Madison Square Garden Company’s Big Reimagining of Fuse TV
I was poached from SPIN Magazine by Fuse TV in late 2011, first as a Senior Editor, before quickly being promoted to Head of Digital / Editor in Chief. This appointment was in support of owner Madison Square Garden Company’s bold new vision for Fuse TV as a peer competitor with MTV, following its years as a pop punk- and Warped Tour-focused broadcast backwater. My job was to lead the redefinition and delivery of the voice of a major music TV network across platforms, and build a new digital operation from the ground up. With broadcast, web, and social at my disposal, I led an integrated strategy that found me working closely with the broadcast studio team’s executives and leadership.
First, I set upon working with a third party agency to redesign the Fuse TV website to align to the new brand look and feel, optimize taxonomy and shareability, and drive attention to our three content streams: day-to-day entertainment news, content supporting Fuse TV’s new broadcast franchises, and a branded video program on YouTube and web properties. Simultaneously, I quickly grew the team from two to 17, including editors, writers, social media leads, and video producer/editors.
I led a team that was simultaneously producing independent news on top-tier artists, posting video snippets and teasers from episodes of our new series, including Billy on the Street, Big Freedia, and a nightly music news program hosted by Alexa Chung, and developing and producing video franchises that our sales team sold to advertisers including Sprite, Doritos, and Old Spice. The YouTube strategy drove over 3MM views per week and tens of millions of sales annually.