At this year’s PromaxBDA: The Conference, the Media Leaders Summit featured a panel of some of the industry’s most important and influential media executives discussing leadership, innovation and technology in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape. One of those panelists was Kevin Beggs, who started his TV career as a production assistant and today, is president of Lionsgate Television Group, where he oversees such ground-breaking shows as Mad Men, Nashville, and the upcoming Netflix original series Orange is the New Black. The following interview between Beggs and Susan Credle, CCO of media agency Leo Burnett, is a bonus cut from a piece running in the summer issue of Brief, now available.

Susan Credle: At what point in your life did the entertainment business materialize as a way to make a living or a career?

Kevin Beggs: Ironically enough, [at] my house TV was practically banned. My dad was a minister and left the church during the late ‘60s and became a hippie and lived at a commune. And my mom, after her minister husband left her to become a hippie, became more religious than before and then TV was immoral. In college I studied politics and theater arts. I never thought about entertainment per se. But I moved to LA, [where] you realize if you want to be creative you have to be somewhere in the professional media chain. So then I started thinking “well, how do I get into this business?” And maybe it will not be quite as pure as theater but it might be fun. And I wound up, after a couple years of teaching school during the day, working as a PA at night, finally getting on a show, and then kind of working my way up.

Credle: Have you learned more from people above you or below you?

Beggs: I would say I have learned more about the business and strategy and really how it works from really great mentors. Without them I could not have done any of this. My first mentor [was] this kind of old-school producer from that Louis B. Mayer era who was having me take dictation and take a memo and run copy and whatever. I learned everything because I wound up writing everything or rewriting everything and typing it and doing it. And this particular mentor was really education-minded, meaning that rather than just say “do it,” he would tell me how to do it. I have been lucky to have people like that. And then when I came to Lionsgate, Jon Feltheimer came to be the CEO. [He] is a similar kind of teacher, and as a studio chief, far more sophisticated and refined and polished than my previous mentor, who was an executive producer on the show. It is a whole different level of sophistication [running] a company. So that was another level of grad school for me.

Credle: Is there one thing that comes naturally to you that you think has contributed to your success?

Beggs: I think I am very inclusive. I am very empathetic. I can read a room. I know where people are and I try to disarm them and make them very comfortable and think about something else. Get them into whatever we are talking about. I break the ice and just keep it loose. I try to keep a sense of humor to everything because there is very little creativity when people are staring at you with their arms crossed. I’m always [trying] to keep the door open for the creative conversation to happen.

Credle: Marketers are demanding added value when it comes to advertising today. Are you concerned at all about the weakening separation of church and state when it comes to content and brand?

Beggs: Not really. The first show of any consequence that I was on for a long time was Baywatch. This was a syndicated hour that had a very direct relationship with brands. Every other day we were being pitched products with a brand integration idea. And it led with no network and no distribution filter really in between – it was like some of the most blatant product placement you will ever see: “Hey, it is A&W Pyramid Contest. Let us see how many cans we can stack on the beach.” So honestly everything since then, in my mind, pales in comparison. And there has been more sensitivity. The economy changed and that line changed, and show writers who usually said “I will never do this” were, I think, starting to look at it differently and say, “how could this be an opportunity for interesting storytelling?” When and if you can do something that is organic and true to the show, then everybody wins.

Tags:


  Save as PDF