How Bloomberg licenses its content

Brianne Burrowes of I Want Her Job interviewed Susan Vobejda, Bloomberg’s general manager of global content licensing and Americas television distribution, about how it licenses its content.

Here is an excerpt:

What are your key responsibilities in this position?

I’m the general manager of global content licensing and Americas television distribution. What this means is I have a full profit and loss responsibility for this business and I manage a global team of about 60. Our group works with hundreds of publishers and non-traditional media companies around the world—ranging from newspapers to web portals to retail locations to cable operators.

The variety of work we do and the range of partners we work with is what makes my job so interesting. An example of this is a deal we just did with JP Morgan Chase to stream live Bloomberg TV into their Private Client branches. We also work with emerging media, including several mobile partners.

What are three skills necessary to your role in media licensing and distribution?

The first thing I do is very clearly define our strategy. What are our goals and what are we trying to accomplish? When our goals are defined, it’s my job to make them very clear for our team and to help everyone stay on point and prioritize work based on what we’re trying to do as a group.

Second, I think it’s very important to organize and create an operating structure for success. This operating structure includes who’s in what job, clarity of roles across the organization, definition of the processes and clarity on meetings and their frequency, so we can work effectively as a group. Getting that right is critical.

Finally, learning to identify the best people for each role is a vital skill. This is a skill that’s talked about a lot, but is very rarely done. I have worked to make this a priority from Day 1 and to make sure I have the best people possible in my organization.

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