It didn’t matter if Gary Schanman worked in the mailroom at MTV, he just wanted to be in the media industry. Gary’s career path may not have turned out exactly the way he pictured it as a 19-year-old advertising major, but one thing he knew for certain was that showing up and having confidence at work matters. Gary is now the Executive Vice President of Video Services at DISH TV and Sling TV. He’s spent more than 20 years in the media and telecommunications industry and has had a front row seat to some of the biggest media disruptions in recent history. Breaking Schemas co-host and Michigan Ross marketing professor John Branch sits down with Gary to chat about the invaluable lessons he learned on dealing with imposter syndrome, the power of an MBA for career pivots, and the importance of adaptability in the media industry. *Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*
It didn’t matter if Gary Schanman worked in the mailroom at MTV, he just wanted to be in the media industry. Gary’s career path may not have turned out exactly the way he pictured it as a 19-year-old advertising major, but one thing he knew for certain was that showing up and having confidence at work matters.
Gary is now the Executive Vice President of Video Services at DISH TV and Sling TV. He’s spent more than 20 years in the media and telecommunications industry and has had a front row seat to some of the biggest media disruptions in recent history.
Breaking Schemas co-host and Michigan Ross marketing professor John Branch sits down with Gary to chat about the invaluable lessons he learned on dealing with imposter syndrome, the power of an MBA for career pivots, and the importance of adaptability in the media industry.
*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*
Consulting for big companies takes fortitude and confidence.
08:37: You, kind of, have to fake it until you make it a little bit, but not think it sounds wrong. What you have to do is realize that you're just as smart as anyone else in the room. You can use deductive reasoning. You could use inductive analysis. You can do a number of things to say, this is what I think the best bet is and then be comfortable with the fact that it may not be right, but it's smart and thoughtful.
The key to entrepreneurial success.
15:33: It's funny how agility sometimes is the key to entrepreneurial success. It's not the original idea, it's the ability to pivot when you have that aha moment. I remember working with a company which manufactured one of the most boring products you could imagine, very large brake components for trains and tractor trailer trucks, right? And it was a German company which installed software to collect data from the braking systems in order to improve the quality of the braking systems. And then one day, light bulb moment, they realized that this data we're actually more valuable to fleet managers and safety managers at large companies because the data told these folks not about the quality of the brakes, but about the driving habits.
What’s next on the horizon of media disruption?
20:13 The future is really this race for aggregation. It's the best of times in the worst of times, all the choices in the world. You can't even keep up with the quality of peak streaming, of the quality of content out there. TV shows are better than movies, but it's very hard to manage it. It's actually becoming very expensive now because each company, because they're all trying to do it on their own, all have these, the equivalent cost structures, because no one can actually lean on each other for what's best. And so, there's going to be this reworking, which is there's going to be massive consolidation because individual media companies can't compete because they need scale. It's going to be a massive race for re-aggregation. Find a single place where I can get everything I want that's going to require data sharing, which no one wants to give up. It's going to require ego, put in a way, because media is a very ego-driven business and a prideful business. And it's going to require a re-establishment, in my view, as a biased distributor, re-establishment of the partnerships that made the business strong in the first place.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Breaking Schemas, a podcast that explores the dynamic changes of contemporary business through the lenses of the disruptors who’ve not only navigated the changes but have also rewritten the rules of the game. We’ll be sitting down with business leaders across a wide spectrum of industries to discuss their victories, their failures, and the biggest lessons they’ve experienced throughout their career to prepare tomorrow’s leaders — that’s you — for an ever-changing marketplace.
I’m Marcus Collins, marketing professor here at the Ross School of Business University of Michigan. I’ll be your host, along with my co-conspirator, Professor John Branch. Now, let’s get into it.
[00:00:46] John: Hello, everybody. John Branch here, Professor of Marketing at Michigan Ross at the University of Michigan, coming at you with another episode of Breaking Schemas, where we explore all things disruptive. Unfortunately, absent today is my co-host and co-conspirator, Professor Marcus Collins. He's off around the world somewhere doing his thing. And we look forward to welcoming him back on another episode in the near future.
But today, we have a wonderful guest, of course, a Michigan alum. It is Gary Schanman, Group President, Executive Vice President of Video Services at DISH TV and Sling.
And we're so happy to welcome you here, Gary. How are you?
[00:01:30] Gary: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:01:32] John: Well, we love having you here. Let's go back to the beginning. Where are you from? Who are you? All of that good stuff.
