OUR STORY

At the beginning of every year, Gary Lico, the president and CEO of CABLEready, writes the goals he has for the company on a white board in his office. “It’s almost like a touchstone, whatever we write, it happens,” says Lico. “If we say, here are the original programs that we want to launch, they get launched. A year ago we said we wanted to add more finished programming [to our catalogue] and we got that.”

Whether or not the board has any magical powers that give a helpful push to Lico’s plans, one thing is certain: Lico has based his business on the power of knowledge—knowing his product very well, conveying that to his clients, and being very familiar with the needs of his buyers.

In fact, Lico built his company on the expertise he acquired in the U.S. syndication market. In the early ’90s he realized the nascent cable networks were underserved. “They were not getting the kind of programming that they needed from the studios and my feeling was that there were other sources of programming that could be tapped.” He set up CABLEready in 1992. “The foundation of the company was built on two things: finding out more about the programming [we were distributing] and making sure we tell the story of each program well, in a way that makes buyers understand how it meets their needs.”

Lico made CABLEready’s first sale just six weeks after the company launched, with Nickelodeon picking up the children’s show CAPPELLI AND COMPANY. That was followed by sales of other series to A&E and Travel Channel. Shortly thereafter, Lico met a college professor who was holding seminars and Lico was asked if the sessions could be the basis of a TV program. “After watching a rudimentary tape of one of the seminars, we thought, ‘Yeah, we think we can sell this.’ ” The seminars became the well-known and critically acclaimed series INSIDE THE ACTORS STUDIO, which allowed Lico to get into original programming. “It also became the driving program of our international business,” he says.

At about the same time, a chance meeting evolved into a turning point for CABLEready. “I was hired for a day-long consulting session at a small production company in Pennsylvania that was doing medical inserts for newscasts, but they wanted to do something bigger,” explains Lico. He suggested doing a series on forensic science and the show became Medical Detectives, which has run for 12 seasons and by the end of 2008 will total nearly 350 episodes.

“That put us into the development business, where we were working with producers to help them flesh out ideas, develop them and put them into cohesive form for sale. This is what makes us different from most other companies. We’re more than a distributor because we develop ideas. We’re less than a producer because we’re not involved in production. But if you give us raw footage, we will help you put together a pilot or a presentation tape, so this is the sort of hybrid company that we’ve become.”

CABLEready has grown into a leading supplier of factual programming and its catalogue contains a range of series that can meet the varying needs of buyers around the world—from FORENSIC FILES for Court TV, to BILLION DOLLAR DISASTERS and HOUSE OF BABIES for Discovery, to THE DIRECTORS for Starz Encore, to GIGANTO and MONSTERQUEST for The History Channel, and ACCIDENT INVESTIGATOR for Discovery Health.

In January 2006, CABLEready announced a major deal. TV Guide Network chose CABLEready as the international distributor for more than 100 hours of original programming, including the home makeover show READY, SET, CHANGE!, the fashion makeover series TV CANDY, and the Red Carpet pre- and post-event coverage of the entertainment industry’s top award ceremonies. These Red Carpet specials are hosted by Lisa Rinna and Joey Fatone. “TV Guide is iconic,” says Lico. “Nobody has ever covered entertainment better. To be working with TV Guide Network is the latest realization of our mission statement… not to mention a personal dream of mine. These programs and specials cover what viewers LOVE… movies, TV hits and the stars in ‘em!”

CABLEready also represents the entire catalog from New York Times, including several medical vérité series such as TRAUMA: Life in the E.R. and MATERNITY WARD; and powerful investigative documentaries including INDONESIA: Struggle for the Soul of Islam, THE PERFECT WAR, and the THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN REPORTING specials. Other key suppliers for CABLEready are Lionsgate, The Weather Channel and truTV.

The white board in Lico’s office is covered with goals for 2008 and 2009. An optimist at heart, he loves his work as much today as he did when he first started in the business. “Life’s a journey, not a destination,” he says, and he welcomes whatever new stops are in store for CABLEready this year.