Brand builders - Arts and Entertainment Television Network's Biography's television program

Brandweek, April 6, 1998 by Brooke Bailey Johnson

It all starts with a compelling life, and the subjects of A&E's Biography must have one. That's been true of everyone from Michelangelo and Julius Caesar to Judy Garland and Jackie Chan, a few of the more than 500 people profiled on the cable series, now in its 11th season. Execs at the network have applied the same criteria to each of Biography's now-numerous brand extensions: it must be compelling in its own medium in order to protect the flagship show's equity and enhance its life.

A&E is steadily building Biography, its nightly look at historical figures hosted alternately by Peter Graves and the irrepressible Jack Perkins, into its trademark masterbrand, one that is crossing a spectrum of media from home video and the Internet to kids books, calendars and CDs, as it looks to make itself to famous figures what ESPN has become to sports, a sort of pop cultural first reference point.

"Anyone managing a brand has similar considerations," said Tom Heymann, vice president of Arts & Entertainment Television Network Enterprises and the overseer of Biography's offshoots from its core television series. "We're very conscious of the fact that we wouldn't want to go into a category of product where it's not a natural fit. And we have to do it in a way that benefits the brand and turns into a business for us."

Home videos were the obvious first extension. Sold through direct response, catalogs, online and in dedicated space at some 500 Barnes & Noble bookstores, documentaries on Jesus, Jackie Onassis, Santa Claus and Thomas Jefferson are the leading sellers. The show, which jumpstarted the network in the popular consciousness, expanded from its once-a-week status to five-nights-a-week in 1994, more fully leveraging the growing library, with a weekend edition added the next year. A Biography Web site was born in 1996 and has grown to include 22,000 personalities; its traffic now surpasses that of A&E's own site, with 2 million views a month.

But it was last year that Heymann and company really kicked up a flurry of activity around the brand. Biography Books launched, from Random House's Crown Publishing division, as did Biography magazine, Biography audiobooks, a "BioBytes" section on A&E's Web site and a Biography International TV series on the network.

"It was clear to us early on that this was an extendable franchise," said Brooke Bailey Johnson, A&E's evp/general manager. "There's a power in the name itself, and it's allowed us to extend beyond the cable network arena and, as a network, break through the awareness barrier."

Like its subjects, each new product must be unique, A&E execs insist. The magazine, for instance, goes after a "different angle, a different way to deliver value to the consumer," Heymann said. Under the tagline, "Every life has a story," it brings the Biography franchise a little more to the forefront of pop culture via profiles of contemporary TV stars and pop icons (Helen Hunt was a recent cover subject), along with feature stories on ordinary people who do extraordinary things (Mark Miller, a Texas man who finds kidnapped children, was spotlighted this spring). The magazine has built to 325,000 circulation, mostly subscription, in little more than a year.

A recent deal inked with EMI-Capitol Entertainment Properties Will give rise to another Biography incarnation: music. The line of CDs launches this summer with Mel Torme, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Judy Garland and Nat "King" Cole. All have been profiled on the TV show, and the CDs will include the artists' work along with interview snippets, previously-unreleased material and extensive liner notes. The products also will be "enhanced," meaning they will include video, and will be sold at both book stores and record retailers. They will be promoted occasionally on-air.

Just as there seems to be a never-ending supply of people to profile, A&E execs are continuing to search for other ways to fill out the brand portfolio. One area to be a focus this year and next: kids. Books will be published in the fall aimed at teens and tweens, with elementary school youngsters getting their own line in 1999. The books would be marketed to schools initially, and later to the trade. All publishing, CDs and online ventures will be broadened, and execs plan to export many of the extensions internationally, tailoring the approach and content for each territory.

Even in its original medium, Biography will eventually be extended into a series of made-for-TV movies for prime time, focusing on dramatic interpretations of people's lives, Johnson said. Already A&E has begun running therned weeks for the flagship show to induce across-the-week viewership; an upcoming "troubled genius" week will feature profiles of Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Truman Capote. And the show has continued to strengthen, in 1997 posting its best ratings year since its launch; it showed a 17% ratings increase in the fourth quarter '97 from the previous year, and a 23% gain during November sweeps. The series also saw a 20% ratings jump for December, with the profile of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton scoring the highest rating of any Biography.