Over a television career of more than five decades, Laureen Ong has been at the forefront of more than a few trends.
Ong, who started in broadcast TV in the 1970s, was instrumental in the 1982 launch of SportsVision Chicago, one of cable’s first regional sports networks, while serving as executive VP of programming for the Chicago White Sox.
In 2000, Ong took the reins as National Geographic Channel’s first president, leading the then-Fox Cable Networks-owned documentary service into more than 60 million households over her seven-year tenure.
Ong, a former The WICT Network Woman of the Year and Multichannel News Wonder Woman, has also been president of Travel Channel and chief operating officer of Asian media firm Star Group Ltd., and has served on the board of several entertainment companies, most recently WWE. She currently sits on the board of Social Venture Partners, a company that assists philanthropic groups.
Ong, who is now a limited partner in the White Sox, recently spoke with Multichannel News senior content producer, programming R. Thomas Umstead about TV’s evolution, the implosion of the regional sports business and the progress toward diversity in television both in front of and behind the camera. The interview was edited for space and clarity.
MCN: When you first started in television, did you ever think that the cable industry, and now the streaming business, would have so drastically changed the home entertainment business?
Laureen Ong: No, I didn’t. At that time, the business was very entrenched in traditional media, so if you really wanted to step out and do something different you had to be willing to take a risk in areas that were unproven and go and get someone to hire you to help build an industry. So that was fun. Now things are changing so fast now that everything is unknown. Technology is a game-changer and also generationally, younger people’s habits are different. You can’t predict anything because you don’t know what they’re going to be tied to, or not be tied to. So the combination of technology and younger people with different ideas, different habits and different ways of living, can’t be predicted and can’t be controlled.
MCN: In the midst of change within the industry, have there been any constants that remain true to the business?
LO: I think that the one thing that never changes is that people care about engagement. It measures how successful you are based on how engaged the consumer is that comes to watch us, whether it was for five minutes or for an hour. That served as your report card, so I think that the engagement factor never goes away, because it’s the proof of whether, in regards to scripted programming, how good the writing was or how good the characters were. People still want to escape in one way or another, and people want to feel good after they are done watching something. So even though all of this is changing, I think there’s still a basic, human need that people have for wanting to be entertained, wanting to be engaged, wanting to have something to talk about and share with other people.
Even though all of this is changing, I think there’s still a basic, human need that people have for wanting to be entertained, wanting to be engaged, wanting to have something to talk about and share with other people.”
Laureen Ong
MCN: Another area of the business that’s undergone a major upheaval is the regional sports business. You were part of one of the first regional sports network launches, and now the category has all but imploded. What’s happened to the plight of the regional sports business from your perspective?
LO: Well, it’s so hard because player salaries have gotten so crazy, so it’s the whole economics of sports and what’s affordable, and what isn’t. Also, it’s about how many people are willing to just sit there and watch a game. Baseball’s a perfect example — even though they’ve sped up the game and they tried to make it a little bit more user-friendly on the viewing side, it’s still a little bit like watching grass grow, and that's coming from a limited partner in baseball. People just aren’t sitting in front of their TVs watching sports every day over a long season. So until you get to the playoffs with sports like baseball and basketball, you don't have that many avid fans watching day in and day out because people are busy doing other things. They are not tied to their TVs the way they used to be, so that changes the whole sports model, particularly with regard to regional sports. Most of the big games that I care about are going to be played on a wide platform, so for the regional sports networks it’s a little painful.
MCN: The streamers have introduced more internationally-created and diverse content to the television landscape. How far have we come in terms of showcasing content that features the experiences and lives of people of color compared to when you began your career?
LO: That’s one of things that the rise of Netflix, Amazon Prime and others have done is bring in an awful lot of content from other places that’s pretty interesting and pretty good, but there has always been an audience for that. There are a lot of diverse faces and personalities that deserve to be heard and deserve to have a place out there to be seen. And frankly, because the audiences are far more diverse now, [distributors] are looking for content that they can relate to and that makes sense for them. So ultimately it needed to go there, and I’m glad it is going there. Is it ever going to be as much as we want it to be? Who knows? We can only hope that it gets voted on by how many people are watching. Obviously there’s a need for it, people want it and are embracing it.
MCN: What about the pace of diversity behind the camera and in the C Suites? There’s more diversity among network executives and distributors now than when you were president of National Geographic Channel, but do you feel the industry will continue to look at diverse talent to fill executive positions?
LO: That’s a hard one because I’m still on a lot of nonprofit boards and other organizations, and that comes up a lot because there’s still a lot of work to be done there. Somebody needs to show them a path on how to get there. Sometimes you need the right mentors to help to say, ‘Hey, you'd be great on this board, or you will be a great leader in our company — I can help you.’ More of us who have been there have a responsibility to try and bring more people through, because it’s scary at first. We all had help along the way.
MCN: What else do you want to accomplish in your career?
LO: I’m always curious and looking to learn something. Everybody should always challenge themselves: At the end of the day, if you don't go, ‘that was a good day because I learned something new because it opened my eyes,’ then you’re not challenging yourself. I love to challenge what I thought was true to prove to me that I was wrong. I would love to be wrong or help me modify how I was thinking about a particular thing. If you are so stuck in where you were or where your opinions were, then you can't ever grow and you can't ever consider other things. You can’t ever contribute in a meaningful manner to society. So if you want to be relevant, you have to be open to the changes that are going on, whether it's in the industry or society at large, or whatever. They all have an impact on how it all works together.
