Staying Power

In the entertainment industry, actors, directors and producers aren't the only ones who hop between projects and employers—executives tend to move frequently, too. But not Abbe Raven. She's worked at A&E Television Networks since its 1984 launch, and as president and CEO since 2005, she's responsible for a company that brings six cable channels (including History and Biography) into more than 235 million homes. In an interview as part of the Kaplan-NEWSWEEK M.B.A. program, NEWSWEEK Editor-in-Chief Richard M. Smith spoke with Raven about building a career without changing employers. Excerpts:

SMITH: Did you really start out at A&E running a copy machine?
RAVEN: More or less. I had worked in theater and film, and I offered to fill in for somebody who was copying scripts and answering the phone. When I give advice to people starting out in their careers, I always say, "Just get your foot in the door and do the best job you can." Very often, women graduating college or business school are told not to take a job that's administrative, but I learned a lot working as an assistant. I learned how to do budgets, how to set an agenda. So I'm a big advocate of getting in and doing the best job you can. You will be noticed.

How has starting at the bottom of an organization affected the way you run it at the top?
It helps that I actually know what a lot of people really do, I know what happens in their divisions, and I know what it takes to put a show together from inception onto the screen. Growing up here has helped me really have the essence of the organization as part of my soul. It's been part of my life for so long that I think it's made me even more passionate about the company and about what we're trying to do.

When you took over as CEO, A&E ' s numbers had softened and your audience was aging. How did you revitalize things?
The way I approached it was, let's be honest about this and stop fooling ourselves. What's the real story? What is it that we need to improve? And I set out to welcome younger viewers into the network by introducing new real-life series, acquiring some programming that would quickly lower our median age and developing more original programming, including drama. Taking those steps laid the foundation for our success. A few years later, we've become a top 10 network once again, and we've lowered our median age by almost two decades.

How much do your own values influence programming choices?
It's a real mixture. You have to ask yourself if you're a part of that audience or not. For example, when I was running the History Channel, our audience was 70 percent men, so clearly I'm not programming that for myself. But very often you may look at something and say, "This really touches me. This is really something I believe in." We have a program on A&E right now called "Intervention," which follows an addict through an intervention, and when I first saw the pre-pilot, it struck me personally because it was so moving. It's a program that really gives hope to families. It was not necessarily a commercial idea, but I felt we needed to take the risk in putting that show on the air.

As a woman at the top of your industry, do you feel any special responsibility?
I always want to be known as a good executive, not as a good female executive. But I do have camaraderie with other women in my position and have learned from them, and we have our own special issues that we have to deal with. It's also important for people to know that you can still have a family and be in business, and I've tried to exemplify that.

How do you keep up with new technology?
When I took over, I created something in our corporate office that's called the digital lounge. It's a replication of a living room, but it has every new gadget in it. It helps us understand what it's like to watch our programming on an iPod, or to watch on multiple screens. I'm not an engineer, so I don't claim to understand how everything works, but I need to understand how consumers use technology, and part of that is using it myself. One of my laboratories is my train ride into New York City every day, [where] I watch whether people are listening to their iPods, what phones they're using, what BlackBerrys they're using, what shows they're watching on their computer.

What are the common mistakes made by young managers?
They still have a lot to learn. I'm a big believer that experience counts for a lot, and while you do learn a lot in business school or in college, it's when you start doing a job that you really learn what it's like to be part of an organization. I also see younger people who tend to move around more, going from company to company. Obviously that's counter to my own philosophy. It served me well to stay here. I had lots of opportunities along the way, and I think it'll be interesting to see whether this new generation goes back to a little bit more of staying in one place than jumping around.