UTA News Co-Heads Urge Media Vets to Be ‘Multi-Platform’ to Survive Shifting Landscape
It's no secret that the journalism industry is caught in the midst of a shifting media landscape, whether that be television audiences moving from traditional linear to streaming platforms, salary reductions and layoffs due to belt-tightening across the major corporations or the emergence of new technologies like artificial intelligence.
And for high-profile journalists like Norah O'Donnell, David Muir and Jake Tapper, the ones helping them navigate all of that during this period of transition is United Talent Agency's co-heads of news Marc Paskin and Ryan Hayden. The pair, who spoke to TheWrap in their first joint interview since being appointed to their current roles in April, said the key advice they're giving clients to weather all the changes is to make themselves indispensable by being "multi-platform."
"Cable or network television is great, but let's also build out your digital strategy. As these media companies are all starting to look at this shift, whether it's through streaming or digital, we need to educate our clients and say, 'Here's the path that we need to follow down,'" Hayden said. "We don't want anyone to have blinders on to any of it. And this goes for more veteran talent that are stalwarts of the business that have been doing this for a long time and do very well. We're not going to rest on our laurels there. We want to figure out, as well as for the next generation, what are those new strategies going to look like? And we have an entire creator and digital group here at the agency that is focused on that and we're working right alongside them and helping figure out these strategies."
In addition to Muir, Tapper and O'Donnell, UTA represents talent such as Kara Swisher, CNN's Dana Bash and Kate Bolduan and CBS News' Margaret Brennan. Paskin emphasized that both established voices at traditional news outlets and rising stars in the digital space remain critical to the future the agency wants to build.
"If you look at this year's election cycle coverage, those massive moments happened on linear television. Yes, there were streaming opportunities and all of that. But it is really important that we do everything we can to support the work of those people," Paskin added. "We want to make sure that we're advising them about how they can craft a future that maybe is a little bit more differentiated in terms of the avenues that they're approaching. So that is an area where we are being super aggressive. How can we diversify clients' portfolios to make sure they're safeguarding themselves not just from a monetary perspective but also from an audience resonance perspective? You should be reaching audiences everywhere, and so we're really excited about those kinds of opportunities for our established clients."
Read on for our full Office With a View Q&A with Paskin and Hayden to learn more about their careers and where they believe the industry may be headed.
Talk to me about your career trajectoriesand the lessons you've learned that have helped you get to this pointMarc Paskin: I started my career in theater, which is what I always thought I wanted to do growing up. And then after a few years working in that world, I realized I wanted to be a part of something that reached a wider audience. I was excited at the prospect of working in media and through a very lucky set of things that were outside my control, I landed at ABC News. I was there for about five-and-a-half years. And then right after the 2016 election, I felt really compelled to go work in digital media. I felt like I needed to learn what it meant to live and die by the internet. So I went to go work for Mic, which had that spectacular inversion in 2019, but I got to really learn a tremendous amount from that incredible team. And then I got recruited to UTA right after that and came here and I've been here for about five-and-a-half years.
One of the reasons that it was super exciting to come here is that UTA was really focused on the future of news and the future of where this industry is moving. I think especially as we build out a practice that is forward-facing and thinking about the future of this industry, we have to make some really big bets and we have to take some risks on people that we really believe in. What I have focused on from Day 1 is this next wave of talent, people that are coming from the traditional news and broadcast organizations and how do we help them create a holistic strategy? And then simultaneously, people that are digitally native and helping them build interesting portfolios around themselves.
Ryan Hayden: I always thought I was going to be a prosecutor. I worked for the state's attorney all through law school at the University of Maryland. After my second year, I came out to Los Angeles and worked for a music law firm and fell in love with the entertainment part of the business, not so much the law part of it. I went back to Maryland, finished my last year there, passed the bar, came right back out here, made a connection and started at UTA 20 years ago. I came up through the mailroom, worked my way up as an assistant and then started in unscripted television focusing on talent. As that boom was happening, I also started repping athletes for everything — off court content, television shows that they were hosting and and all of that — and started to get into doing their broadcasting deals and certainly launched that side of the business over a dozen years ago at this point.
