Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My guest is Courtney White, President of Wheelhouse Entertainment. She runs the production arm of Brent Montgomery's Wheelhouse Venture, which includes TV, film and digital production, brand management, and an investment arm. White spent seventeen years as a top programming executive for
Food Network and HGTV. She joined the Wheelhouse Group in twenty twenty two, when she exited her job just in advance of the merger that created Warner Brothers Discovery. White explains how Wheelhouse is navigating a topsy Turvey marketplace for content. It's all about the quality of the idea and the quality of the elements that are producer brings to the table. She also explains why Wheelhouse has invested significant resources to host networking events for creatives in New York, LA and
other cities. In a world where most pitches now take place on Zoom, Wheelhouse wants to create that environment of spontaneous chit chat that sometimes.
Leads to huge breakthroughs.
White gives a great example in the conversation that is coming up right after this break, and we're back with the conversation with Wheelhouse Entertainment President Courtney White. Courtney White, President of Wheelhouse Entertainment, thank you so much for having me here at the Wheelhouse House in West Hollywood.
Thank you for coming. It's a pleasure to talk with you this afternoon. We are talking a few hours before you host a Ladies launch event, a networking mixer for all kinds of creative types producers, writers, directors, talent in the Los Angeles area. Tell me why Wheelhouse invests in
this and what you get out of it. Well, it goes back to I think the essential DNA of Wheelhouse and the initial vision that Brent Montgomery, are founder and CEO, launched with, and it's we're in a business that is about collaboration, relationships, taking a plus B and making a C that has never existed before. And Wheelhouse has invested in these properties. We have the Wheelhouse here in West Hollywood,
one in Tribeca and New York. And while those are workspaces and meeting spaces, they're also event spaces for people in all different walks of our business. So creatives, people in the finance world, talent all come together, and you know, it reminds me of something that a lot of people are saying post COVID. When you now pitch an idea on Zoom, it's a very controlled half hour pitch. You pitch the idea, then you click off, and what executives and producers say a lot is but the real business
didn't get done in that pitch. It used to be when you walked into the office and you walk to the elevator. That's when something happened unplanned, the famous walk to the elevator and so many shows we're birth that way.
And so this is about.
Bringing people together who might not otherwise intermingle, and it's about the magic of collaboration. We all have a lot of planned meetings, we all have a lot of very strategic let's meet this person. This is a great group of people who come together in these events and magic
happens and connection happens. And then with ladies who launched now, I was the beneficiary of growing up in a corporate environment where there was a lot of resources spent on my growth, and I went to events at Wicked Women in Cable Television and those kinds of events, and it really helped groom me as an executive. And I did see coming out of COVID there was either a cutback on companies supplying those resources or cutback on especially young
women coming into the office. I learned how to do my job by watching my mentor, Kathleen do her job, and so I really think that that exposure and that networking was critical to my career. And we have the event spaces, we have events teams, and so to do one that was a female focused series seemed to really be something that I was passionate about and something that Wheelhouse was just turnkey made to do.
Yeah, well, you certainly have quite the setting here. It is a it is a warm, you know, cozy ish but absolutely gorgeous house, and you fill it with lots of you know, it just it's an inviting setting for absolutely, for sure. Isn't you raise something interesting? Certainly? I can definitely remember, you know, organizations, event and events and organizations built around, particularly around the development and nurturing of women
in cable. And I think I would chalk a lot of that up to the fact that cable as a nascent industry, you know, going back to the late seventies and early eighties. There were there were the k Koppleowitz's, there were the Geraldine Leiborns. Was a place for a lot of women who might have been banging their heads on the or to get to get hired by ABC, NBC and CBS, basically the only game in town at
that time. But here was this new business. Abby Raven famously at A and E Networks, started as a secretary and left thirty five ish years later as chairman and CEO. Doesn't get better than that. From that experience, what did you find were really beneficial? Like, what were the networking events that really helped you go to the next level, or the or the role modeling experiences that really impacted you.
I remember distinctly this one Wicked leadership session. It was probably a two or three day off site, so it was an intensive and it was about finding your management style. And these were those of us who were participants. You know, we were kind of mid level, We had probably just started managing one or two people. We were at that point of our career.
The sweet spot for a nurturing I felt, so yeah, and so you you kind of understand stood the importance of managing people well because you had started to do it and you realized how difficult it is and what a commitment it is to do it well.
