Cable Clairvoyant

Univision’s Jennifer Ball Has Seen the Future, and It’s Now

By David Tanklefsky -- Multichannel News, 1/30/2012 12:01:00 AM

Jennifer Ball received some media-savvy paternal advice in her younger years that put her at the forefront of a booming market.

“My father, who always wanted to take credit for my career, wrote career columns for The [Boston] Globe, The Chicago Tribune and The New York Times. He said, ‘Don’t go into plastics. Cable is the future.’
” Today, the future is a combination of cable and the Hispanic market — right where Ball lives as senior vice president of affi liate marketing at Univision Communications.

Th e 2010 U.S. Census proved what the cable industry already knew: that the U.S. Hispanic population is growing faster than any other demographic, with a whopping 43% increase in a decade. Thanks in part to Ball’s leadership, Univision is poised to capitalize on this huge growth sector, ideally to the mutual benefi t of the programmer and its distributors.
 
HEADS NEW GROUP
“Univision is a category driver,” Ball says. “We are experts in the area of Hispanic media across the board. Th e knowledge base on how to market to this audience as well as the assets that we have available is at an entirely diff erent level than others.

” Earlier this year, Ball put together Univision’s Distribution Partnership Marketing Group, which serves as a marketing consultancy group for the network’s affi liate partners.

“This isn’t just about promoting tune-in,” Ball says. “It’s about teaching our partners the cultural relevancies needed to reach the Hispanic market. It’s very custom-tailored to each distributor.”

Ball’s group off ers consumer research and insight, as well as a creative services team that works closely with distributors’ own marketing groups.

Ball is also heading up distributor marketing for key elements of Univision’s future growth. In October, Univision announced a pact with Hulu under which it is providing hundreds of hours of programming to the online video service. And this month, the Hispanic media giant wrapped up its fi rst affi liate deal, with Dish Network, for a trio of new networks: Univision Deportes, Univision tlNovelas and Univision Noticias. Th e channels, plus a second sports outlet, are scheduled to go live on the satellite-TV provider this spring.

Ball says the most exciting part of her work is being involved in “the transformation of Univision as a company in the midst of the transformation of America. It’s like being part of a big movement. That’s extremely exciting.”

Ball grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and knew she wanted to get into the television industry from a young age. She specialized in TV and theatre at New York’s Edward R. Murrow High School and then studied communications at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

Her first job was at Cablevision Systems in Boston as an assistant in the door-to-door sales group. Her supervisors fostered her interests by allowing her to write and produce commercials “in addition to collecting dusty converter boxes,” she jokes.

She moved into the corporate offi ce of Continental Cablevision soon thereafter and went on to become manager of the Northeast business after US West bought the company and re-named it MediaOne Group in the mid-1990s.

“I had a big role in launching the brand both in corporate and in the field,” she says. “We were the fi rst to go from just providing cable TV service to providing phone and Internet service.”

She moved back to New York in 1999 when she landed a job as manager of affi liate marketing at A&E Television Networks. “I always wanted to work for a programmer,” she says. “I particularly admired A&E’s programming and how they worked closely with their partners toward a common goal.” Ball was promoted to director in 2002, and in 2006 she was named vice president of distribution marketing.

While at AETN, she developed a number of crossplatform strategies that helped to elevate the network’s ratings and brand presence. She was part of a team that launched video-on-demand, A&E HD, History HD and other new products, and oversaw the positioning of those networks with distributors.

“During her time at A&E is really when non-linear content started to become prevalent in the industry,” A&E Networks executive vice president of distribution David Zagin says. “Jennifer made sure her clients understood the value of what we were providing in the non-linear space.”

‘RECRUITED’ HERSELF

Her current boss, Univision executive vice president of distribution sales and marketing Tonia O’Connor, has known Ball for nearly 15 years.

When O’Connor (a 2010 Wonder Woman) joined Univision in 2008, tasked with signing retransmission-consent deals across the industry, she knew she needed a team to help distributors understand the value of the audience Univision could deliver — a team that understood the market from both the programming and distribution side.

“When I reach out to people I secretly want to recruit,

I say, ‘Do you happen to know anyone?’ ” O’Connor says playfully. “She circled back and let me know she did know someone, and it happened to be herself.”

“She’s very clear about the fact that she always wants to beat expectations,” O’Connor says. “She wants her team to perform as well, but she’s very clear in defining what that is and what it looks like.”

Ball’s understanding of Hispanic culture also comes from her personal life. “I’m married to a Venezuelan,” she says of her husband, Enrique. “That’s where my interest in the Latin culture began.” They have two children, a son Ben, 14, and a daughter, Lily, 10.

JENNIFER BALL

Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
 
Age: 44

Current job: SVP, affi liate marketing, Univision Communications

First job: Cablevision Systems, Boston

College: Clark University (majored in communications and sociology)

Favorite TV shows: Mad Men, Modern Family, Univision music specials

Musical tastes: “I love Latin music; I’m a big fan of Pitbull [and] Shakira.”