proposition dropped. The ad load grew, the content was held off the platform now for other direct-to-consumer things, and the price keeps going up.
SCHLEY: Right.
SCHANMAN: And so —
SCHLEY: Yeah.
SCHANMAN: — you started to see that like in 2013/’14, and I think we were able to still grow, but it was mostly due to bundling. And then once Netflix did originals and Amazon spent $8 billion on content, it was inevitable. And sports is the last real holdout.
SCHLEY: I guess so.
SCHANMAN: Keeping the bundle together, and already it’s slicing and dicing.
SCHLEY: Yeah. Your last — your most recent gig was running group video services for EchoStar, which I guess is —
SCHANMAN: That’s right. Satellite and streaming.
SCHLEY: Yeah. So whither the satellite TV category? What’s — is it going to be with us in ten years, or what do you see happening?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I think there’s a place for satellite television. I think there will be millions of subscribers to subscribe to satellite television. I think it will continue to decline. I don’t think I’m revealing any deep secrets that the markets–
SCHLEY: No, I —
SCHANMAN: — if I said, “Hey, I have a plan to make satellite TV grow,” people would probably not agree with that.
SCHLEY: Right.
SCHANMAN: So the markets know that. Yeah. I think that satellite TV was great for linear delivery of HD channels —
SCHLEY: Absolutely.
SCHANMAN: — at a time when the rest of the cable industry was flat-footed.
SCHLEY: That’s a great quote.
SCHANMAN: And I think it’s a great way that people, especially in rural America, can access content that may be harder to get. That being said, I will say that broadband penetration was pretty high, even in those areas, which is great.
SCHLEY: You can get TV through that pipe.
SCHANMAN: Totally, and most of the people that leave satellite now actually go to streaming solutions or other — like, they’re not necessarily just jumping between satellite providers anymore.
SCHLEY: You made such an interesting point before we started the camera rolling about — maybe we’re seeing a repeat of history with the broadband business, where the intrusion of fixed wireless kind of took the industry a little bit by surprise, I think.
SCHANMAN: Yeah. I always — it was funny. I was in meetings where people were like, “That’s never going to have an impact at all.” And the thinking is — and I still think it could be capped, because I think at the end of the day, it only works when you have fallow mobile networks.
SCHLEY: Fixed wireless being Internet over the air, high-speed Internet over the air, is that fair?
SCHANMAN: That’s right, so 40 bucks a month for T-Mobile, you put it in your house, but you’re using the 5G and the cellular network —
SCHLEY: The cellular network, yeah. Yup.
SCHANMAN: — to access it. Easy to set up — once again, easy to set up. If you think about Starlink, right, very easy to set up, very modern. You don’t have to install a whole dish and things like that. I believe that, yeah, it caught the industry a little bit flat-footed, because I think there was an assumption that broadband, at 70 bucks
SCHLEY: For a gigabit-level speed service —
SCHANMAN: Right, is sort of what people want, etc. But you know something? People always want value, and a lot of people can get away with 50 megabits per second. And if it costs me 25 bucks, I’ll do it.
SCHLEY: Yeah. That’s pretty sweet.
SCHANMAN: And so I think now there’s probably a reckoning for that a little bit. But I do think it’s somewhat capped, because I do believe at some point, if you’re a mobile network, you’re probably better off getting mobile subscribers on that network. —
SCHLEY: They’re richer customers than fixed wireless.
SCHANMAN: Much richer customers, and fixed wireless will suck up all of your excess capacity so you can’t grow in the mobile area.
SCHLEY: Fair point. And you’ve been involved in —
SCHANMAN: But it’s impressive, what they’ve done.
SCHLEY: I agree. You’ve been involved, and you mentioned it, in FAST, which I think if I get it right is free ad-supported streaming television.
SCHANMAN: True.
SCHLEY: And we were joking about it, because it’s just television coming over a different pipe. Is that fair?
SCHANMAN: Yeah, and I think — was it Alan Walk came up with that phrase? Good for him.
