Time-shifting at 42 Below

Former Disney boss Rich Frank says digital video recorders will spell the end of network TV as we know it

These days he's mixing vodka and wine but Rich Frank, the high-profile new face on the board of New Zealand liquor company 42 Below, has spent years straddling the line where entertainment and technology meet in Hollywood.

Frank is executive royalty in the US entertainment industry. He was chairman of Walt Disney Television and Telecommunications and ran Disney's syndication arm, Buena Vista.

He headed Disney Studios for nearly a decade during a period when some of the entertainment stable's biggest-grossing films and TV shows were made.

The 62-year-old is also incapable of retiring, as his continuing chairmanship of Los Angeles talent agency The Firm illustrates.

"I'm terrible in retirement mode," Frank tells the Herald on his second visit to New Zealand for a 42 Below board meeting. "I can't last six months without getting bored."

Frank's various roles have seen him range right across the entertainment and communications industries.

He describes the move to high-definition broadcasting as "just a prettier way to [display] pictures". But the advent of "time-shifting" - using digital video recorders to easily watch programmes when you want and skip through the adverts, he views as the most significant technological change facing the TV industry.

After a long career in television, where life revolved around prime-time advertising slots and ratings figures, it was an early morning meeting with his grandson that opened Frank's eyes to the challenges time-shifting presented to the TV industry.

"It was 6am and he crawled into bed and said: 'Poppa, let's go play.' I suggested he watch cartoons. He said: 'I wanna watch TiVo."'

The 6-year-old was already a fan of the digital video recorder service which started the time-shifting revolution in the US.

"It's the end of TV as we know it. It was the implications of it that woke me up."

Still a TV junkie, Frank now has five TiVo boxes in his house, recording different free-to-air and pay TV sources.

"I watch more TV than before and I don't watch commercials."

The irony of that is not lost on the former TV executive. In 2003, he gave up on retirement to set up Integrated Entertainment Partners (IEP), which sought to develop new brand marketing and advertising strategies.

In the world of TiVo, Frank realised that the future of television depended on "integrated branding" where product placements became "part of the show".

The movie industry has already grown adept at integrating brands, with a visit to the cinema these days an exercise in spotting product endorsements.

In 2004, IEP merged with The Firm, which looks after the affairs of Cameron Diaz, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and a string of other actors. Now the studios are falling over themselves to cast the actors his company represents, and to adopt new tricks of the trade developed by the marketing arm of his business.

"I'd like James Bond to drink 42 Below," says Frank. In the new advertising environment, it's not out of the question.

The TV and movie industries face the same issues surrounding the digitisation of content as the music industry has, says Frank.

"The music business nearly wiped itself out not making music in the format people wanted and at the price they were willing to pay."

Frank sees changes to the distribution of movies to include internet downloads and simultaneous cinema and home releases as inevitable. But the entertainment industry is worried the change will hurt its business model.

"Video outlets, if these start to go, you put pressure on the business model," he says.

"You have to get your money back through the distribution chain."

Yet another of Frank's restless retirement spells ended when he decided to put his entertainment and communications experience to use in the fledgling dotcom industry.

Food.com had an ambitious goal in the late 1990s - to let consumers order food from the virtual menus of some 17,000 restaurants online.

The venture's deep-pocketed backers included McDonald's, Kraft Foods, TV Guide and Blockbuster.

But despite patented technology and its heavyweight investors pitching in US$150 million ($235 million), the website joined the casualty list when the bubble burst in 2000.

Frank had sunk "many, many, many millions" of his own money into the venture but seems unscarred by its failure.

"I think it would work [today] with a different business plan. The technology is better and the patent was usable."

But with The Firm, his Napa Valley vineyards and most recently his directorship at 42 Below taking up his time, Frank has no plans to resurrect his dotcom dreams.

"I'll let the younger people do more of that. It moves so fast. I'm not a tech maven."

Rich Frank

Next big thing: "The ability to get full motion video any place, any time."

Favourite gadget: BlackBerry.

Alternative career: "I'd have done something in hospitality ... food and wine."

Spare time: "I try not to have spare time but I love being in Napa and I love to play golf."

Favourite sci-fi movie: A tie between When Worlds Collide and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.