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| SportsNet N.Y. President Jon Litner |
Former NHL Exec VP & COO
JON LITNER was named President of
SportsNet N.Y. in February ‘05. The network, co-owned by Sterling Entertainment Enterprises (a media company led by Mets Owner
FRED WILPON), Time Warner and Comcast, launched 13 months later. Litner heads up all daily operations, including distribution, production, programming, marketing and public relations. The year-round home of the Mets and Jets, SNY has been an immediate hit with viewers. TV ratings are up 93% compared with last year’s numbers on MSG. The network broadcasts four live sports news shows daily from its street-level studio in N.Y. and has 30 college football games and 100 college basketball games on its fall/winter program schedule. A former two-sport (baseball and football) athlete at Yale, Litner started his career at Capital Cities/ABC Inc. before joining the Baseball Network as VP/Business Affairs and later rejoining ABC Sports as VP/Programming. He spoke with SportsBusiness
Journal N.Y. bureau chief
Jerry Kavanagh.
| Age: 42. |
| Education: B.A., History, Yale (1985); Cornell Law School (1988). |
| Favorite vacationspots: Park City, Utah, for skiing; Anguilla, with my wife; and just being anywhere with my children. |
| Favorite band: Rolling Stones. |
| Favorite author: CORMAC MCCARTHY (fiction), WILLIAM MANCHESTER and DAVID HALBERSTAM (non-fiction). |
| Favorite movie: “Good Will Hunting.” |
| Favorite sports movies: “Bang the Drum Slowly” and “Bull Durham.” |
| Favorite quote: F.D.R.’s “It’s important to handle success as a gentleman and disappointment as a man.” |
| Last book read: “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy. |
| Most frequently read book: “A Confederacy of Dunces.” |
| Pet peeve: Dishonesty. |
| Collections: Baseball memorabilia that reminds me of my childhood. On [my office] wall are several old gloves. One of them is very similar to the one my father used to throw me batting practice with when I was a young boy that stirred my passion for baseball. |
| Fictional character you identify with: None. I live in the real world. |
| Personal heroes: SANDY KOUFAX, BART GIAMATTI and WINSTON CHURCHILL. |
| Management style: I believe in leading by example. Hire the best people that you can, give them clear direction, celebrate their victories and support them when things don’t go the way you set out to go. I’m collaborative and inclusive, but I’m also demanding. I expect everyone to strive for excellence every day. |
| Best career advice you received: Recognize the importance of listening. |
| Earliest sports broadcast memory: The 1967 Red Sox winning the pennant. |
| Indispensable piece of technology: My treo. |
| Fantasy job: I’m living it, but my second fantasy job would be to teach history at Yale. |
| Smartest business call: Hiring an outstanding management team. |
Q: The New Yorker editor DAVID REMNICK said, “Everybody has a cartoon of themselves. Mine is: I write very fast, and I’m ruthlessly efficient with my time.” What would a cartoon of you look like?
Litner: It would be someone who is very passionate about life, who tries to excel in everything knowing full well that I won’t.
Q: Why do you do what you do?
Litner: I have a lot of fun doing it. When the opportunity to combine my passions for sports and for television and new media, and to do it in the largest media market in the country with a team like the [Mets] and partners like Comcast and Time Warner -- well, it doesn’t get any better than that. And to put together a team of young, hungry, ambitious people and to provide them the leadership to do what we’re doing, it’s exciting and very rewarding and personally fulfilling.
Q: Nice timing in this the first year for SportsNet N.Y., with the Mets out front from opening day. What has the Mets’ success meant to SNY's business?
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Litner Says Mets’ Success Was Huge
Advantage In Network’s Launch |
Litner: Having the Mets, and the audience they were able to deliver and the success that they had, was a huge advantage for us. It allowed us to leverage that to promote who and what we are and the program offers that we have, particularly our news and information. We were able to attract a greater audience. That benefited us because that audience tuned in to us and we were able to expose them to our other shows.
Q: What’s new at SNY?
Litner: We’re the fastest-growing regional sports network in the country. What we’ve been able to do in six short months is grow our distribution from nothing to well over 8 million. Our ratings, particularly for our Mets games, have improved nearly 100% [from last year’s ratings on MSG]. We’ve doubled our audience. We’ve established the brand, SportsNet N.Y., as a destination home for sports in New York.
Q: How have you established the brand?
Litner: By reaching out to all the sports teams and fans and sports events that this city hosts. There’s a great fanaticism in this market for New York sports. There’s no other city in the world that has the number of major league teams. Sports in this market is very much a cultural institution like Broadway is. And we see an opportunity for us to be that destination home so that all the fans who follow their teams come to us and know that we’re going to reach out to them and cover their teams. That’s what our brand stands for. Others in this market have chosen a different niche, and it’s worked well for them. But we think there’s a greater opportunity for us, and one that we’re aggressively running after.
Q: You consider SNY more than a niche network, though, right?
Litner: We are niche to the extent that it’s sports, but we’re not so narrow that we’re only targeting a particular slice of the city. We’re also a regional sports network, so sports is what we’re covering, but we’re not aligned with any one particular sport or any one particular team. Obviously the Mets are our flagship, but the name of the network is SportsNet N.Y. It’s named that because we’re reaching out to all the teams, all the sports fans and all the events in this market.