SCHLEY: Yeah. (laughter)
SCHANMAN: Yeah, I mean, what’s funny about it is it’s like, I’m old enough to be like, that’s just TV, man.
SCHLEY: It’s appointment television, right?
SCHANMAN: It’s just broadcast TV — it’s lean-back TV.
SCHLEY: Yeah.
SCHANMAN: You just turn on your TV and you say, oh, what’s on? And it’s — when you interview, like, in research, young people do it, they’re like, “This is amazing. You just turn on the TV. I don’t have to think, I don’t have to do whatever.” I’m like, “Wow, gee.”
SCHLEY: “Imagine that.”
SCHANMAN: Exactly. Past is prologue.
SCHLEY: When I was six years old I think that’s what I had.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, but that’s huge. That’s — it’s amazing. And it’s interesting, I was — I helped launch some services in that space.
SCHLEY: I know, I know, and we get phobic over the means of distribution, and I’m not sure it’s that important. What I always thought was the important delineator in modern television, and you’ve had it throughout your career, have dealt with it, is on-demand versus linear. Forget how it’s distributed.
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: Do you agree with that premise?
SCHANMAN: I agree. I think it’s about the content on your time and choice. And I think that’s the most important thing. I do believe that the industry built itself as an infrastructure play for a long time, where distribution — and think about early on. It’s like, well, if you want to get your content to so-and-so, you gotta go through the distributor.
SCHLEY: I’m your man.
SCHANMAN: And so — and then the Internet changed all that. And the truth is, content is king. Sumner Redstone said that, and I agree. And content when you want it is really essential.
SCHLEY: We almost — well, not almost. We take it for granted now, though, I think.
SCHANMAN: We expect it.
SCHLEY: You can get anything you want pretty much any time.
SCHANMAN: Yeah, it —
SCHLEY: Live sports is an exception, I get that.
SCHANMAN: But now the challenge is, now it’s just a mess. So it’s gone from being — it was the greatest gift to consumers that’s now gotten perversely distorted by all the companies involved.
SCHLEY: Right. Irony.
SCHANMAN: So what should have been ultimate customer choice is now, “Where is that show on?”
SCHLEY: Splintered, fractional, right. I know.
SCHANMAN: “I can’t find it. I don’t know what it is.” So everyone is now in this reaggregation goal. Samsung’s trying to do it. Google’s trying to do it. Some of the traditional MVPDs are trying to do it through the Xumo Box and things like that. And the challenge you have is just that it’s not — we’ve made it really hard for consumers where it actually takes more effort, in some cases more cost, to be able to —
SCHLEY: Work.
SCHANMAN: Like, how do you watch the NFL season right now?
SCHLEY: Which of 18 different —
SCHANMAN: You can’t.
SCHLEY: — oh, no, no, unless you spend a great deal of money.
SCHANMAN: That’s right, and then you have to know that there’s a Christmas Day game on Netflix —
SCHLEY: Or Amazon Prime or whatever.
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: I have two more questions for you.
SCHANMAN: Sure.
SCHLEY: What’s been — beyond the paycheck, what’s been fun about this career? I mean, what — I kind of intuit the answer, but I want you to say it. What’s driven you?
SCHANMAN: I love TV.
SCHLEY: Yeah.
SCHANMAN: I love entertainment. I love storytelling. Which — and just like my experience with engineers or creatives, I’m not a creative person. So just to be close to that and to be a part of that —
SCHLEY: And to enable it.
SCHANMAN: — and to enable it to me was amazing. And it would be frustrating when we couldn’t do as much as we wanted, but the ability to actually be able to work in an industry where people are creating content and we get to sell it and distribute it to people to me is amazing. I always joke “Yeah, I would work in the mail room at MTV.”
SCHLEY: Oh, my God, yeah.
SCHANMAN: I remember that. I didn’t care what I did. And by the way, a lot of respect to people in the mail room.
SCHLEY: Absolutely.
