Delivering Content: Who Owns the Viewer?

Chase Carey

Chase Carey is deputy chairman, president and chief operating officer of News Corporation, a position he has held since July 2009. In this role, he oversees diversified global operations spanning five continents, including the production and distribution of film and television programming; television, satellite and cable broadcasting, newspaper and book publishing and digital media. He also sits on the company's board of directors. Previously, Carey was president and chief executive officer of DIRECTV, Inc., where he led the operations and strategic direction of the DIRECTV, Inc. companies - which include DIRECTV, Inc. in the United States and DIRECTV Latin America. He was elected to the position in 2003 by the company's board of directors. He also serves on The DIRECTV Group board of directors. Prior to joining DIRECTV, Inc., Carey was co-chief operating officer of News Corp. and chairman and chief executive officer of the Fox Television Group. He was particularly instrumental in managing the operations and strategy of News Corp., focusing on its worldwide television business that encompasses the FOX network, Fox Television Stations, Fox's cable programming group, and News Corp.'s international satellite operations. He is a graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Business School. He is also a trustee emeritus at Colgate University.

Pat Esser

Patrick (Pat) Esser is president of Cox Communications, a multi-service broadband communications and entertainment company serving approximately 6 million residential and commercial customers.

Esser brings more than 30 years of experience in cable and telecommunications to bear on his role as Cox’s top executive, a position he’s held since 2006. He joined Cox in 1979 as director of programming in Hampton Roads, VA., and was part of the original management team that pioneered Cox's advertising sales division now known as Cox Media. Named corporate vice president of advertising sales in 1991, Esser was presented with the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau President’s Award just three years later. Esser became vice president of operations for Cox’s Western Division in 1999, and a year later was promoted to senior vice president of operations. In 2004, Esser was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Cox has earned numerous accolades during Esser’s tenure as president; many tied to his personal passion for diversity and inclusion. In 2006, Cox debuted in DiversityInc’s listing of the Top 50 Companies for Diversity; the company has placed in the Top 50 for five consecutive years. In 2009, the Women in Cable Television (WICT) Foundation named Cox the Best Operator for Women in Cable for the seventh straight year. In 2007 Esser was personally distinguished with recognition as Multichannel News’ first “Executive of the Year.”

Customer service excellence is a Cox hallmark under Esser’s leadership. Cox ranks highly in annual J.D. Power and Associates’ studies of consumer satisfaction. In 2010, for the eighth consecutive year, Cox received highest honors in their Residential Telephone Customer Satisfaction StudySM in the West. Cox has ranked highest among small/midsize business data providers in J.D. Power and Associates’ Major Provider Business Telecommunications StudySM three times, including 2010. To-date, Cox is the only telecommunications and entertainment company to receive top honors recognition from J.D. Power in studies of video, telephone and high-speed Internet satisfaction.

Esser serves on the board of directors of C-SPAN, CableLabs, TCM Parent, LLC and Cable in the Classroom. Additionally, he serves as an adviser to the Association of Cable Communicators and the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications. Esser also serves as a Southeastern Trustee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and has served on the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council. He has also served as chair of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

A graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, Esser holds a B.A. and M.A. in communications media, and in 2003 was presented the university’s Heritage Honors Alumni Achievement Award. In 2009, he was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.

Piers Morgan

Known to United States viewers primarily for his role as a former judge on NBC's No.1-rated America's Got Talent and as the winner of Celebrity Apprentice, Morgan has had a long career in journalism in the United Kingdom as a newspaper editor and, more recently, as the host of the popular television interview program Piers Morgan's Life Stories. He is now bringing his penetrating interview style and gift for unearthing the surprising detail to American television and to CNN viewers around the globe with his primetime interview show, “Piers Morgan Tonight.”

Morgan began his career as a reporter for The Wimbledon News and then as a columnist at The Sun. In 1994, when Morgan was 28 years old, Rupert Murdoch appointed him the youngest ever editor of the News of the World, and the youngest national newspaper editor in Britain for 50 years. Two years later he moved to the Daily Mirror, where he served as editor-in-chief from 1995 until 2004. The paper won numerous journalistic awards including Newspaper of the Year at the prestigious British Press Awards in 2002 for its coverage of 9/11. After his controversial departure from the Mirror, Morgan went on to become a best-selling author, a regular media columnist, and host of his own interview programs on the BBC and ITV, as well as appear as a judge alongside Simon Cowell on the No.1-rated show Britain's Got Talent.

After leaving the Daily Mirror, Morgan began writing a monthly interview column for GQ magazine where he interviewed some of the biggest names in global entertainment and politics. In 2004, he moved into television, co-hosting a Channel 4 current affairs show, Morgan & Platell, and two BBC interview shows, Tabloid Tales and You Can't Fire Me I'm Famous. In 2008, Morgan joined ITV, where he hosted a documentary travelogue show called Piers On!, reporting from cities including Shanghai, Las Vegas and Dubai. He also developed a new talk show, Piers Morgan's Life Stories, where he conducts one-on-one intimate and lengthy sit-down interviews with celebrities, business and political leaders, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It has been consistently the No. 1-rated talk show in Britain for the last two years.

In September 2010, CNN announced that Morgan will host a candid, in-depth newsmaker interview program on the network. "Piers Morgan Tonight," premiered on January 17th 2011 and airs weeknights on CNN/U.S. at 9 pm ET/PT and also airs worldwide on CNN International in more than 200 countries and territories.

He will also continue to write his two regular columns for the Mail on Sunday newspaper, and also provides regular columns to CNN.com.

Morgan is based in New York, and will also work from Los Angeles and London.

Ted Sarandos

Ted Sarandos has led content acquisition for Netflix since 2000. With more than 20 years' experience in home entertainment, Ted is recognized in the industry as an innovator in film acquisition and distribution.

Before Netflix, Ted was an executive at video distributor ETD and Video City / West Coast Video.

He also serves on the Film Advisory Board for Tribeca and Los Angeles Film Festival, the retail advisory board for the Digital Entertainment Group and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Ted is married to U.S. Ambassador Nicole Avant and has two children.