So it was that perfect time for that training. And there were all different styles that we talked about, but there was this one. It was like the ultimate quadrant that you could you could enter into, which is how can you be like lean into female attributes to not try to just blend in with men, but really bring the female attributes to the table and use them in an empowered way, so not try to blend in with all of the male suits, but stand out, be confident
in standing that out. And that that was sort of the ultimate, like the ultimate style to aspire to. And so I remember that and so like here today at Wheelhouse, you know, it's the place is covered in pink flowers. You know, like we're leaning into that that feminine power.
How do you curate the invite list?
So it's a mix. So we at Wheelhouse always have dozens and dozens of partnerships going on, and it's producers, broadcast partners, talent, other production companies. So the the list always starts with our current partners and then we invite them to then to bring people on their teams, and it's very purposefully not just made for senior level executives.
So again, this mission is really to fill in what the voids are with people not necessarily being in the office all the time, not necessarily having big events that are sponsored by their organizations. So we have people who are in the first year of their career, we have people who are really senior and so at every event, and we've done series in both New York and LA we do a newsletter and get everybody connected after the fact, and then we always get a swell of people who say,
can this person on my team come? Or I just met this person, So it grows really fast.
I'm joking, but does Wheelhouse have like a first look on any ideas that come out of it? Actually, I'm only half joking.
It doesn't. So we feel proud for the connections that come here. We you get looped into a lot of those kind of connections and partnerships. We at Wheelhouse are well represented here, so we've got a lot of our labels and teams here. So if something happens that we're not a part of and a story is founded here, we still consider that a win, and frankly, at this point in the industry, you know, any wind for the business is a win for us.
All. It's been more than a few years since Brent Montgomery founded Wheelhouse and he you know, I remember he very purposely founded it with it to be a different kind of company, to have a lot of different aspects and different different revenue streams coming in as the head of Wheelhouse Entertainment, can you kind of sketch us through what that company is and where you're finding the biggest opportunities at this time.
So, Wheelhouse Entertainment is comprised of seven different labels and those include Butternoud, the lifestyle label, Spoke, which is character driven, wheel House Studios run by Glenn Hugle, who's also our chief creative officer, who is our big global format genius. Twist is our newest label that is led by Jane Latman who is a Discovery ID, and then HGTV and Food Network. We have a new venture, wheel House Sports.
So we really cover all of the unscripted genres and we think of ourselves as the Avengers, so we've got specialists in all of those subgenres and then they share resources. Our digital teams support all of those labels. So for example, Jane Latman just launched a show on Discovery I D and then that became a podcast that we're now announcing, And so those digital teams are really charged with building
out the content from a vertical standpoint. But then also things like our legal and our production management team is centralized. So the idea is that the labels all are quite specific, and they're scrappy and really development focused, and when they get series up and running, they plug into our centralized machine. And our centralized machine is also quite scrappy because we find every project is bespoke and needs a specialty team.
We've got one project, for example, that has a live finale and so bring in that the live specialists is something that we do to fortify the teams. So it is it's very broad and I would say our current mission is to really broaden out what kinds of screens and where our audiences are consuming our content. So we work with Netflix and Hulu and cable and streamers, but also going straight to YouTube. So we have a partnership with and Edward from the NBA and we're creating his
series Year five, which is straight to YouTube. We have another show in the works which has not been announced yet, but it is has a cable play, a streaming play, and experiential, so lots of different tentacles. I do think in general there's a bigger flexibility now than there was a year ago. I see a bigger flexibility in Warner, for example, now than when I was there three years ago. So I think that door is opening.
Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more from Wheelhouse Entertainment President Courtney White. And we're back with more from our conversation with Wheelhouse Entertainment President Courtney Way.
Going straight to YouTube? Is that a programmatic strategy? And can you make it work? Is it viable to put something on YouTube? And you know, the can the programmatic alan sustain you? Is a success?
I would say that economics need to start with a concept that's really efficient. So and when we're asking ourselves, okay, is this a TV show? Is this so the economics of scale, it has to start there. So it has to be something that we can make for less and not that it's lesser quality, but just the nature of that show. So in year five, for example, we've got it's very verite and its cameras embedded with an Edwards
in behind the scenes of his NBA career. I just had a meeting this morning with a chef who is a well known name who wants to create something at their house, very simple cooking content, and we think that YouTube is the place for that, and then we're finding success with bringing brands on board. To launch on YouTube with an unknown talent from the ground up is really tricky, so we look for a head start in terms of the talent that we're partnering with, having a robust following
on their own brand relationships, and an efficient model. So when those things line up, it can make sense for us.
The largest streamers got into unscripted after really going big unscripted shows. How do you think that's impacted the overall unscripted market in terms of the demand.
