Johnathan Rodgers, president and chief executive of Silver Spring-based TV One, is retiring at the end of July from the cable channel that caters to African Americans.
The network, a joint venture of Lanham’s Radio One and Comcast Corp., said it may announce his replacement by the close of this week.
“In these sorts of media jobs, you have to have a change every five to 10 years to refresh the product and the brand. I’m of an age that it’s time,” said Rodgers, 65.
Rodgers has been with TV One from its 2004 inception, making the network profitable within five years and bringing it into 53 million households to date.
“One of the reasons they were so successful is Rodgers leveraged the popularity of Radio One, running a lot of advertising on Radio One stations when there was a launch in a market,” said SNL Kagan senior media analyst Derek Baine. “Striking deals early on to partner with Comcast and DirecTV also put them over the hump in getting a big subscriber base pretty quickly.”
From the outset, Rodgers worked to distinguish the network from Black Entertainment Television, impressing upon advertisers that there was enough room for multiple stations catering to the black community. Whereas BET’s lineup appealed to a younger crowd, TV One targeted a more mature audience.
TV One, Rodgers said, has found the most success with its annual broadcast of Essence magazine’s awards show, the documentary series “Unsung” and a reality show about actress LisaRaye. The channel has a broad mix of programming, including a news magazine and situation comedies.
“TV One has good, original shows that are funny without relying too much on stereotypes,” said Sheri L. Parks, associate professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland. “This shows how important it is to have African Americans at every level of the production process, because that’s how you get a variety of images.”
A 45-year media veteran, Rodgers started his career as a reporter for Sports Illustrated and went on to work as a television writer and producer for NBC and CBS.
Rodgers rose in the ranks at CBS to become president of the CBS Television Stations group, earning a reputation that piqued the interest of Discovery Communications. The Silver Spring media company wooed Rodgers into joining as president of its U.S. Networks group, where he eventually launched Animal Planet and Discovery Kids.
Within a year of his 2002 retirement from Discovery, Rodgers was tapped by Alfred C. Liggins III, chief executive of Radio One and TV One’s chairman, to help launch TV One.
“It was an opportunity to take all that I learned and create, what I believe to be, a sustainable network that serves and respects African American adults,” Rodgers said.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, May 22nd 2011 at 5:26PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
