In a career spanning more than two decades, Katherine Pope long ago cemented her place in the annals of TV history, helping develop and launch such iconic series as The Office, House, New Girl and 30 Rock through her relationships with studios and programmers big [NBCUniversal] and small [Chernin Entertainment and Studio 8 Entertainment].
Now, as head of Spectrum Originals since 2018, Pope faces a new challenge, developing original content for Charter Communications’s exclusive programming arm. It’s a challenge Pope’s boss, Charter senior executive VP David Ellen, said she has been more than up to.
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“In a few short years, she and her small team have taken their deep industry knowledge and created a steady stream of high-quality scripted series available exclusively for our Spectrum viewers,” Ellen said. “With these originals, she has developed a truly differentiated experience for our highly engaged audience and exceeded our expectations at every turn.”
From the beginning we said we were going to take a portfolio approach and offer shows that appeal to different segments of our subscriber base.”
Katherine Pope
But challenges are nothing new for the seasoned TV executive. Throughout her career Pope has taken chances on programs that seemed well below the radar but later attracted huge audiences. At Spectrum, she heads a relatively new original programming unit but has already scored some wins with shows like Joe Pickett, watched by more than 1 million unique households in its first month, making it the most popular show in Spectrum’s short history.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Pope had brief stints at ABC News and VH1 before landing a job as an associate at NBC in 1998. She stayed there 10 years, rising to executive VP of the network and president of NBC Television Studios, helping to launch shows for both the NBC broadcast network [The Office] and Universal Studios [House], programs that weren’t hits from the beginning. Pope credited a host of other executives who kept those series and others on the air despite ratings pressure.
“Certainly both House and The Office had amazing champions who stuck their necks out to keep them because they believed in them —- I’m paging you, [former Fox Broadcasting president] Gail Berman and [former NBC president of primetime development] Kevin Reilly,” Pope said. “That said, the worst thing about a show being canceled quickly is you don’t get to continue collaborating with people you love (RIP Ben & Kate!).”
While Pope had a string of successes at NBC, she got the ax in December 2008, along with a handful of other execs, after a disappointing fall lineup with shows championed by her then-boss Ben Silverman, who was let go a few months later. That just presented another challenge Pope quickly overcame, joining former News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin’s Chernin Entertainment in 2009 to head his fledgling TV unit.
There her run continued with New Girl, which ran for seven seasons on Fox, and others. While Chernin was a well-known, successful TV executive — he ran News Corp., which included Fox, several cable channels and the 20th Century Fox studio for 20 years — Pope said his company was still a departure from the big studio environment.
“What was fun was Peter was leaving a gigantic job, and we didn’t even really have offices yet, and we would just talk about what we wanted to make and what the company could be and where the business was going,” Pope said. “It was a really special time. I’m so grateful that I got fired from NBC when I did, and that I got to work with Peter and the team.”
Starting All Over Again
Pope moved to Studio 8 Entertainment in 2015 after Chernin’s development deal with Fox expired, helping to launch its independent TV division. Three years later, she joined Spectrum Originals, for a chance, she said, to build something “from scratch.”
“From the beginning, we said we were going to take a portfolio approach and offer shows that appeal to different segments of our subscriber base. And that is what we have done,” Pope said. “Our viewers are smart and love TV so we just want to be sure we’re making quality content that will keep them engaged and coming back to watch our shows, and we’ve been able to do that thus far.”
At Spectrum Originals, Pope has developed shows in several different genres — action (L.A.’s Finest), drama/thriller (Long Slow Exhale), mysteries (Paradise Lost and Eden), and comedies (The Bite and Mad About You). Viewership and engagement has been strong and programming enjoys a nine-month exclusive window for Spectrum customers, moving on to outlets like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.
Pope said more is in the pipeline, including A Spy Among Friends (starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce), and Joe Pickett is about to start production on season two. “We’re going to keep doing what we are doing which thus far has proven to be successful,” Pope said. ■