[00:01:39] Gary: Yeah, I grew up on the East Coast. Went to Syracuse undergrad. Worked in the advertising industry first for agencies like Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, which actually we're going through tons of change in the early ‘90s. And then, you know, really built my career working in cable and telecom, starting after a couple of stints at startups during the first dot-com bust, which is, it was very transformative, of course. Worked at companies like Cablevision, worked at companies like Comcast, Charter, and then over the last couple of years, after doing actually a startup for a couple of years on my own, I came over to DISH Network to lead the Sling business. And since, I think, last year, I've took on all of the video services businesses. So, their satellite TV business, the Sling TV business, their ad sales divisions, as well as all of their programming departments.
[00:02:27] John: Lots of disruption in the video and streaming and media in general. And we'll get to that in a moment. But let's go back to the Syracuse time for a bit. Tell us about your undergrad there. And what, what was the plan as the 19-year-old kid on campus?
[00:02:43] Gary: You know, I actually, I like media. I always wanted to be in media. To me, it was fun. I'm one of those people that's more of a line versus staff guy. So, for example, you know, if staff folks are people that just love accounting or love marketing and they could do it and they could sell erasers. For me, I always wanted the industry. I always wanted the line. I tell people I would've been really happy working in the mail room at MTV, and then they laugh at me, by the way today, and they say, “Well, what's MTV and what's a mail room?” But, you know, you could get what I'm talking about.
So, to me, I wanted to be close to that. And so, I dual-majored in the Newhouse School for Communications, but I also was a dual major in the business program, because I didn't know what communications meant, but I knew I liked it. And so, I wound up studying advertising. And to me, that was a very interesting and, arguably, a safe way for me to, basically, get involved in business, but the business of media. And I loved it. I loved it. And all I wanted to do was work at an ad agency when I got out.
[00:03:46] John: Tell me about your time in advertising. Look, folks, if you don't know Y&R, Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy, these are the creme de la creme, like, world-class global advertising firms. What'd you learn there? What… how did you come out of that experience?
[00:04:00] Gary: So, I learned a couple of things. One is success is showing up. You want to do well, show up, be reliable, be somebody who's interested and curious. And if you show up, they'll give you more and more. I got out of school, and I made, like, 18 grand a year. And that was… I know I'm old, but, like, it was, even then, it was poverty.
But I was passionate about it. I volunteered within the first 24 hours to do, like, an all nighter on a pitch. And just showing up, I was able to move up across the board. So, I learned showing up matters. I also learned that, in most cases, you're good enough. And imposter syndrome, you know, could be a driver, but also a destructive force. So, try to have confidence that you're there for a reason and play the role that you're able to play. And then from there, you know, get your knowledge base, and then you can get more leadership skills over time.
And then I also learned I love the business, right? So, I loved advertising. But the last thing I learned was I didn't want to be my boss's boss's boss. And if you don't want to do that, you need to think about what's next.
[00:05:04] John: And what was next for you?
[00:05:05] Gary: You know, for me, it was more traditional, like, “Hey, I'm going to go to business school,” so I could figure out what I want to do next. To me, business school was the best pivot that I had heard about where I can basically go from agency side, which is honestly very hard, but, like, it was client service, which I highly recommend everyone does, because you learn how to take care of other needs. So, you got to show up. You got to be there. You're not just telling people what to do. You're, you're actually… it's like being a server in a restaurant, right? You're there to serve. So, you learn a lot about character.
But I also wanted to move to the client side. I wanted to be more, sort of, helping to drive more than just one, one of the P's of marketing, right, which you could argue that the advertising agency wasn't even the full P of promotion, right? It was just a part of it. It was the comms part of it.
And so, I wanted more. And so, that's why I was very excited to go to Michigan. And I loved my time at Michigan. I mean, I'm so thankful for Michigan. You know, I met my wife there. It was just the most magical two years I could have ever hoped for. And it set me up for everything I've done since.
[00:06:06] John: Thank you for saying that. I'll pay your dollar fee later. Folks listening to the podcast, I think Gary said two very, very insightful things there, which I wanted to highlight, put a little exclamation point on them both. First, being in a sales role is so, so important for a career, particularly in marketing. And indeed, there are companies out there which will not allow you to go into marketing if you have not pounded the pavement for a period of time. And to your point, Gary, I think it does create a certain mentality of servility, right? That you are serving other people. That's great.
