Interview: Dan Fawcett, President, Fox Digital Media

Dan Fawcett starts his new job as president of Fox Digital Media Thursday, nearly four months after predecessor Pete Levinsohn moved to Fox Interactive Media. Fawcett would have made the transition sooner from DirecTV, where he has been EVP-programming and business & legal affairs for the last three years but he was trying to finish up what has turned out to be a controversial deal with Major League Baseball to move its out-of-market package from cable, satellite and broadband distribution to DirecTV and broadband exclusively. He’s no stranger to complex deals or to rights issues but knows what he faces at Fox Digital differs from making cable and satellite deals on either side of the programmer/operators equation. As currently configured, FDM is a very small group, particularly when compared to similar efforts at other major companies. We talked Wednesday about the transition and some of the challenges he faces.
Differences: “Obviously, this is a new sector for me,” he says, calling it “kind of the Wild,Wild West.” In cable, “there’s a template that’s been around and everybody kind of knows what it is.” Here “there aren’t defined business models and technology is changing faster than I can keep up with. The goal is to figure out how to get content to people however they want to get it.”
Making money for Fox: I pointed out that his job description also calls for “exploiting Fox content across all digital platforms” and for making money. He replied, “It’s got to be a business model that makes sense.”
Working across Fox: Fawcett moved to DirecTV when News Corp. became majority shareholder; prior to that he was EVP-business and legal affairs for Fox Cable Networks. Between the two, he already knows a lot of people across the company, which should come in handy: “This is a job where you’re really working cooperatively and collectively.” In order to accomplish some of the deals we’ve reported, the digital media team has had to work with the interests in of three — sometimes, more — entities within Fox.
Pulling deals together: Again, the mix of parties and interests involved in various digital rights deals goes beyond the traditional. For instance, we recently wrote about a deal that looked like a relatively simple digital rights swap for House with My Name is Earl that was stymied by a repurposing deal placing current shows on a cable network. Fawcett: “It’s a little bit of a morass to figure out how to bring everyone to a consensus. … It’s not easy, it

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