EVP, GM, or CMO—why pick one when you can be all three?
In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Keisha Taylor Starr, EVP, CMO, and general manager of Scripps Networks at The E.W. Scripps Company, proves that intersectionality and a diverse skillset can take your marketing game to the next level.
Tune in for their discussion on how strategic repositioning can drive record-breaking audience engagement, why marketers must balance creative risk with financial rigor and the leadership moves required to shape an industry built for diverse voices.
What you’ll learn:
- How to transition from CMO to General Manager by gaining P&L ownership
- Why sports franchises are essential programming investments
- The strategy behind rebranding a legacy network for new audiences
- How to balance creative ambition with financial rigor as a CMO
- The importance of diverse representation in leadership and decision-making
- How to expand sports definition and create inclusive programming
With a career spanning agency work at BBDO, leadership roles at CNN, Turner Broadcasting, and Warner Bros. Discovery, as well as experience in collegiate sports marketing, Keisha has consistently driven innovative transformations across news, entertainment, and sports properties.
Her leadership in ION’s rebrand into a general entertainment network with pioneering women’s sports programming has resulted in record-breaking audience engagement and Google TV’s most-watched free live channel designation in 2024, demonstrating how CMOs can balance creative vision with financial accountability.
Episode Highlights:
[05:53] Connection Is Your Competitive Advantage in a Fragmented Media Landscape — Keisha emphasizes that the modern media environment demands a fundamental shift from competing on content volume to competing on audience connection, explaining that in an era where viewing is asynchronous and audiences scatter across infinite platforms, connection becomes the differentiator that traditional networks can no longer guarantee. Her strategic response is to anchor programming around universal connectors, whether that’s local news, live sports or experiential events, that create genuine reasons for audiences to gather.
[08:08] Make Early Strategic Bets on Underserved Audiences Before Competitors Do — Keisha demonstrates how successful brand repositioning requires identifying audience gaps and committing resources before market saturation occurs. While many networks were still discussing women’s sports as a trend, Scripps made the calculated decision to build franchise-level programming, i.e., their dedicated WNBA broadcasts on Friday nights and NWSL games on Saturday nights, creating structural scarcity in premium programming time. This early mover advantage addressed a real consumer friction point: Sports fans struggle to find their teams across fragmented broadcast rights and platforms. The result was record-breaking engagement, including seven WNBA broadcasts averaging over 1 million viewers—metrics that were previously unattainable outside traditional sports.
