Mark Silverman has fond memories of Sept. 1, 2007, the day Big Ten Network went live to TV viewers for the first time.
“We had been working nonstop to get the network ready,” Silverman says. “I started in December (2006), and most people didn’t come on board until April and May 2007. Flipping the switch, going live on air and watching Dave Revsine, our host, do his open for BTN, it was definitely the most memorable moment I have in our history.”
It was an instance of great accomplishment. But the work of turning BTN into the successful business venture it is today, with more than 300 affiliates and a presence in more than 52 million homes, was still a long way off when Silverman and crew came into work the morning after that glorious day.
“Launching a cable network is never an easy challenge,” says Silverman, the president of Big Ten Network, a joint venture between the Big Ten Conference and Fox Networks.
“We weren’t available everywhere and people were hearing frustrations from their family and friends that the games weren’t on.
“Financially, we weren’t able to bring in the revenue we had hoped to that first year. The schools were not happy to hear from their alumni and season-ticket holders that they couldn’t watch the games. There were just a lot of overall challenges from a management standpoint that we had to work through.”
Silverman felt the pressure, but he did his best to not let the criticism get to him or his employees. He was confident in his plan to build the 120-employee network and satisfy everyone’s concerns. It was just going to take a little time to make that happen.
“I needed to make sure everyone was focused on doing their job and not focused on everything else,” Silverman says. “They could not allow that to get in the way of creating a network. When people did see it, it needed to be a network they would want in their homes, one that they would talk about with their friends and say, ‘This is great; you should get it.’”
One of the first steps Silverman took to get BTN on an upward trajectory was to embrace his critics.
Meet criticism head on
Silverman didn’t have to look far to gather opinions about what BTN was doing right or wrong in those early days. In the case of Big Ten schools, university presidents and athletic directors, as well as the people who wanted to watch the network’s programming in their own homes, he felt a high level of accountability.
But Silverman was confident one of his best plays in helping the network meet its goals was to reach out to a different group.
“I wanted to meet the chief critics,” Silverman says. “We contacted the major bloggers as opposed to just reading negative stories about the network from people who really didn’t understand it. I spent a lot of time trying to discuss what was going on with these major influencers in our area.
“I had long conversations with these bloggers who tend to be very opinionated and very strong in their views. I got some of them to understand our point of view.”
Whenever you’re trying something new, you’re going to have skeptics. While you can talk and talk about why you believe it will all work out in the end, it’s often easier to earn support when you have other people willing to stand by your side and back up your claims.
“It’s a lot more credible than when you’re doing it yourself,” Silverman says. “For me to talk about the benefits of the Big Ten Network, of course I’m going to do that. I run the network. But if you can have famous alumni or media who are impartial in theory and just want to give their true opinion, that can really help.”
So Silverman went on talk shows and met with bloggers and editorial boards and did his best to answer questions and shift public opinion about what was happening at BTN.
“It just required a lot of hands-on direct communication with people who I think up until that point didn’t get much respect,” Silverman says. “I don’t think you saw many presidents of networks talking to bloggers. It was 2007 before they got to be more mainstream media like they are today.”
His goal wasn’t to ensure every story about his network in the future would be a glowing endorsement. He just wanted coverage to be fair.
“A satisfied customer is the best way to measure your company’s success,” Silverman says. “If you can attach your brand to something that is really meaningful and important to your fan base, or your customers, and then have others see the benefits, you can really utilize that to grow your company.”
Keep your goals in focus
The Big Ten schools represented another group that Silverman had to work hard to satisfy. Early on in the network’s life, a show was produced that listed the top 20 sports icons in Big Ten history. It did not get a good response from those within the conference.
“The conference was very reluctant to order certain schools over other schools,” Silverman says. “There is always this feeling in the conference that all the schools are equal. We need to do everything equally. But what we decided to do, which I felt was more appropriate for the network, was rather than be equal, we need to be fair.
“If a school is going to compete better than another school in a certain sport, they have earned the right to have more of their games on our air than the team that is not going to win as many games.”
