After cutting his TV teeth helping Roger Ailes sell the "most powerful name in news," Jason Klarman now finds himself trying to figure out what (young, successful, energetic) women want.
It's not as big of a stretch as it might seem.
Klarman's current gig is general manager of NBCU's female-focused Oxygen Media, which has experienced dramatic growth since the Peacock took control of the channel two years ago.
At Fox news during the 1990s, Klarman was VP of marketing at Fox News Channel, working under Ailes to sell the concept of a non-traditional news channel unafraid to show its colors.
Oxygen and Fox News couldn't be any more different, but Klarman believes the same thinking that made Ailes' baby an American icon will make Oxygen a big success as well.
"He taught me the need to be big, to think big and be true to your brand," Klarman told TheWrap. "You have to understand who you audience is and then super-serve them.
"The brand is everything."
In other words, whether you're selling Bill O'Reilly's rants or Tori Spelling's meltdowns, make sure you're audience has no doubt what it will find when it tunes to your network
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No wonder, then, that Klarman is obsessed with branding, waxing rhapsodically about Oxygen's carefully crafted, heavily researched idenity as aspirational television for women ... who are young, successful, and ready to kick the world's ass.
But the Oxy Gal, part of what the company calls Generation O, isn't just a vague marketing archtype. She's actually got a name.
"We call her Krystal," Klarman said. "She's every person. She's 28. She makes over $50,000 a year and she lives in A and B counties ... And we understand this woman in a way that makes her very real."
Oxygen joined the Lauren Zalanick-run stable of cable networks and websites after NBC acquired it in 2007; Klarman -- part of Zalaznick's A-team during her stunning makeover of Bravo -- was promoted to GM shortly thereafter.
He says the network already had a focus when he and his team arrived -- but it needed a brand.
"What we had seen in Oxygen was the beginning of a really good idea," Klarman said. "It was already a network about these larger-than-life personalities living life on their own terms. We connected those dots, we created the 'Live Out Loud' brand. And then we marketed the hell out of it."
Klarman said the goal of the brand was not simply to attach labels to programming but to carve out a niche among viewers hungry for certain kinds of shows. (See accompanying article, "What's Next for Oxygen?")
"We couldn't just define it by 'women.' Women aren't a niche; they're half the country," Klarman said. "We decided there was an audience that was underserved, and that we could create a brand around that audience."
Once they'd defined their mission, Klarman and Oxygen programming chief Amy Introcaso-Davis -- who both report to Zalanick -- began focusing on the content needed to build and expand the brand.