Then we acquired N.S. Bienstock. I always had a passion for the news growing up just outside of D.C. for news and politics. And the closest thing to the news deals was the sports broadcasting deals. They mirrored each other in terms of how those deals were structured. So I think my passion for that was combined with my love for the news and politics. I started getting really involved in Bienstock and started representing, along with Jay Sures, a bunch of our news clients and signing news talent and really interesting people in that space and built up a business there. And now Mark and I became co-heads of that area and I also co-head along with Jerry Silbowitz our sports media practice. So a dual role there.
Coming up at this agency and working on this side of the business for 20 years through ups and downs, I think the one lesson is you have to be a fierce advocate for your clients in the good times and the bad. Now, especially more than ever, it's about standing behind the clients and and really being fierce advocates for them and not backing down when it gets tough. You have to maintain that level of loyalty and advocacy for the client.
How are you helping talent navigate this changing landscape?M.P.: I think one big part of it is about making sure that you're doing everything in your power to have as much information as possible. A huge part of our job is getting information and providing information to our clients. You have to be really prepared to tell them what you know and also what you don't know and walk them through the contingencies that we need to think through in a moment of instability.
One of the things I've seen over the course of my career, in those moments, is people are really looking for a human touch. They're really looking for somebody to hold their hand through a really scary, frustrating moment. We're going to see any number of these over the course of our careers. This is the nature of any business. This is not exclusive to media and entertainment. Any business goes through contractions and expansions and so you have to have that long view. You have to be prepared to weather the storm and do so with some real empathy and heart, because what we're all going through is really, really hard, and oftentimes what people are looking for is just to be seen in that moment of fear, which is a totally fair and human response to what are very scary headlines.
R.H.: I would just add the reason we're in this business is to remain positive about the business. I think when Mark and I sit here and and talk about our ideas for the department, it's always under the guise of positivity. Businesses ebb and flow but there's always a light at the end of the tunnel and we remain very bullish. Business models may change, the way people consume may be different, but there's one thing that we know which is people will always consume the news.
M.P.: The talent in this business have never been more important. There's a ton of research recently that we've shared as a department where audiences really are attaching in a material way to the talent that is providing their news and information and I think that's something we're laser-focused on because that creates opportunity in some of these traditional outlets. CNN has already discussed how do you create verticals around talent, which makes a tremendous amount of sense to me because that is a talent-centric brand. But that doesn't have to necessarily just exist at a place like CNN.
What are the major concerns you're hearing from your clients, especially with the introduction of new technologies like AI?M.P.: I don't think it's as much concern as it is wanting to know the opportunities. They don't know what they don't know. So going back to being multi-platform, what we're hearing more than general concern is talk to me about podcasting or publishing or the digital space and social media. How can I ramp that up for myself? Teach me about TikTok, Instagram Live. Teach me about these opportunities so I can be educated, because I may not fully know what these are and it might be scary to me. So it's about who are the experts in the agency that can sit down with them and help them focus on utilizing all these different areas that they're not used to flexing?
I firmly believe journalism and journalists are not going anywhere. So I don't believe any doom and gloom prognostications. CBS News is not going away next year, that is just not going to happen. That brand is a legacy brand and a mainstay in our industry, and it's going to find its footing in some way, shape or form. What that looks like in a year, what that looks like in five years, we can't really opine on that, but I would say we've had some really great success with digitally native talent that are building sustainable businesses online.
A YouTube creator by the name of Johnny Harris has a massive audience and is redefining journalism on the YouTube platform. We are learning in real time with him what that means and how journalism can thrive on that platform. So our hope is that we can take those findings and use them to inform conversations with CBS News when they're thinking about their strategy, we can point and say, "Look, this is actually working over here. And if you all introduce some of these ethoses into your workflows, there can be some real opportunity there." But you're already seeing some moves of people from these traditional establishments to creating direct consumer businesses on platforms like Substack or YouTube, and I think that we're going to continue to see some experimentation in that space. But that doesn't necessarily mean people are leaving traditional media full stop. You can have your cake and eat it too. There's a way to play in both sandboxes, and so I think you're going to see that kind of experimentation happening, which is really fun and really exciting.
