Variety; Exiting Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Networks Head Kathleen Finch Encourages Peers to ‘Stop Using the Word Cable’: ‘That’s Going Away at Some Point’

Story from Variety:

Kathleen Finch, Warner Bros. Discovery‘s head of U.S. networks, had one piece of advice for her peers in the industry as she prepares to retire this month: “Stop using the word ‘cable.'”

“What we do is content,” Finch said during a keynote conversation at Content London. “And where it’s viewed is where the audience chooses to find it,” whether that is on linear platforms or via a streaming service like Max.

It was announced in August that Finch would retire at the end of the year and will be replaced by Warner Bros. Television group chairman and CEO Channing Dungey. Before the WarnerMedia and Discovery merger in April 2022, Finch headed up Discovery’s 12 lifestyle brands including HGTV, TLC and Food Network. Post-merger, Finch oversaw almost all of U.S. networks including TBS, TNT, TruTV and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim.

Finch encouraged others in the business to “stop limiting ourselves to, ‘I’m a cable exec, I work in cable, I’m making cable content.’ That’s going away at some point, right? So what we all are is creatives. You make content, and then you put it on all these different places and the audience chooses to watch it whichever place they happen to prefer.”

Finch said “I don’t consider myself a cable exec,” but instead a creative. “We make content — where it goes is almost out of our hands,” she said.

However, Finch doesn’t believe cable will disappear in the near future, noting that millions of people in the U.S. still consume it so it remains a “hugely profitable business, a multimillion-dollar business.”

“Is the cable business going to grow? No, of course not, because people are not going to go out and get cable subscriptions that they don’t have right now,” she said. But, “it’s not going to go away in the near future,” she added, noting that she prefers to think of the cable business as “slowing, but not dead.”

Finch cited TLC shows like “90 Day Fiancé” as proof that content that airs on cable can go on to find an entirely different audience on streaming. “They’ll be watched in huge numbers on the linear platform by a slightly older audience, and then it’s on Max, and suddenly a lot of 30-year-olds who don’t have cable are being exposed to it,” she said. “So what we’re getting is the opportunity to build a brand new audience that is just as passionate as the cable audience.”

Reflecting on her impending retirement, Finch said it’s “been the longest goodbye ever” and that Dungey is “terrific and she’s going to be great at this job, in addition to her regular day job running Warner Bros. Television.”