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o sooner had Jennifer Chun’s Time Warner Cable team made the decision to let CBS owned-and-operated stations go dark on its systems in early August than Chun was back in the negotiating room. This time, she was facing off with another network group, Fox, that was seeking a hefty price increase as it prepared to launch Fox Sports 1.
A top lieutenant of Melinda Witmer, Chun is one of Time Warner Cable’s leading negotiators. She’s the gatekeeper that sports networks need to get past if they want carriage on the country’s second-biggest cable operator. Chun handles Time Warner Cable’s relationships with sports properties, and in addition to CBS and Fox, she oversees negotiations with Turner’s networks and all regional sports networks outside of Comcast and ESPN.
“I’m coming off a pretty long stretch here,” Chun said. “It is a pretty intense place to be right now.”
Ironically, Chun got her start in the business working with Fox’s affiliate group. She said the differences between working for a programmer and working for a distributor are considerable. “When you’re on the programmer side, especially now as the industry has consolidated so much, you have a handful of relationships that are the vast majority of your revenue,” Chun said. “When you’re on the distributor side, every relationship that you have matters, no matter how big or small.”
— John Ourand
“Jennifer is an intellectual powerhouse and has one of the finest legal minds I’ve ever come across. Like other women I’ve come to know well in our industry, she’s a skillful negotiator but is guided by an incredibly strong moral compass. It was a privilege to work side by side with her at Fox for many years.”
— Karen Brodkin | EVP, business and legal affairs | Fox Sports Media Group
