After seven and a half years at the helm, Tony Vinciquerra will leave his major handprint on the history of the past 100 years at the studio now known as Sony Photos Leisure when he steps down as CEO on January 2nd. measured as much by what was not done over time as the highest as it will be by the initiatives taken to restructure and reimagine the company in the second century.
The experienced administration, which manages the necessary studios, has been selected as this 12 months’ recipient of the Choice Vanguard Award that recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to the television company around the world. The kudo will be offered to Vinciquerra on October 21 at the international material market and content convention Mipcom in Cannes.
In support of one of Hollywood’s basic studios, Vinciquerra restores the welfare of major commercial employers. To steer the ship through strong trade winds, the start of the streaming war, the COVID-19 pandemic and the strike of writers and actors in 2023, Sony Group Corp. chairman-CEO Kenichiro Yoshida praised the head of the studio for his “deep expertise and experience in the leisure area, strategic imagination and prescient and excellent management.
Dan Doperalski for Options
Vinciquerra will hand over CEO to his chosen successor, Ravi Ahuja, who is currently SPE’s president and chief executive officer. Vinciquerra will remain with SPE as non-executive chairman until December 2025.
“He bought the expertise he wanted for the people running the company. And he was very calm, level-headed, wise,” Vinciquerra said of Ahuja’s promotion.
Under Vinciquerra’s management, SPE deliberately positioned itself in a major transition for the pay TV sector. Sony isn’t part of a larger rival studio in rushing to build a direct-to-consumer streaming platform. The only money-losing streamer that SPE had under its roof when Vinciquerra arrived in mid-2017 – Crackle – was offered for less than two years later.
“Crown”
Daniel Escale/Netflix
“In the beginning, we decided not to enter the last leisure streaming company. All these companies have jumped in first and actually have no plan, unless it will also be determined for the customer. And as an alternative for us to dive in to do the same factor, we made the choice to be a supplier weapons, and we are many on the (TV) creator’s bench and doing well,” said Vinciquerra. Election.
As an alternative, SPE is embracing the energy of Sony Corp. with anime manufacturers under the Japan-based Aniplex banner to assemble a subscription anime streamer that faucets into a rabid fandom for the serial animation format. Today, streamer Crunchyroll SPE has more than 15 million subscribers, and is making a profit.
“We can see that (anime fans) are growing and the product is relatively cheap. We’re not spending $5 million per episode. We’re spending $200,000 to $400,000 per episode. So we’re jumping in with every toe, and now we’re in a good place with Crunchyroll,” Vinciquerra said. “But we’re looking at genre-based streaming services. We predict there’s a lot more to do there.
Vinciquerra’s reinvention marketing campaign also includes getting a grip on SPE’s more than 20 home-grown manufacturing banners, which have grown in Europe, Latin America and Asia to the point where they are no longer profitable for the studio.
“We decided to pay attention to the locations where we think we can win,” Vinciquerra said. Chief among them is U.Ok., the board of worldwide TV production leader Wayne Garvie has directed SPE to take on the prosperous production outfit, along with Jane Tranter’s Dangerous Wolf (“Dark Stock”), Eleven (“Intercourse Training”) and Film Eleven Hours (“Alex Riter”).
Vinciquerra’s first 18 months at the studio were marked by a whirlwind of restructuring, layoffs and administrative changes. They have also offered or closed dozens of cable channels around the world that have dragged down revenue. He has a strong belief in what he wants to achieve, drawing from his expertise which includes 10 years operating the Fox Networks Group and 6 years as a media consultant for the large TPG.
“I used to be on the board of Pandora, I was on the board of DirecTV, I was on the board of Qualcomm and many different companies. So, I see clearly what is happening in our company from the surface,” said Vinciquerra. “After I bought it here, the company was very difficult.”
They have strong emotions about what they want to change, but they also second-guess themselves over the years, like the shock of the pandemic.
“I asked myself – should I not enter the streaming service company? As a result everyone informed me how stupid I used to not do and remove the cable network. Many people here ask about this,” he recalled.
Vinciquerra caught up with his instinct to streamline SPE’s operations. The need to rehabilitate struggling items has continued in his profession, since he bought his first job in the sale of radio dirt in Albany, NY Years later, he discovered an important lesson when he became the general supervisor of Westinghouse Broadcasting WBZ- TV Boston. It’s only about time that the mother or father company reduces the price and depends on 200 employees, down from 350.
“You need to have a critical mass to understand what the problem is, how to solve the problem and what to do to get to where you need to be,” he said. “When you get a lot of believers, the naysayers go underground.”
