Vanguard Awards: Jennifer Caserta

Executive Vice President, General Manager, IFC

By Stuart Miller -- Multichannel News, 6/13/2011 12:01:00 AM

In the last 18 months, IFC has been attracting more attention for its push into original programming with quirky and creative comedies and for its rebranding to re lect that new sensibility. As a result, more people have been trying to get network chief Jennifer Caserta’s attention.

“I’m being bombarded, in a good way,” Caserta, 40, who is being honored with a Vanguard Award for her leadership, said. “Production companies, writers, comedians and actors are all noticing us. People are talking about us more and there is lot of interest in developing projects with us.”

Much of the credit for this heady rush goes to Caserta, who oversees everything from programming to scheduling to marketing. She joined IFC in 2004 as vice president of marketing, after building her resume at Westwood One, Food Network, Oxygen Media and Court TV. She left IFC to oversee Fuse, another Rainbow Media property, expanding the scope of her experience. When she returned to IFC, she was groomed to become general manager, and took on that role in July of 2008.

POUNCED ON ‘PYTHON’

She spent her first six months in charge evaluating needs and challenges. Then she began putting her stamp on IFC with the docuseries Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut), earning the network’s first Emmy nominations.

“That really put us on the map,” Caserta says.

Once on said map, Caserta began filling it in with a unique blend of alternative comedy, much of it like Monty Python’s Flying Circus in its appeal to a male demographic … and Caserta herself. “I’m a chick who watches TV like a dude,” she said.

Ed Carroll, chief operating officer at Rainbow Media, put it another way. “She has a sense of humor that is capable of making me blush.”

Not only does she have “the right sensibility for this programming,” said Carroll, but Caserta’s marketing sense is crucial in the push forward into original series and a new “Always On, Slightly Off ” identity as IFC has also evolved into a ratings-oriented, ad-supported service.

“From the first time I met her, she was always full of ideas, seeing IFC as it was but also as a potential place it could evolve into,” Carroll said.

Ann Carlsen, founder of the consulting and executive search firm Carlsen Resources, has known Caserta for a decade and helped her find executives for IFC. She calls her “warm and funny” but more importantly praises “her ability to identify talent early and her personal investment in developing the leaders of tomorrow.”

Carroll said Caserta is a great consensus-builder and team player, but also quite driven — and always on. “She’s an insomniac, up all night watching television. If I think of something at 11:45 at night and send her a note to discuss the next morning, I’ll usually get a response at 11:47. She is great at moving things forward.”

While her tastes make her job easier, Caserta believes in going “deep into the research” to see what the IFC audience wants.

She doesn’t look for “edgy,” a word often bandied about for programming that seeks mainly to shock. Instead, she looks for the next cool thing. “It’s what the IFC audience wants,” she said. “I take cool-hunting very seriously. That is my job. I pride myself on it.”

The first original series was born out of one of IFC’s acquisitions. The network was getting a great response to reruns of the short-lived masterpiece Arrested Development when Caserta heard that one of that show’s stars, David Cross, was shopping a project starring both Cross and fellow Arrested alum Will Arnett. She thought, “What better place than IFC for that project?”

Cross, having seen the new life IFC brought to Arrested, agreed and last year The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret became the network’s first scripted series.

IFC also persuaded The Onion, the satirical newspaper, to create a TV extension, which became Onion News Network.

Then came sketch-comedy series Portlandia, co-created by and co-starring Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen. No SNL cast member had ever simultaneously had a series on another network, but Lorne Michaels thought IFC was a good fit for this unusual show and gave his blessing. Michaels’s Broadway Video is producing it with IFC.

Caserta is quick to point out that while she is “very much involved in programming decisions,” she “relies heavily on her programming and development staff ,” notably original programming senior vice president Debbie DeMontreux.

Caserta’s job, she said, is to help figure out which fare is unusual and pushes at boundaries but is also “as accessible as possible. We don’t want to be narrowly focused.”

She also believes in breaking the rules when necessary. For example, Portlandia production had to be squeezed into summer during Armisen’s SNL off-season. “We jumped on that. I want to seize the opportunity when it’s something special.”

EXPECTATIONS ON RISE

IFC continues to expand its original programming. Todd Margaret, Onion News Network and Portlandia are all set to return. And this summer will see three new nonfiction series: Commercial Kings, about two guys who produce local ads on the cheap; Whisker Wars, about competitive beard growers; and a travel show called Young, Broke and Beautiful.

These series — “docu-comedies,” Caserta calls them — walk a fine line, finding humor implicit in the situations without ever laughing at the subjects.

Another scripted series, Bullet in the Face, is planned for 2012, and an improv show is in development.

Caserta said she knows her job is only going to get more challenging, even with IFC rising on talent radar screens.

“It gets harder with success,” she acknowledged. “There are expectations in place and the new shows have to pass a certain filter. Yet to take risks you have to be willing to accept failure. But I love the challenge of it.”