Art of the Deal

Janice Arouh felt the earth move under her feet when she was interviewing at the Hallmark Channel.

It was a chair-clattering earthquake — but for Arouh, it marked the beginning of what is a dream job, in a dream location, for a dream industry. “I have the best job in cable, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the tea leaves in China,” Arouh said with a laugh.

That’s saying something because her job is among the toughest in the business right now: To negotiate and renew carriage contracts with cable operators for an independent network, during a time of squeezed shelf space and quickened competition.

It’s tense work, “but, you see, I love tension,” Arouh said. “With tension, there is opportunity.”

It is that kind of cheerful determination that marks Arouh, throughout her wide network of peers and colleagues, as a feisty, one-of-a-kind Wonder Woman, who leads with her heart, but keeps her head three steps ahead of the game.

“Janice is warm and authentic and huggable — but be the one across the table with her in a negotiation, and whew! That’s a whole other thing,” Cox vice president of operations Jill Campbell said.

Since joining the company in 2004, Arouh and her team launched Hallmark Movie Channel, began gearing up for a March ’08 launch of high-definition TV, and lifted Hallmark Channel’s cable footprint from 56 million to nearly 85 million subscribers.

It’s all about Arouh’s practice of the art of the deal, noted Henry Schleiff, president and CEO of Crown Media (which owns Hallmark), who likens her to a female Winston Churchill.

“When you look at the great moments in the history of negotiation, there are always those who have great respect, and are able to work the back channels,” Schleiff said. “Janice understands the needs of both sides, and is tenacious in pursuing her position. And she does it in a good-hearted way.”

For Arouh, whose professional background includes advertising (she worked on the “Mac the Knife” campaign for McDonald’s fast-food chain) and affiliate sales and marketing (Fox Cable Networks, Showtime Networks), there’s a cadence to every deal.

“There’s a pace,” she said. “It’d be nice to go Philadelphia once, and sit down [with Comcast] to get the deal done, but in reality there’s at least 200 correspondences — e-mails, phone calls, letters, meetings — that take place before you actually get to the business terms.”

The word “no” is an Arouh motivator, too. “That’s when you have to have that fire in your belly,” she said. “That’s when you get to work toward the 'yes.’ ”

When Arouh was in the eighth grade, she piled her wagon every day to deliver copies of the Cleveland Press. Fridays were collection day. The paper cost 60 cents a week. “Most everybody gave me a buck, and I kept 40 cents,” she said of her earliest encounter with sales and negotiation.

She credits her parents, and particularly her father, who moved to Ohio from Slovenia, for her work ethic. “They instilled in us to work hard, get as much education as possible, not marry before age 30, and to travel the world,” Arouh said.

Arouh, who is highly regarded as a mentor to co-workers and industry, is more of a “be where you are” person than a “life balance” person. She thinks women do a disservice to themselves by talking about the balance of life and workplace. “It’s about being focused in the moment, being smart and organically controlling your direction,” she said.

That plays out in Arouh’s life, not just at Hallmark, but throughout the industry.

In addition to being a treasurer for the Women in Cable & Telecommunications Foundation and WICT National boards, she’s a Southern California Cable Positive board member, and a former board member of the Southern California chapter of Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing. An animal lover, she volunteers at the California Wildlife Center in Malibu.

“There are a lot of ways to describe Janice — smart, honorable, hardworking, committed. But the thing that really sets her apart is her energy, this incredibly focused energy that she brings to everything she does,” Disney-ABC Television Group president Ann Sweeney said. “She makes anything possible.”

A mother of two — daughter MacKenzie, 14, and son Alec, 6 — Arouh’s advice to soon-to-be-working-moms is this: Get some sleep. “Because for the next 15 years, you’re going to be utterly exhausted,” she laughs.

Other Wonder Womanly advice, imparted to Arouh by her mentors, and imprinted into her day-to-day work: Grow rhino skin, “because if you’re easily offended in this business, you’ll just cry all the time.”

Also: “Establish your brand. Know who you are, define your attributes, position yourself, and stick to it.” Her brand? Passion, which she describes as “that fire in the belly that burns and motivates you to give your best.”

On the people side, Arouh believes in hiring people smarter than herself, then to empower them, and give them credit for jobs well done. “Guess what — I hope there’s someone on my team right now who wants my job,” she said.

It is that kind of Wonder Woman spirit that endears her to her friends and colleagues in cable. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love her,” Cox’s Campbell said, noting that it’s not just about the intelligent, win-win approach to deal making. “As a friend, she just pops into your life occasionally, with a really sweet message that just puts a smile on your face — she makes everyone feel special, one person at a time.”