Silverman had to find a way to manage these concerns about treating everyone the same with his professional responsibility to produce high-quality programming that recognized the excellence that the conference was producing.
“To lead an organization, you need to be willing to hear negative commentary on your business,” Silverman says. “Not everything we do is right or perfect. The first step is to be candid and to be aware that you could be doing things better. You want to take input from everyone, but not everyone’s input is right.
“We’ll hear certain ideas from the schools. As the leader of the network, I need to tell them, ‘Look, I hear you. But that’s not really in your best interest because of this.’ Or, ‘That’s a great idea, let me look at it and see what we can adapt.’ You need to be able to filter through the recommendations. Everyone has an opinion, but they may not always be right.”
This is where it becomes critical to have clear goals of what you want to be.
“You need to be very candid, but you also need to lead and sometimes people are very content to just do what’s been done the previous year,” Silverman says. “You need to be able to push through what you believe is right for the company whether or not everyone is on board.”
When the scandal at Penn State University with legendary football coach Joe Paterno leapt into the headlines, Silverman was faced with a critical decision.
“Up to that point, we had been very reluctant to say anything at all that wasn’t categorized as positive about our schools, our coaches or our conference,” Silverman says. “In light of covering that situation, the network really grew up, and we had to cover it the way our analysts truly felt.
“They were encouraged to just say what they really thought. We needed to cover it if we were going to really be a network. It was us gradually becoming more confident in what we do as a network and not being so worried about what the schools or our conference or our fans are going to think; do what we think is the right thing to do. That’s something that came about over time for us.”
Try new things
Silverman and his team are continuously looking for new ways to strengthen the BTN brand. In 2012, the network launched the BTN Big 10K race in downtown Chicago. About 4,000 runners signed up for the inaugural race, followed by 15,000 for the second race in 2013.
“We’ll take a hard look at ourselves at the end of each year and note what we did well and what we could do better and come up with a plan of what we can do next year to keep advancing,” Silverman says.
If your business hasn’t experienced any failures while trying new things, you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough.
“You want to be better at limiting your failures, but you don’t want to limit the experimentation,” Silverman says. “Put failure within a decent constraint. You’re going to invest X amount of dollars and if it doesn’t work, it was worth it. It’s like research and development.”
The key to being successful at branching out is to know what you can handle.
“No matter how big your organization, you typically only have a limited few key people, and it’s their resource or bandwidth that you can allocate on so many projects,” Silverman says. “If something is going to happen, it typically needs a lot of company focus and priority and working together to make it work.” ●
Takeaways:
- Don’t let people panic.
- Develop clear goals.
- Don’t fear failure.
The Silverman File:
Name: Mark Silverman
Title: President
Company: Big Ten Network
Born: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Education: Attended UCLA and received a bachelor’s degree in economics; earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Michigan.
What led you to a career in media? There were two things I found fascinating in my local newspaper, The Journal News, when I was growing up in West Haverstraw, N.Y. One was the top 20 TV ratings. I would delve into the shows that were the highest-rated shows on the three major networks at the time. I just found that whole idea of measuring these top shows fascinating. I also checked the top 10 movies of the week and what their box office grosses were. That just really piqued my interest from a very young age.
What fascinated you about it? You have ratings and movie grosses, which is a mathematical judgment, and you’re applying that to things you really enjoy doing — watching TV and going to the movies. It was the marrying of those kinds of things that gave me the thought that you could actually have a career in something you find interesting and entertaining as well.
Who has been the biggest influence on your life? Personally, I would have to give credit to my parents. I get my work ethic from my father and most of my personality from my mom. It’s the combination of those two. And of course my wife of 20 years, Vicki.
If you could speak with anyone from the present or past, with whom would you want to speak with? Jesse Owens. We profiled Jesse Owens as a Big Ten icon. Someone who endured what he endured as an African-American at the time, going to Munich for the Olympics at the time he was there, representing Ohio State. Gaining his perspective would be very interesting.