Second thing, what I love you said, is MBA as a switching device. There is probably no other better career switching device out there than the MBA. It's incredible how, you know, for three, four, or five years, you can be a bank clerk. You start your MBA. And suddenly, the entire world doesn't see you as a bank clerk anymore, but as a potential manager. So, folks, if you're stuck or not stuck and you just want to switch, consider an MBA. And of course, consider an MBA at Michigan Ross. Did you do an internship, presumably?
[00:07:16] Gary: Yeah. So, my internship I wanted to get more involved in media and entertainment. And so, I, kind of, scraped around to try to figure out the right internship, and I was able to, honestly, through friends of friends, connect with a media entertainment practice lead over at PwC. At the time it was Pricewaterhouse. I wasn't able to work in that group that summer, but they put me into their supply chain, more process consulting group in the Midwest. And I worked that summer there. I learned a lot. I also… I learned I did not want to work in that part of consulting. And then I was able to interview at the PW group in strategy consulting for entertainment media.
[00:07:54] John: And is that where you landed out of the MBA?
[00:07:57] Gary: Yeah, that's where I landed. It was a startup group within there because Pricewaterhouse had never had a strategy consulting group, right? Most of the media entertainment industry, you know, they work with McKinsey. They worked with Booz Allen. So, it was really cool because it was a startup, but it was also very ambiguous because consulting's already ambiguous. And for people that are interested in consulting when they get out, it sounds very exciting, etc. But it's also, it requires a lot of fortitude because you have large companies that have existential problems. And they are asking a 27-year-old, what do I do? Or a 30-year-old. And honestly, I had no idea.
And that's what I learned from that, was I learned that you need to, I know it sounds interesting to say this on a client business, but you, kind of, have to fake it till you make it a little bit, but not think it sounds wrong. What you have to do is realize that you're just as smart as anyone else in the room. You can use deductive reasoning. You could use inductive analysis. You can do a number of things to say, “This is what I think the best bet is.” And then be comfortable with the fact that it may not be right, but it's smart and thoughtful.
[00:09:04] John: Yeah.
[00:09:04] Gary: That's what I learned in consulting.
[00:09:07] John: Sounds like an amazing experience. Now, you made the good segue for us to enter the discussion around media. So, in the spirit of media, and given we're in a really hot political environment right now, I'm going to do a Fox gotcha moment, because five minutes ago, you told me that you wanted to switch out of agency onto the client side. And yet, out of your MBA, you went to agency side again in consulting.
[00:09:30] John: What's up with that? Gotcha.
[00:09:32] Gary: You got me. So, here's what I would say. I didn't know what company I wanted to work for. There weren't a lot of companies in media that had more, like, traditional recruiting environments. So, I couldn't go work for a major company. Like, you know, Disney, I think, you know, was a very West Coast focused. You know, they weren't recruiting. When I've gone to work for Disney, yeah. When I've gone to work for Viacom straight out, yeah. They went to Harvard. So, I'm like, “Okay, let me go to a practice where I can work with different clients, see what's there.” And then my goal always was, yes, to be able to work at a major media company. And the irony of this whole journey is I never once worked for a major content company ever. I found a niche in content distribution cable and satellite. And that's how I built my entire career.
[00:10:20] John: Yeah.
[00:10:20] Gary: And so, it was not the plan. But I'm very happy with the way it panned out.
[00:10:26] John: Tell us about that switch, then, from consulting into client side, and specifically, into content and distribution.
[00:10:33] Gary: So, in 1998, the internet was starting to become commercial, right? It was becoming a business. Amazon had launched in ‘96, I think, around. And so, you know, all the projections in the future was all about that. And so, all of my peers were like, “We want to leave here and we want to do an internet startup.”
And so, that's where I actually went. I left consulting to go work for a CBS… at the time, they were merged ViacomCBS. Then they split up. Now, they're back together. But it was called iWon.com, I-W-O-N.com. And I was one of the first 20 people there, not a founder, just a worker there. And we built this really successful portal where we… people clicked around. It was, kind of, like Yahoo. And they clicked around and they earned points into a sweepstakes.
And we basically gave away money to encourage people to come to the site. And it was a very interesting business because we had to build the site from scratch, we had to monetize the service, right? We had to figure all of it out. And so, that was incredible. Working nonstop all hours, New Year's Eve, with Y2K hit around that time. We had to be careful. We were working in the server rooms, with, you know, putting ice packs on the servers because we were so successful initially with our page views. It was very hard to keep up. Like, really cool, scrappy stuff. And I worked on product and business development, which I hadn't… didn't have experience with.
