A Deep Dive in Content Distribution with Scott Ehrlich, SVP Growth Networks & Content, Sinclair Broadcast Group

Speaker 1 (00:00):

[inaudible] 

Speaker 2 (00:06):

Hi everybody. And welcome to this week's podcast, Joe and I am this week with the fabulous Scott Ehrlich, who is the senior vice president for growth networks and content for the Sinclair broadcast group. And I had a chance to be on a panel recently with Scott and the stuff that he has his hands on is kind of a mind blow, um, and sort of the best education of what's happening in television in terms of the distribution mechanism and all the different content models. And so I thought it would be great to talk to Scott about all the things that they're up to, um, at Sinclair, um, because it's, it's a great education, I think, for the current ecosystem. So welcome to the tech cat show Scott. Um, why don't you tell us first about your role? 

Speaker 3 (00:50):

Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Um, so I've been at the company for almost four years now. Um, and, uh, I oversee a couple of different units. Um, so my, my, my business unit is called national networks and platforms and, uh, Sinclair is at its heart, um, a local media company. So our biggest assets are our local television stations, um, and the regional sports networks that we acquired about two years ago. Um, and so we're known generally as a local media company and I was kind of brought in to be the kind of national guy. Um, so, um, that means a couple of things. So the national networks part is we have for over the air, um, broadcast networks. So yes, 25 years after I got into streaming, I got into over the air broadcasting with antennas and stuff. Um, and we'll come back to this or why that makes sense to me anyway. 

Speaker 3 (01:50):

Um, uh, and then the other part of the job is, is, um, uh, the platforms part, our OTT platforms. So we have, uh, we have, uh, uh, a service called news on, um, which has well over 200 local newscasts aggregated into one app. And so if you're a local news junkie or your news junkie general, um, it's, it's kind of a, a real buffet. Um, and it's really, it, it, it really hits a stride in, you know, of like a hurricane hits the Gulf and you can go from a station in Shreveport to a station in mobile, to a station in Tallahassee, and you can even kind of go around and see how different people are covering the story. Um, and then of course, if you're out of market, you can, you can see, um, the news from your market and then, uh, stirs our owned and operated OTT platform we launched in, uh, in January of 18. 

Speaker 3 (02:48):

I think it was, um, January of 19. I feel like I've been living in a time where for the last year and a half, does anybody else feel that way? Yeah, we had a year that sort of did no, it was January of 19. Um, so it's not two years old. And in stores, there's a platform that has about 130, um, uh, fast channels, uh, free ad-supported streaming television channels, um, and unique to that space, which is a space that includes people like Pluto and, and, um, uh, Samsung TV plu