Shape Shifter

After Reinventing Herself, Sherry Brennan Is Transforming Fox Networks’ Pay TV Distribution

By Janice Rhoshalle -- Multichannel News, 1/30/2012 12:01:00 AM

Eight years ago, Sherry Brennan retired. Then a Cablevision Systems programming executive, she was at a high point in her 15-year cable career. But she wanted to have a baby.

“I was 40 years old, and I knew it was going to be challenging because I had some medical issues,” Brennan says. “If I didn’t have a baby, I didn’t want to blame my job for not having a kid.”

She managed to make a clean break. She quit her job and vowed never to work in corporate America again.

By the time her son, Lorenzo, was 10 months old, Brennan decided stay-at-home motherhood was not for her. “I was like, ‘Alright, what am I doing here,’ ” she recalls with a laugh. “I was kind of bored.”

‘PERSUASIVE POWERS’

She started putting feelers out and learned of a job opportunity at Fox Networks. “I called everyone who knew Mike Hopkins, who is my boss here, and said, ‘please call him or email him and tell him [about me], ‘and I guess the combination of my persuasive powers and my friends’ resulted in Mike ending up hiring me.”

As senior vice president of distribution strategy and development, Brennan has been instrumental in shaping the programmer’s pay TV distribution. Responsible for developing multiple growth strategies for Fox’s diverse group of networks, she is in charge of discerning new business models with alternative platform distributors and directs long-range digital strategy.

She recently spearheaded Fox’s long-term renewal to distribute the English-speaking version of China Central Television — the largest broadcaster in China — in the United States.

“She really has the ability to sort of look at the big picture, think critically about the issues and bring them back to be relevant to what we’re doing,” Hopkins, president of distribution at Fox Networks, says.

“With the partnerships that she deals with, she really does a good job of being able to communicate well with what we’re doing for that partnership,” Hopkins says. “And she does a good job of making sure she represents us well. If the other side ever feels there’s something they’re unhappy about, she is able to explain the situation and make sure they realize the importance of the partnership, and solve any problems.”

Adds 2010 Wonder Women Rita Tuzon, executive vice president and general counsel for Fox Networks Group: “Sherry is the go-to person who can talk to the technical people and understand it and then communicate that to the business people so they can understand it. Sherry can make very complicated things understandable.”

Brennan’s work ethic developed early, growing up in a lower-middle-class working family in Iowa City, Iowa. “When I was a kid, all of my friends’ parents were professors at the University of Iowa,” Brennan says. “And even though my dad was a washing-machine repairman, my friends’ parents all had Ph. Ds. I could see the difference in their lives versus my life, and I knew which one I wanted.”

After receiving her master’s degree in economics, she began working on her Ph. D. Then, she dropped out. “Getting a Ph. D in economics is no slouch achievement,” she says. “You really have to be dedicated, and I knew I wasn’t. I left and went to work for the Federal Reserve Bank, which was fascinating.”

The excitement wore off quickly. Af ter a while she began looking around for jobs in the private sector, and in January of 1989, she was hired as an analyst at California-based Falcon Cable before moving to New York-centric cable operator Cablevision Systems in 1996.

“At a pretty young age, Sherry was what I would call a complete executive,” Mac Budill, executive vice president at Cablevision, says.

Budill praised Brennan as a quick thinker with fresh ideas, a deft project manager and a capable negotiator. “She had a pretty well-rounded portfolio of skills, and she was very eff ective for us — and for me — and it was a big loss when she left.”

PREACHES AWARENESS

Brennan tries to impress upon people she mentors and with whom she works the importance of being aware of their decisions, and accepting the consequences of decisions gracefully.

“Sometimes people make decisions that seem fun, or right, at the time, and then they’re not really aware of what the consequences are going to be, and they tend to sometimes get angry about the consequences.”

Her “much-adored boy” is now a first grader who enjoys books, playing the violin and watching Marx Brothers movies.

“And he’s not like a mini grown-up, he’s a boy,” she said, “He likes to play soldier; he had a fake pipe in his mouth and a hat on the other day and I said, ‘Who are you?’ And he wouldn’t answer me for a long time, and I asked him, ‘Lorenzo why aren’t you answering me?’ And he said, ‘Mom, I’m being sculpted, I can’t move.’ ”