So another executive shakeup has gone down, this time at my old stomping grounds. VARIETY veteran Cynthia Littleton was among the many that broke the news yesterday afternoon:
Sony Pictures Entertainment is set for a transition at the top in January when Tony Vinciquerra steps down from his role as CEO and hands the reins to Ravi Ahuja.
Ahuja will become president and CEO of the Culver City studio as of Jan. 2. Vinciquerra, who has served as Sony Pictures Entertainment’s chairman and CEO since June 2017, will remain in an advisory role as non-executive chairman through the end of 2025.
For a change, this is a transition that is not happening because of a sale or a scandal. As Littleton underscored, (t)he succession plan for SPE has been in the works for two years, after Vinciquerra negotiated his most recent employment contract with parent company Sony Corp. in Japan. As someone who worked for him in two separate arcs at two studios over a span of nearly two decades, I’d offer this was “in the works” long before that.
In both instances, Vinciquerra was recruited for leadership roles by ownerships who were seeking an adult in the room at a time when far more outgoing and mercurial personalities were on the move. When it was announced to my FOX Cable Networks colleagues that he was replacing the well-liked and aggressive Jeff Shell when he departed for NBCU, there was both disappointment and skepticism. They knew little more than he was a veteran of broadcast TV management, having risen from salesman to group head of the likes of CBS and Hearst-Argyle. Since I had come from that world, I had a bit more insight into both his reputation and resume. What I assured those that asked he responded to two things first and foremost: attention to detail and lack of flamboyance.
I summed up my first thoughts about him earlier this year when news began to trickle out that Sony was attempting to get into the battle for control of Paramount Global. Embedded in that June musing:
When Vinciquerra took over, ironically from Shell, as CEO of what was then FOX Networks Group in 2002, shortly after joining the company as president of the broadcast network, he immediately instituted a series of cost-cutting measures that had top financial executives personally reviewing expense reports to question if there were cheaper car services or taxi companies available in cities we’d frequently travel to. The number of extended conversations I was compelled to have to educate our CFO about the limited options in Charlotte, North Carolina after 10 pm at night were more detailed than the ones about the millions of dollars we were spending on ratings services that weren’t accurately measuring our properties. When we’d screen pilots and presentations for him, he’d rarely ask questions about execution and auspices. More often than not, his reactions were limited to “That looks pretty expensive”.
To be sure, that’s a formula that’s worked for him. He spent a decade at FOX and is now in his seventh year at the top of SPE. And as Zacks Business Report meticulously detailed earlier this month, there was more than a decent amount of positive news eminating from Tokyo, particularly about the businesses under Sony Tony’s purview:
Sony Group Corporation SONY reported fiscal fourth-quarter 2023 net income per share (on a GAAP basis) of ¥153.60, which increased from ¥113.89 a year ago. Adjusted net income came in at ¥175.1 billion compared with ¥141 billion in the prior-year quarter. Pictures sales increased 13.3% year over year to ¥406.7 billion, mainly due to an increase in theatrical releases and higher revenues for Crunchyroll. Operating income was ¥30.7 billion compared with ¥15.5 billion a year ago.
And indeed, his current boss was more than willing to compliment him, as Littleton further shared:
“The extraordinary turnaround at SPE over the last 10 years would not have been possible without Tony’s deep experience and expertise in the entertainment space, his strategic vision and his outstanding leadership,” (Sony CEO Ken) Yoshida said in announcing the change. “Under Tony’s watch, SPE became a critically important part of our efforts to maximize the value of our IP and find synergies across all our entertainment and technology businesses, and it remains a key driver in Sony Group’s ongoing corporate strategies to lean further into the creative and entertainment spaces.”
His Sony legacy will be more defined by what he didn’t do as much–perhaps more–of what he did do, a point DEADLINE’s Anthony D’Alessandro drove home in his writeup yesterday:
Vinciquerra made it his business to put the studio’s cards back in order; predominantly he kept Sony from turning itself into a streamer — maneuvers which have cost their motion picture studio competition dearly in billions of red ink investment– while also pivoting Sony Pictures Television away from broadcast into a streaming content supplier.
Or as Sony brass proudly coin the conglom: a content “arms dealer.”
It’s a strategy that proved strong through Covid as rivals fell prey to the temptations of streaming, and even throughout the dual strikes to the point where Vinciquerra shaped Sony from being a previously buzzed about acquisition target pre-Covid to the big kid on the playground with the potential to wrangle a major studio such as Paramount Global.
And as he expounded in an interview with the LOS ANGELES TIMES’ Meg James:
“When everybody jumped in (to streaming), I thought, ‘Well, none of these companies can supply all of their creative needs”. They’re all going to be at war for subscribers. We have a great library; we have great creators on our bench so let’s supply them so they can fight their wars. And it worked.”
When Tony arrived on the scene at Sony I was once again sought out as the one who actually knew about what makes him tick. Among the ones who were both dubious and fearful were those affiliated with Crackle, at the time Sony’s entry in the still-emerging streaming landscape. Despite the fact it began as a male-skewing outlet more than a decade earlier, and preceded all of the other walled garden studio efforts to follow, it had never found an appreciable audience or viable business model and was in the middle of yet another redirection and revamp. They were concerned that in initial meetings, unlike his more expressive predecessors, he raised nary an eyebrow about what they thought were the exciting new content and on-screen look they were about to unveil. They were adamant that they had finally figured it out. When I actually saw the first private Nielsen numbers for their latest series, I knew damn well that their days were numbered. And they were, as D’Alessandro detailed:
Divesting non-core businesses at Sony was also key during Vinciquerra’s run, i.e. selling its majority stake in the 2006 $65M price tag Crackle streaming service to Chicken Soup for the Soul, as well as unloading most of SPE’s international cable networks as that market began to wane. Crackle was bleeding $35M annually with a staff of 300 before Sony unloaded it to Chicken Soup for the Soul.
What he is leaving behind for Ahuja is the most diverse portfolio of content of any significant “arms dealer”, ranging from syndication stalwarts (and profit centers) JEOPARDY! and WHEEL OF FORTUNE, a renewed collaborative spirit with the other divisions that helped THE LAST OF US evolve from a mere PlayStation video game to a hit HBO series, and a growing footprint in anime. Per Littleton:
Vinciquerra discovered that Sony Corp. owned a sizable anime production studio in Japan. His team studied the market and found that anime was the kind of niche content that has a passionate following. At Vinciquerra’s direction, SPE acquired the fledging anime streamer Funimation and a few years later merged it with competitor Crunchyroll, which SPE acquired from AT&T. Today, the expanded Crunchyroll service has about 15 million paid subscribers worldwide.
But it’s an even tougher business now that it was then, and as he confessed to THE WRAP’s Sharon Waxman yesterday, he doesn’t see things getting any easier. As the headline fortold, he foresees cable-company write downs, consolidation, potential bankruptcies, a Charter merger in Europe. And yes, he just turned 70 and is apparently back on the dating scene. Plus, his frequent lunch buddy Norman Lear left us nearly two years ago.
So like any veteran troupadour, Vinciquerra knows when it’s time to leave the stage. And unlike a lot of his competitors of late, he does so on his terms, and with relative dignity.
Bonna futura, Tony V.
Until next time…