Passionate Leader
Kim Martin Draws On Her Own Experience and Staff Contributions in Charting WE's Course
By Janet Stilson -- Multichannel News, 1/29/2006 7:00:00 PM
If you’d asked Kim Martin five years ago if she could oversee an entire TV network, her answer would have been “no way.” Martin, who was promoted to executive vice president and general manager of WE: Women’s Entertainment at the end of 2004, had spent almost her entire career in affiliate sales.
When the opening surfaced, she was executive vice president of distribution and affiliate marketing for AMC, Fuse, The Independent Film Channel, WE, Mag Rack and sportskool. But “I thought, 'I don’t have the qualifications for the job,’” she recalls.
At the time, she was enrolled in Women in Cable & Telecommunications’ Betsy Magness leadership program. “One of the things you have to do is go through a life plan,” she says. “And as a professional woman, particularly one with children, you don’t really focus that much on yourself that often.”
As Martin developed ideas of what she could become with the support of the other women going through the program, she started to realize she had some pretty compelling characteristics for the job. “I love TV and style and fashion and decorating — and I’m such a girl’s girl. I have lots of girlfriends,” she says. “I thought, 'Wait a minute. This really is a good job for me.’”
A little more than a year into the gig, that has become pretty obvious. “What stands out is the slate of original programming that Kim got on the air,” says Ed Carroll, president of WE parent Rainbow Entertainment Services.
Primetime ratings grew 50% overall in 2005, fueled in large part by originals — there were 64% more than in 2004. The network has already slated six new series for the 2006-07 season.
Carroll likens Martin to Mary Richards, the classic Mary Tyler Moore TV character. “She’s optimistic, perky, smart. She doesn’t take herself too seriously, and she’s incredibly dedicated,” he says. “What I saw very quickly is that her staff was quickly inspired, because she’s so passionate.”
She’s also very inclusive. When she took the new position “I didn’t have experience in how to run a TV network. But what I did have was a very experienced team,” Martin explains.
She instituted weekly meetings with every member of her senior team of 12 people — “everybody who’s a director and above” — to discuss and debate almost every important issue concerning the network’s direction.
She also instituted an e-poll that involves a panel of some 5,000 women in the key 18-to-49 demo, to solicit their opinions and attitudes about topics and personalities. That helped the senior team focus the network on true-life stories that fall in three categories: relationships, pop culture and style.
Martin’s drive to win is something that her old boss, Bill Goodwyn, president of affiliate sales and marketing at Discovery Communications, knows all about. He met Martin in 1987, when she was hired by Discovery Channel in affiliate relations. “People would always come up to me and say, 'You’re very lucky to have her working for you,’” he says. “Whoever she works for, she’ll always make that person look good.”
Martin recalls, “I was the 34th employee hired. There was just one network, Discovery Channel, with 12 million [subscribers].” She was there for 12 years, rising to senior vice president of affiliate sales at Discovery Networks for the U.S. and Canada.
“She’s a terrific manager, and people will follow her from one organization to another,” Goodwyn says. “A lot of women might be jealous of her, but her personality is so engaging, and she’s so sincere, it never goes to her head. She always remembers her roots.”
Those roots would be Millegeville, Ga., a community of 7,000, which had the country’s largest mental institution at the time she was growing up. About 20 years ago, the facility was turned into a prison as well as a mental hospital. And her father is in charge of its communications. “She was so driven to get out of there and accomplish something,” Goodwyn says.
Martin didn’t originally turn her attention to the media business after graduating from Georgia College. After a few early years as a salesperson in the pharmaceutical industry, she earned her master’s degree. But she just couldn’t get excited by the obvious options — investment firms, banks or insurance companies. A mutual friend, Nicole Browning, currently MTV Networks president of affiliate sales and marketing, set up some interviews for Martin at various media companies, and that’s how she happened onto Discovery.
While she has so many professional accomplishments, Martin says the thing she’s most proud of is her two daughters, 7 and 10. “They’re at a great age. Mom’s still cool, and they’re still going with the flow.”
She raises them with her husband of 16 years, whom she met on a blind date 23 years ago.
And she follows a simple rule: “I have to be home for dinner every night at 7, and I stick to it,” she says. “I have two girls that are very social, and they can’t wait to tell me about their day.”
Every morning, she gets up at 5:30 to take a jog with the dog or go to the gym before her girls wake up. “I get them on the bus, and then I get on the train to work.”
Goodwyn says that work is likely to lead to many more accomplishments before she’s through. But she’s “most focused on WE now,” Martin says. “I think I have the best job, of anybody, any woman. Running a network for women, who are just like myself, you feel like you make such an impact.”
