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Company Watch: GB Entertainment

Bensinger straddles on-air and business sides with TV show

Bouncing around Monaco last week, Graham Bensinger was on the hunt again.

The journalist and businessman was not chasing an interview but rather wider television distribution in Europe for his eponymous “In Depth With Graham Bensinger” program, which sees him rove the world to examine top figures in sports and entertainment. Bensinger, 30, is the driving force of GB Entertainment, the 10-person company that produces, distributes and sells advertising for the show, where he conducts long-form interviews with luminaries such as Jack Nicklaus, Mike Tyson and Stephen Curry.

Working on both the business and talent side, Graham Bensinger has transformed his interview show into a profitable company. Below, he chats with golf legend Jack Nicklaus.
Photos by: GB ENTERTAINMENT
Straddling the business and talent side of TV is unheard of for many on-air personalities. But Bensinger decided to go it alone in 2010 amid what he viewed as an uncertain media landscape and an insufficient amount of editorial control over interviews at some of his prior stops, which included NBC Sports and ESPN.

As a result, he has served in all sorts of roles for his syndicated show, which airs at varying times depending on the market and which started off on regional sports

networks but is now on many broadcast channels.

The show, in its seventh season, is still small. But with TV viewership up to about 800,000 combined viewers an episode and the company on profitable footing, according to Bensinger, GB Entertainment is performing solidly after early challenges.

“It’s going really well, [but] it took a long time to get to this place,” Bensinger said. “I’m very conscious of my place and my show’s place in the media landscape, which is that … we’re a nice-to-have, not a must-have.”

The show, which has 26-episode seasons, sees Bensinger and a production crew spend anywhere from a few hours to a week with an interview subject, often a mercurial or hard-to-reach athlete or retired athlete. In addition to segments with Nicklaus, Tyson and Curry, Bensinger has spent two days with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hong Kong, two days with Alexander Ovechkin in Moscow and three days with Dikembe Mutombo in the Democratic Republic of Congo, among many others. He’s drawn news-making comments out of subjects like Shaquille O’Neal, who talked about telling Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz that “black people don’t drink coffee” after Schultz had approached him about doing business together.

Bensinger, who is on the road about 250 days a year, has spent months and even years getting athletes to green-light interviews. Before he conducts one, executive producer Laura Susic, Bensinger and his part-time researcher spend hours studying the subject, poring over press clippings and talking to the interviewee’s confidants.

“We’re not a show where we’re talking to these people about their stats,” Susic said. “We’re talking to them about who they are, what makes them tick, what their passions are, how their

childhood defined who they are or changed them, so it’s really more than just sitting there and off the cuff going, ‘Hey, [Wayne] Gretzky, what does it mean to be so great?’”

By being independent from a major network, the show also has that element of added editorial control that was crucial for Bensinger. He disliked how networks condensed some of his long interviews into short snippets that generally

contained the most controversial parts, which he said quickly eroded his trust with those athletes.

“I understood from a news editing perspective that there’s limited time and you have to air the most newsworthy content,” Bensinger said. “But then I also understood from the athletes’ perspective, they’re like, ‘Crap, why am I sitting down with this kid if I’m not going to get a fair shake?’”

The company says the show is in 86 percent of U.S. households via 106 broadcast affiliates and 11 regional sports networks. The show also appears in 10 Pacific Rim countries via a three-year deal with ESPN Australia and six countries in Europe (plus Israel) via Fox Sports Europe, and airs on Southwest Airlines flights. It is growing its digital presence on YouTube after previously being aligned with Yahoo Sports.

The company has grown to the mid-seven figures in annual revenue, Bensinger said, and while he wouldn’t disclose precise figures, he said revenue is up 15 percent this year after being up 7 percent the year before. Advertisers include Bank of America, AT&T, State Farm, Dr Pepper and Hugo Boss. The show also has worked with advertisers to find synergies, like Bensinger interviewing Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton in front of Charlotte-based Bank of America employees, or Hugo Boss facilitating an interview with Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, who represents the brand.

Bensinger spent two days with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hong Kong.
Photo by: GB ENTERTAINMENT
All the while, Bensinger has built a staff that allows him to take a more long-term view for the show, which he eventually wants to take into the political realm, as well as GB Entertainment, which he also wants to grow in new ways.

The fact that he’s doing this while retaining an on-air role is not lost among peers like ESPN’s Chris Fowler, who has served as a mentor to — and international-travel enthusiast with — Bensinger.

“What he’s been able to do is combine some of his passions — researching and interviewing, sports, travel — and then the business part is impressive,” Fowler said. “I just wouldn’t want to have to do [the business side] myself, but there he is with his own show, getting great distribution and growing it — sometimes in really lean times in the business.”

Tony Pace, former Subway chief marketing officer who advertised on Bensinger’s show while he was at the sandwich chain, pointed out that in an era of media saturation, the show’s knack for getting high-profile people to open up in ways they usually don’t has created valuable content around which the show’s advertisers can activate.

“Brands and marketers need to get a little closer to the programming they’re in,” said Pace, who now runs his own marketing consulting firm, Cerebral Graffiti. “Graham is kind of seizing on that.”

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