So, it was very humbling and very exciting. And I learned how to work with engineers. I learned how to do business development deals to be able to get, you know, partnerships executed, so, we could build the automotive section of the portal, you know, or the finance section of the portal, right? And that was amazing. But it also was a lot of, like, you realize the value of showing up. You need intelligence. You need to be able to think on your feet.
And that’s when I learned what I really wanted to do. What I really wanted to do was I wanted to build products with technology. And that's why it was, kind of, fun working in what was a traditionally legacy business, which we'll get into in a minute, which is, how do you help transform from within companies that are facing existential threats from out without? And that's… I learned that in those two years. So, I took the consulting, which helped me think critical thinking, data analytics. I took the advertising. The, you know, roll up your sleeves and just serve, serve, serve, along with this experience of just rolling up sleeves and building stuff. And then I took that through the rest of my career. That was my career. And I've been told, like, I'm an innovator and an executor. Like, that's how I should summarize the advice I've gotten from mentors. Like, that's your elevator pitch, because you're willing to do the work, but you're also a good thinker.
And so, that set me up. So, it was interesting. All of my idea of going to client side and maybe doing marketing. And I run marketing now, but, but it pivoted and it was more about building stuff.
[00:13:15] John: This is a wonderful story, Gary. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of a couple of things. First, early internet, but certainly internet today, how much of the monetization is really about two-sided business models, right? Where you are essentially giving something to somebody in order to make money on somebody somewhere else. And it’s incredible to me that you are right there on the, on the bleeding edge of that two-sided business model, which the internet facilitates early on.
Secondly, I love what you said about the startup, right? When you have 20 employees, you got to do anything and everything. And my co-host, Professor Marcus Collins, always says that, you know your company is big when, if the photocopier stops working, there's a number for somebody to call who will come and fix it or load the paper. You're at a startup if the photocopier stops working, you just fix it your damn self, right?
[00:14:08] Gary: Yeah, that's a brilliant… simply brilliant comment. It's true. And by the way, you mentioned the first item about the transition of, like, of the monetization. It was all evolving, right? Is it’s, first, this business started as a CPM model. Let's get advertisers and get eyeballs. And then it turned into a data play. Because to give away money in a sweepstakes, we had to have everyone registered, which means everyone that went to our site was identifiable. It was a lightbulb. And so, wow, that transition of, like, wait a minute, the value here is the data. Obviously, you have to protect it, anonymize, things like that. But fundamentally, our ability to do targeted advertising was the special element.
And then what was interesting is they learned, and I had left at that point to go to cable, but they learned, also, that real value of the property was actually the search. And as a result, that company got bought by Ask Jeeves. And so, the search was the most important part of the portal. Even though everyone originally thought it was all about, you know, the auto section and the this section and all that stuff, it was the big search box.
And this was all, like, Google just launched in 1999, right? Think about that. And so, we were, this is, like, 1999 into 2000. So, yeah, I saw a lot of that. It was really, really fascinating. And in hindsight, this just makes me laugh, like, wow, like, so many things were happening that I was able to at least witness. You know, we didn't dominate any of it, but it was really good to see that.
[00:15:33] John: It's funny how agility, sometimes, is the key to entrepreneurial success. It's not the original idea, it's the ability to pivot when you have that “aha” moment. I remember working with a company which manufactured one of the most boring products you could imagine, very large brake components for trains and tractor trailer trucks, right? And it was a German company which installed software to collect the data from the braking systems in order to improve the quality of the braking systems. And then, one day, light bulb moment, they realized that these data were actually more valuable to fleet managers and safety managers at large companies because the data told these folks not about the quality of the brakes, but about the driving habits.
Gary, tell us about the next career switch out of this startup world into media.
[00:16:28] Gary: Yeah. So, you know, I always liked television. I liked TV. And when I was in consulting, I loved television. I did analysis. And my area was cable and, and what was going to happen with content distribution over time. And so, I was like, okay, I want to get back into that. I want to get back into media. Things are changing. And I actually, I interviewed at Viacom, once again, a lot of the content companies. Those were the areas that were, like, the flashy stuff that I always, kind of, wanted to get to. But then I get this opportunity to interview at Cablevision. And it was a local New York company, 3 million subscribers, owned by the Dolan family. And I'll be honest with you. I was like, “Oh, I don't know. I'd much rather work for Disney.”
But I got hired there. And I realized the importance of distribution in the business. And I learned so much about that. And I came in as a business development strategy person, mostly BD, which gave me good, good scope across the board. I miss building, but it was a good start. And I just started to fall in love with that business. And I also realized I was good at it. So, it was, you know, the times that I had opportunities to go and do another startup or the times I had to go to do maybe work at a content company, I was like, “No, no, this is… I started to develop a niche in a sweet spot and it allowed me to move up, because it was an area I really liked and I was good at it.”
