Forty under 40

It was Sunday, Aug. 29 — a little more than a week before ESPN and Time Warner Cable would announce their groundbreaking carriage agreement — and ESPN’s Justin Connolly was at his customary spot, sitting in a conference room at Manhattan’s Time Warner Center.
Connolly, who had been part of every negotiating session in the run-up to this deal, was flanked by two ESPN lawyers. During a marathon 16-hour session that started at 10 a.m. and ran until 2 a.m., Connolly and his Time Warner Cable counterparts hashed out many of the broader deal points.
All of the negotiations surrounding this high-profile deal were tense. Just six months earlier, Connolly and his distribution colleagues were unable to avert a problem with Cablevision, as ABC went dark on the cable operator’s New York-area systems for about 24 hours in the lead-up to the Oscars.
The Time Warner negotiations were faring much better because of lessons Connolly learned from the Cablevision negotiations, including the need to keep in close contact during any dispute.
“Both parties were focused on keeping dialogue and conversation going,” Connolly said. “When talks break down and the lines of communication are broken, people disengage. Good relationships make for a much smoother process.”
Adding to the pressure of the Time Warner talks were similar negotiations Connolly was conducting with Verizon. At least three times a day, Connolly walked six blocks from negotiations at Time Warner Center to ABC/ESPN’s offices at 66th Street, to call the telco about its deal.
The end result is one of the cable industry’s most forward-thinking deals, one that allowed Time Warner Cable subscribers to stream ESPN’s channels to their personal computers. Connolly believes the deal was easier to cut thanks to his experience with Cablevision.
“Justin possesses an amazing aptitude for simplifying and solving complex issues by building coalitions and finding mutually beneficial common ground in the wake of competing points of view,” said Terry Denson, Verizon’s vice president of content strategy and acquisition. “As a result, my dealings with Justin never feel as though we are locked in a zero-sum game.”