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FEATURE
The new chief of E! has forged close ties with operators, sharpened the network's profile-and cut some of the porn. But can she really take the home of Talk Soup to the next level?
In her Hollywood office, Mindy Herman has a pair of framed jerseys signed by players from the Los Angeles Kings and Philadelphia Flyers pro hockey franchises, along with a helmet once worn by hockey great Wayne Gretzky.
If she worked for, say, ESPN, Herman's sports shrine might not attract any notice. But the diminutive Philadelphia native-and lifelong hockey nut-is the president of E! Entertainment Television Networks, which has cornered the market on brazen and occasionally titillating talk shows and documentaries, such as Howard Stern, E!: True Hollywood Story and Wild on E!.
Since joining the network a year ago, Herman, 39, has had little time to indulge her passion for sports. She has set the ambitious goal of launching four new networks over the next decade that will help broaden the assets of the private company-80% of which is owned in a joint partnership between Comcast Corp. and the Walt Disney Co.-and secure its success in the digital age. While she declined to discuss specific plans, Herman says that all the new networks will, like E!, generally focus on lifestyle issues. She would also like to increase Us distribution by nearly 13%, to 80 million homes.
"I joke that I want to be a 2.0-rated network," Herman says, alluding to the fact that E! has never risen above a 0.57 rating, or 385,000 households, on a quarterly basis in the past three years, according to Nielsen Media Research.
"It might take me four channels to get there," she says in her Philadelphia accent. "But we will be more successful in the long run with a lot of channels."
INDEPENDENT'S DAY
It took more than ten years for E! to reach its current distribution in 71 million U.S. households, moving itself from a niche Hollywood network that was widely considered an industry joke to a channel that's now included on most expanded basic packages offered by satellite and cable providers.
The fact that E! remains an independent network-even though it's controlled by two giant partners-will make it difficult...