Vinciquerra remained in broadcasting, working as a senior executive for CBS Tv Stations and for Hearst in the Nineteen Nineties when the firm went on a station-buying spree. He credits Peter Chernin, the respected media investor and former head of Twentieth Century Fox and president of Rupert Murdoch’s Information Corp., for bringing him into the showbiz big leagues. Chernin pushed Vinciquerra to oversee Fox’s broadcast community in addition to its cable properties.
It was a goal that largely paid off – especially since Vinciquerra remembers trying to talk Chernin out of giving him the assignment in the first place. Years later, he was thankful that Chernin ignored him.
“Logically, it didn’t make sense to hire me to run the Fox broadcast community because I don’t have the community expertise,” Vinciquerra said. I run a TV station. This is a completely different company.
Among his achievements at Sony, Vinciquerra mentions overcoming two very different challenges. When he took the position in 2017, Vinciquerra told the company’s leadership that the studio had no alternative because it did not work extra with the expertise and content material franchise owned by Sony Corp’s PlayStation game division and in the Sony Music division. Sony management in Tokyo is supportive. But from his expertise at Fox, he also knows the collaboration can’t be dictated from above.
“It doesn’t work for someone who says, ‘You did it.’ It’s got to get the (creative) team working together and get the artistic juices flowing,” he said.
Sony gathered about 40 key art executives from games and photography, put them in a large convention room and equipped with whiteboards. The instruction for each group from Tokyo was to find a way to work together “without fear of a huge amount about who is going to pay what,” Vinciquerra recollects.
“They spent two days together, so they came here with 12 or 14 different initiatives to work on together. Now they’ve got seven or eight,” he said. The list includes the adaptation of HBO’s acclaimed drama collection “The Final of Us,” which is going to a delayed sophomore season, “Uncharted” 2022 and “Gran Turismo” and “Twisted Steel” in 2023.
Pedro Pascal in the HBO collection “The Final of Us,” from Sony Photos TV
Liane Hentscher/HBO
In terms of music, Bruce Springsteen is involved in an unscripted venture with Sony’s TV division. Dangerous Bunny, the top-selling reggaeton star, has a small role in the 2022 Brad Pitt-starrer “Bullet Prepare,” and he’ll be seen again in Sony’s upcoming film.
One of the other important milestones during his tenure was the renovation and deepening of the renovation of SPE’s large space in Culver Metropolis, which was the hallowed floor of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Some of the soundstages in the studio have not been well maintained for years. The wooden boards between the partitions have been rolled, creating the danger of the fireplace between various problems, so as not to show the old infrastructure that is inside. Strong earthquakes may require some removal.
In the beginning, the Vinciquerra group made a five-year plan to make infrastructure upgrades and improvements. After the COVID incident. With many employees on empty and manufacturing running for months, much of the heavy building work took place over the course of 18 months.
“We ended up finishing almost every wall and every stage with the rest of the pandemic,” he said. “Even now, we don’t get enough.”
The Culver Metropolis Lot is a part of Hollywood history that is between constructions – commonly known as Scenic Arts Constructing – has been designated as a historic landmark that cannot be radically altered. The only drawback – the construction will deteriorate due to age and decay.
SPE’s answer was to build a new multi-story building located in Scenic Arts, which provided support for the Nineteen Twenties building. The Scenic Arts facility is built with an amazing pulley system that allows the administrators to film scenes in opposition to a large-scale painted backdrop that provides the entire scene from the New York Metropolis avenue.
The historic components of Scenic Arts have been preserved, but the interior has been redesigned for use as an assembly area, which can now be rented out by outside entities.
In the meantime, the new building was built with the purpose of being a place for the viewers of “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune”, who often come to the place for the recording of the respected entertainment show SPE. His position is easily close to the “Jeopardy” and “Wheel” phases. In fact it is full of shops now.
Where there is will, there is means. This is the guideline for Vinciquerra throughout his profession. The past seven years at Sony have been an exciting experience that has required him to call upon all the abilities he has developed over the years, and more.
“I’ve always liked the mental problem of setting up a technique to solve a problem,” Vinciquerra said. “Every job I’ve done has gone through a big change. The organization of work is now second nature to me.
Each scenario has its own personal challenges, but Vinciquerra finds he relies on a few easy-to-rely on guidelines.
“You keep your ego out of it. You hire good people and also let them take a bow for a good job,” he said. “I get satisfaction from seeing the people I work with do well. And there are many people throughout the trade that I’ve done well for. I’m really proud and very satisfied about that.