We as makers don't think of it necessarily as a cable show or streaming show because frankly, most of our shows are airing on multiple platforms, and so you're selling into to this family of broadcasters more than just one home. So in some cases it's been able to help us budgetarily because different facets of the same company, the streaming aspect and the cable aspect are sharing costs. I think what has happened is everybody is caring about, Okay, how
do we get people to the next episode. The bingeability patterns that you see on streaming, I think are everywhere. So even in a standalone show, it's like, Okay, is there a foreshadow moment to the next episode or what's sticky about it? So the other reality, which is I think a harsh one for the business, is there are very few really high volume shows anymore, and so it really is about the six eight episode order that that is the norm.
Whereas when you were running Food Network and we're involved with HGTV, you would order as many as forty fifty episodes at a.
Time when I started in the development department at HGTV in two thousand and five, because our cost per hour were solo, we didn't do pilots. We went straight to sixty five.
The long term forecast of the cable business is one of, you know, of a shrinking subscriber base. That world has been very important to Wheelhouse and to the sort of forerunners of Wheelhouse. How are you how do you see that going in the next five to ten years? Is that do you think do you think destination cable channels like you're alumni, you know, Food Network and HDTV, do you think those are going to buck the down trend maintaining a healthy audience, a healthy linear audience.
I don't see the linear audience trend reversing. And I think of hg TV and Food Network just as examples as brands more than networks now, you know, and my hope is that they they their growth is really on streaming and max and being part of that offering. You know, where we see cable, there's definitely a bifurcation of the marketplace. There's the more high end event shows and more expensive shows.
And if you can really create a show for cable first and foremost that is excellent and sticky and garners an audience and has made economically really efficiently, I think that's gonna still be the market. So I think the cable business, what we're finding there is, you know, the budgets are tight, but if we're able to tell the story that that we tell within a price point, there's still there's there's still business to be had there, you know.
In my hope for these cable networks that I love is that they're not they don't just live on linear, but that they can really take their audience to to streaming too.
Let's go to the other end, podcasts and other forms of content. Where are you finding the most opportunity there?
So we're really focused there in the crime space. So we are finding that's crime. Yeah, I mean that it's it's such. It's such an important part of the podcast business in terms of genre. And when Jane Latman came on board to launch Twist, she was really passionate about being able to tell stories uh in in multiple places. So as we grow our podcast business, a lot of it falls in the crime space, and.
That's largely advertising supported. It is, yes, and it sounds like there's enough there to make it worth your while. I'm talking about podcasting specifically.
It is especially when you approach it vertically like we are. So it connects to a show we're making. It's you know, so that vertical business that's where we see a lot of growth is where can we take something that may start as a show but becomes an experience, becomes a podcast. So growing from that core business ip that we're creating, that's how we really focus where we're going to spend our energies and resources.
Are there any other like new cutting edge formats, anything that you're seeing real potentially?
Yes, we have one coming at the Door which is not yet announced, but it touches a little bit on the DNA of Alone, which from Montgomery and Will not the girl on our teams created, but takes in a completely different direction. So and it at the Helm has two really famous content creators who most of the people in the world know by name and are really surprise ending that's live and I would say, you know, for all of the talk with there's nothing new being sold
and everything's a reboot. Million Dollar Secret, this show that I'm kind of teasing and not really mentioning and Got to Get Out are all internally developed by our Real
House Studios team under the leadership of Glenn Hugle. So when we're finding we can bring something truly ambitious, unique and never been done before to the market, there's been a frenzy for it from the buyers and A Million Dollar Secret is doing great so far, so hopefully on the audience, and hopefully we'll have a really strong launch for Got to Get Out as well.
Let me close by asking you what's the best part of your job or some of the best parts of your job that you love the most.
I love being able to work with creatives who have completely different brains, and I do think our secret sauce at Wheelhouse is our collaboration. So we have people who have come up through the business, through every different angle and coming together and collaborating with people who have minds that are nothing like yours, who are completely creative. And the big part of our company's job is to come up with ideas every day. So we're doing that internally
and feeding off of the creativity of each other. We're hosting events, feeding off the creative of the outside world. So that creative collaboration in that spark that happens when two people get in a room and create a new idea in the moment, which is what Wheelhouse is all about. And to me, which was so attractive about coming on board. I mean, that's just magic. It's lightning in a bottle, as they say, So that's the best part.
Well, here's hoping that there's a million dollar idea just waiting to jump out at you in a few hours at your event, Courtney, thank you so much. This has been fun.
Thank you, it's a pleasure talking to you.
Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review at the podcast platform of your choice. We love to hear from listeners. Please go to Variety dot com and sign up for the free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.