Q: How have you reached out to the fans?
Litner: The commitment is reflective of where our studio is located (on 51st Street and Sixth Avenue at street level), where we invite fans to come out and see us and touch us at our plaza out in front -- very much like what the network morning shows do. You know, we’re not in some warehouse in Jersey or Connecticut. We want more people to know who and what we are and to be inclusive. And our news organization is producing three nightly sports newscasts -- all original, highly topical, objective and unbiased reporting on New York sports. We continue to work at that and to put a tremendous amount of resources behind it.
Q: You have referred to the Mets as a community brand.
Litner: The Mets are a community. Fred Wilpon and SAUL KATZ, the co-owners of the team, are New York men. They grew up and went to high school here and have done business here for many years. The Mets reflect their values, and their values are all about the community. [Manager] WILLIE RANDOLPH grew up in Brooklyn and stoked his passion for baseball here. [GM] OMAR MINAYA grew up in Queens and rooted for the Mets. So, the brand itself is very much a community brand. Yet the team is very diverse, young and exciting. And this network that is covering this team needs to reflect the brand.
Q: Your main competition would be YES and MSG, and perhaps ESPN?
Litner: You know, I think our competitors are not just the other regional sports networks but also the local stations and all the other media devices that people use, whether it’s movies, radio, VOD -- all these things people are competing with in terms of leisure time. The audience that we’re going after obviously is one that everybody’s going after. But in a more specific way, yeah. If you’re a fan [of the New York sports teams], we’re your home.
Q: Will you telecast live sporting events during the winter?
Litner: We have lots of things going on: college football and college basketball, boxing, and a bunch of other programming.
Q: What do you see in the other networks that you like?
Litner: I’ve had the very good fortune to have worked for and trained under some of the real legends in this business: DAVID WESTIN, DENNIS SWANSON, STEVE BORNSTEIN, DICK EBERSOL, HOWARD KATZ and GARY BETTMAN. And I’ve taken away something from each of them and tried to integrate some of those lessons. Part of the culture we’ve created here is reflective of all those lessons. With this network, CURT GOWDY JR., our executive producer, and I were very methodical and took a tremendous amount of time looking at what other regional sports networks and national cable networks were doing before deciding what we wanted to be.
Q: Which is what?
Litner: It was clear to us, specifically with our sports programming, and our baseball programming, that we needed to be dynamic, contemporary and accessible so that the game could be revealed from the field and the dugout.
Q: You said, “We need to continue to take risks and show people something they’ve never seen before.” What did you mean by that?
Litner: What we did -- and no one else in this market, and I’m not sure any of the regional sports networks has ever done it -- is to tap into the players and coaches during the games on a regular basis so that the fans at home hear directly from them. For example, when a starting pitcher was taken out of the game, we had our reporter talk to him. That only happens if the team buys into the philosophy of bringing the fan at home the immediacy and intimacy as if he’s in the dugout. We also had different players or coaches miked during the game to bring the passion and drama and emotions of the games into the viewers’ homes. It’s all about being inclusive versus being traditional.
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Q: What’s been the biggest challenge at SNY?
Litner: The biggest challenge, but also the biggest opportunity for us as the fourth regional sports network in this market, is to establish who and what we are and the value that we bring. And I think in six short months, we’ve been very successful in doing that. People know SNY. We’re very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve.
Q: BILL CARTER of the N.Y. Times wrote “Desperate Networks.” Do sports networks need to take or make any desperate measures?
Litner: In our case, we are very methodical in what we do. We have a plan and were going to consistently follow that plan. We’re going to be aggressive in taking risks when it makes sense. We’re opportunistic. What we set out to do is ambitious, and that’s a good thing.
Q: Does ownership of its own RSN provide a competitive advantage for a team?
Litner: I think what it does do is it allows a team to better manage its brand. It brings more focus than it otherwise perhaps could have got in a traditional rights arrangement with a third party. In our case, it allows us to work closely with the team to achieve production enhancements, access to players and things of that nature. It makes it easier to do some of those things.
Q: What’s the most pressing issue (your network, your industry) face today?
Litner: All of us in this business face the same enormous challenge in the clutter of the marketplace, which seems like an infinite amount of choice that people now have for their leisure time and their disposable income. The strongest brands are able to attract the largest audiences. We’re fortunate that we have a great brand in the Mets, a winning dynamic team that has captivated the city, and a brand called SportsNet N.Y. to embrace the city as the destination for New York sports with the Mets as the flagship. I feel very confident that we will continue to have sustainable growth and continue to serve our viewers and our advertisers and distribution partners and to continue to build asset value for our owners.
Q: In moving from television to the NHL in late ‘99, you said, “I’ve enjoyed my time in TV, but the NHL’s positioned for growth and I wanted to be part of the group that capitalizes on that.” How does the league look from where you sit now?
Litner: I remain a big fan of the NHL. I spent over five years there. They’re the hardest-working, most dedicated people in all professional sports. I’m bullish on the NHL because I think Gary Bettman and his staff have, at least for the short term and hopefully for the long term, solved their economic issues. They have a labor deal that’s a true partnership with the players.
