Anne Sweeney
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Biography
This female executive broke into cable when it was in its infancy and has risen through the ranks not only to launch networks but also to run them. Anne Sweeney originally planned to become a teacher, until a children's TV course steered her toward the medium. After receiving her Master's in education from Harvard, she interviewed for a job at the then fledgling kids network, Nickelodeon. Asked at her interview which of three executives she might want to work for, Sweeney chose Geraldine Laybourne, then in charge of acquisitions. It was a fortuitous choice, as Laybourne would rise to become head of the network and, as a member of her team, Sweeney would rise with her. Eventually, she succeeded Laybourne as head of acquisitions for Nickelodeon, making the deals that brought many of the classic TV series like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Bob Newhart Show" to Nick-at-Nite. Rising to the position of senior vice president of program enterprises, Sweeney negotiated a joint venture with British Sky Broadcasting that resulted in Nickelodeon's introduction to the United Kingdom.
The owner of Sky Broadcasting, Rupert Murdoch, was impressed and he hired Sweeney in 1993, installing her as chair and CEO of Fox Basic Cable with the responsibilities for launching and programming basic cable networks. Within a year, she had introduced fX and fXM: Movies From Fox. For the former, which, at the time, had the largest cable launch ever in terms of subscribers (18 million), the savvy executive mixed a combination of low-budget original fare (i.e., "The Pet Department") and, borrowing a lesson from Nick-at-Nite, rebroadcasts of old favorites (e.g., "Mission Impossible"). The channel also included newer shows such as "In Living Color" and an early morning live show that Fox would later transfer to its owned broadcast stations (albeit with less success). After its launch, a market survey revealed that fX had strong audience approval, although in the broadening cable universe it was becoming increasingly difficult to win substantial ratings. Its sister network, fXM, culled from the Fox library of feature films and was designed to compete with such other cable mainstays as American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies. After the initial fanfare of the launchings, fX did not become a dominant cable force, and with Murdoch's increasingly huge investment in sports, many sports broadcasts were shifted to the network. As the goals and desires of the Fox hierarchy changed, Sweeney left Fox to become president of The Disney Channel, where her boss would be the head of Disney/ABC Cable, Geraldine Laybourne. Sweeney's challenge at The Disney Channel was to add life to a sagging franchise, as many cable systems were switching the network from pay TV tiers to part of the basic cable package. After two years, Sweeney succeeded Laybourne as president of Disney/ABC Cable Networks, overseeing the projected growth of E!, Lifetime and its other components.
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