SCHANMAN: But my point is, like, I didn’t care — I was an industry guy. To me, to be able to work in the company, I’d do anything in that company, versus, like, you know, just be a marketer for anything. And so for me, that’s what it’s all about. And to me, to be around that environment was incredible.
SCHLEY: So your guidance or advice to someone who has a similar passion — just do something? Get in? Find a path and then work it?
SCHANMAN: Get in. Get in. Try things.
SCHLEY: Be good, be impressive?
SCHANMAN: Look. You need to show up. Ninety percent of success is showing up. You need to learn your craft and you need to make others around you — make their jobs easier and make them look good.
SCHLEY: Yeah. That’s huge. Right.
SCHANMAN: If you do those things — and I had hard lessons. I wasn’t always great at that. I had to learn a lot. I had to mature a lot. I had to mellow out a lot, and all these things. But yeah, that’s what you’ve got to do.
SCHLEY: What’s next for you?
SCHANMAN: I don’t know.
SCHLEY: Okay.
SCHANMAN: I think that I’m unnaturally drawn to the industry that I came from, but I’d want to do something a little bit different than just selling video services. But I’m not sure yet. I know that my involvement with AI and what I was able to do over a dish was really interesting, and the ability to use that, potentially to be able to do it in a sustainable way would be interesting. And I think there’s a lot of reconciliation and kind of probably merging and things that are coming ahead in the content space that I think is inevitable that I think maybe I could play a role in.
SCHLEY: I want you to tell me, because it’ll make me feel better —
SCHANMAN: (laughter)
SCHLEY: — that as a content creation or generation or editing tool, AI is not the devil.
SCHANMAN: You know, I don’t know, because every technology has been used by great artists to create better art. So I don’t want to assume that’s not the case.
SCHLEY: Okay.
SCHANMAN: But in this case? I think AI is a massive threat to white-collar workers, and at some point, I’m not sure what an entry-level person’s going to do in the future when you can go to a bot and have it solve those issues.
SCHLEY: Or make some pretty good television, if you want to, right?
SCHANMAN: Yeah. I don’t know — you know, AI can’t think. So AI by default can’t be our most original selves. I think what it’ll do is it’ll have to raise the bar for creators, because maybe it’s not, you know, Jurassic World —
SCHLEY: Eight.
SCHANMAN: — times eight. Maybe it’s got to be something new, a new story. Because I don’t think making Jurassic Park 9 will not be — I think that will involve AI, because someone’s going to try to cut costs, try to work with what they can, do script rewrites, etc., across the board. And at some point it’ll play a role in it.
SCHLEY: Okay.
SCHANMAN: But something completely new may not be able to come from AI. And by the way, that and a dime gets you a dime. I have no idea —
SCHLEY: I understand, I’m just asking, you know?
SCHANMAN: But I’ve been spending a lot of time in that space right now, and I think it’s going to be just like — just like every tech– like nuclear energy, it’s the best of times and the worst of times. Right?
SCHLEY: Listen, there was a time we had other industries trembling in fright because we were going to deliver 30 channels of television, when, you know, we used to have three.
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: You know? And so as the world turns, right?
SCHANMAN: Yeah. I do think AI’s going to help people be able to manage what they pay for and what they don’t pay for. I think it’ll be more—“recommendations” with machine learning is really AI, and I think that’ll help and that’ll get more accelerated over time. And so I think for the consumer it should be good. I think for the creators, it may create challenges.
SCHLEY: Fair enough. This has been just such a rich, provocative discussion, and Gary, I so appreciate it. Not Garry Shandling, but Gary Schanman —
SCHANMAN: That’s right.
SCHLEY: — sharing tales of the front lines in this transformation of storytelling and television that you’ve been such a part of. We greatly appreciate your time here.
SCHANMAN: Oh, I’m honored to be here. Thank you so much.
SCHLEY: Thank you for tuning in for the Hauser Oral History Series. I’m Stewart Schley, we’ll see you again.
SCHANMAN: Thanks.
