PITTSBURGH-Over the past several months, NEP, the television industry's largest mobile production company, announced new leadership with the appointment of Brian Sullivan as the company's new CEO and Jeff Hughes as its new COO for NEP's global business operations. Sullivan comes to NEP after having served in executive leadership roles at Fox Networks Group, SKY Deutschland AG, Sky UK and most recently at McKinsey & Co., where he has served as senior advisor to the Consumer, Tech & Media teams. Hughes comes to NEP after serving as president and COO for Fox Networks' Digital Consumer Group. Prior to his role at Fox, Hughes was CEO of Omnifone, a B2B operator of music services in more than 35 countries and served as a media consultant in Europe before moving to BskyB as CTO (later renamed Sky UK).
TV Technology recently talked with Sullivan and Hughes about their new roles at the company.
TV TECHNOLOGY: Congratulations Brian and Jeff on your new positions. I'm going to play the role of the recruiter in my first question based on your backgrounds, how do you plan to approach your new positions?
Brian Sullivan (Image credit: NEP Group)Brian Sullivan: The thing that attracted me was the increasing pace of change and innovation in the industry, which was present even before the pandemic, but has certainly accelerated. This evolution in the way we pull together broadcasts and live events-where youre able to take advantage of the change and really steer the business and drive innovation to levels we havent seen before-is truly exciting.
Im no prognosticator and I'm certainly not a health expert, but one thing Im very, very confident about is that much of the change the world is experiencing now is going to continue once we come out of the pandemic. And its those companies that can lean into innovation right now and explore new ways of delivering services that are going to be the most successful. Ive been lucky enough to be involved in similar big change moments, both in terms of my time at Sky and at Fox, and Ive seen what you can do if you have the right people, the right resources and the right vision for what you want to get done, and I think were perfectly set up for that.
So thats what got me excited about the job. Beforehand I wasnt even sure I was going to go back to full-time employment. After I left Fox, I was doing a lot of work with McKinsey and was really enjoying that. But this opportunity was kind of right in my sweet spot and positioned very, very well. So, Im definitely looking forward to it.
Jeff Hughes: The most important thing that really attracted me to the new position is the team thats there now already understands their customers very, very well. But theyre hungry for change, and that was part of my evaluation. And like Brian, I enjoy change. Ive never had a job that wasnt being disrupted by either technology or events around the industry.
TVT: Brian, I know you just joined the company, but what's your impression of how NEP has weathered the events of the past six months?
BS: Ive actually been in conversations with Carlyle (NEP's private equity partner) since last March, and as part of that process, I was able to get involved in a couple of the strategic reviews that were already underway. So, I know the company a little better than you would expect from somebody whos just starting their third week on the job.
Listen, its been hard on everybody-not just the business aspect but there's also the personal side. We have over 4,000 employees and their lives have been just as upended. I think we have been very, very lucky in that the company was able to pivot very quickly into the changing customer needs and demands.
For example, our Broadcast Services business right now is running at close to 80% of what it was before the pandemic. Our live events business has almost reinvented itself. Whereas it used to be big concerts like Coachella or Stagecoach or giant events like NAB or CES or things of that nature, many of those events and most of the clients have pivoted to the virtual world. Were kind of uniquely situated for that in that we have the one side of the company that does live broadcast better than anybody else, but we also have this other side that is the leader in live events. The pandemic has almost driven an overlap of those two worlds, which means we have the right people to be able to execute for our customers as the requirements blend across each other.
So, while the live events business has been more directly impacted by the pandemic, theres no doubt about that, its actually having one of its best last couple months because once companies figured out that they could still connect with customers on a virtual basis, they came to us.
Jeff Hughes (Image credit: NEP Group)JH: What I see is that the trends that we already knew were happening were accelerated by the pandemic. The trends did not really change; broadcast and live events were already moving into more technically advanced solutions and centralized production, just at a slower pace.
[The pandemic] also forced us to acknowledge the similarity between the two sides of our business. From what I hear, its really brought our people closer and to begin to solve problems together more so than in the past. I think if you know what it was going to look like in three years, we just kind of compressed that down to a six-month period. Companies that embrace change come out of things like this better than they went into them.
Therell be stumbles, of course, there are always stumbles with change. But this situation has actually just forced us down a path more quickly than we were already headed, and its the right path to go down.
BS: Were backed by a large private equity company and happen to be held in a long fund, as opposed to a more traditional short positi