And I also got great opportunities. Cablevision was, was entrepreneurially driven, family-owned. And, you know, there's pros and cons of working at a proprietorship that way. But for me, it was mostly upside because it was a bold company. They could do what you wanted to do. And so, I was actually put in charge of an internal startup when I was there to actually build a whole interactive television platform to be able to monetize it. So, once again, combined sales with digital. And I, and I moved into a product role. And those opportunities don't really happen a lot at large companies that aren't, you know, solely owned, right?
And then broadband was coming out. It was becoming more important than TV. We were moving from analog television, believe it or not, right, to digital television where you can have 500 channels versus 40. And that was the road I started to take in the early 2000s. So, I was becoming one with what I was able to do. I got great opportunities to do startups and, you know, use the product things I wanted to do, along with being a part of this, what I would call, early-stage trajectory shift towards internet, digital, broadband, and what would, eventually, 10 years later, be, sort of, the massive blow up and fragmentation of video streaming. And I was, kind of, I was a part of growing that piece, and then having to compete with that.
[00:18:58] John: You have highlighted your career and living through so many incredible disruptions and how you have managed those. I want you to look into your crystal ball. What's, what's next on the horizon of the disruption of media? And where are you going to play a role in that?
[00:19:17] Gary: Yeah, so let me just quickly just talk a little bit about the last decade, if you will, right? Because that's when all the disruption happened. If you think about, from 2007 to 2024, and you look at media consumption, you know, you had very limited channels. They were all delivered linearly, not on demand. And now, you have a situation where you… the average household has over four or five streaming services. Only 60 million households in the country actually subscribe to a traditional pay TV bundle. You have massive, massive turmoil in the media industry because the, arguably, what the best business model in the history of the world was, which was the content distribution, the distributor partnership, right, where, you know, they make content high margin, we'd sell it at good margins, and then the customer gets it in one place, is all blown up. And so, if anyone who's listening thinks about how you get content now, it is completely fraught.
So, the future is really this race for aggregation. It's the best of times and the worst of times. All the choices in the world. You can't even keep up with the quality of… peak streaming of the quality of content out there. TV shows are better than movies, but it's very hard to manage it. It's actually becoming very expensive now, because each company, because they're all trying to do it on their own, all have this, the equivalent cost structures, because no one can actually lean on each other for what's best.
And so, there's going to be this reworking, which is there's going to be massive consolidation because individual media companies can't compete because they need scale. It's going to be massive race for re-aggravation. Find a single place where I can get everything I want. That's going to require data sharing, which no one wants to give up. It's going to require ego put in a way, because media is a very ego-driven business and a prideful business. And it's going to require a reestablishment, in my view, as a biased distributor, reestablishment of the partnerships that made the business strong in the first place.
So, that’s my overall summary of, like, how I look at the strategic framework for the future. But I think you'll get a lot less competitors, you'll get a lot more tech companies involved, and hopefully, people can just, you know, pay one bill eventually and just get what they want in one screen.
[00:21:33] John: I'm looking forward to it. Gary, I would love to continue talking for hours and hours, but we've got to call this quits. Marcus, my colleague and I, we try to capture the essence of any episode in a pithy, templated, phrase.
So, I'm going to throw this at you, see if you like it. Confidence as the disruptor. Confidence as the disruptor. We could talk about all the technological disruptions and business model disruptions, which have happened during your life in media and entertainment and the internet. But at the end of the day, what I pulled out of it was confidence as the disruptor. You use the word, “fortitude,” several times, confidence, understanding your worth, fake it until you make it. But I like this idea, confidence as the disruptor. What do you think?
[00:22:23] Gary: I like it. Well, especially if you're talking to the people that are listening. If you think about how do you manage disruption and how do you drive it or react to it? Yeah, confidence matters. And, and I, I, like, what you said there. I think for people to carry that with them, I think is very useful.
[00:22:38] John: Super.
Well, Gary, it's been an absolute delight. I look forward to welcoming you back on campus. We'd love to see you here. And until then, take care of yourself and to all of our listeners. As always, forever go blue.
[00:22:54] Gary: Go blue. Talk to you soon. Thanks for having me.
[00:22:58] Outro: Breaking Schemas is a Michigan Ross podcast powered by the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative and produced by University FM. Go, Blue!