Kay Osborne ends her glorious TVJ innings

Claire FORRESTER

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

THE announcement that TVJ's General Manager Kay Osborne had resigned from the RJR Group of Companies was a bombshell not just for that company but also for the entire media fraternity. Osborne's star had risen inexorably over the seven years that she served as TVJ's general manager and with it the station's fortunes. An abundance of data confirms the station's claim to being the country's and Caribbean leader in terms of high-quality local-based productions as well as audience ratings. Given the favourable track record she established at TVJ, her departure came as a surprise not only to the many thousands of television viewers but to staffers at the RJR Group, some of whom have described her resignation as a national tragedy.

Coming as it did on the heels of a redundancy exercise at RJR, it is easy to understand why many erroneously jumped to the conclusion that this media diva's post was one of those made redundant. Managing Director Gary Allen has since discounted such suggestions. After all, as the Group's leading income earner, TVJ, and its staff, seemed insulated from any redundancy initiative, at least for now.

Osborne confirms that her resignation was tendered in December to take effect at the end of the current month. She also told me that she had left it to the station to make the necessary announcement in their own time. Of course, that announcement was pre-empted by Owen James in one of his broadcasts. However, by remaining silent for as long as it did, RJR may have lost out on an opportunity to present a copybook PR image-protecting statement.

Osborne was reluctant to say much about the resignation itself, beyond that while she enjoyed the time she had spent with TVJ, "there is a time for everything" and that this was as good a time as any to make her departure. She explained that she had initially planned not to stay at the company beyond five years, but that she had no regrets and was proud of the legacy she leaves behind. Judging from the accolades she has received before and since the announcement, her pride seems well-founded.

Osborne, however, has excelled in other spheres and no doubt is comfortable with the thought that there is a life after her stint with the RJR Group. When I visited her elegant suburban home overlooking the city of Kingston, the gallery-like atmosphere resonated a multi-talented personality with a commendable taste in art and music. The warmth of her personality is disarming and we talked for hours about many things - her life in Jamaica over the past seven to eight years, her work in other parts of the world, family life, the media and politics.

A fine artist herself, Kay's works dominate the display which adorns her home. In fact, her paintings have been exhibited at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry and at the University of Illinois' Centre for African American Arts. Also hanging from some of the walls at her house is evidence of her work as a playwright, with plays performed in major metropolitan cities in North America and the United Kingdom.

For us in Jamaica, though, it is as TVJ's general manager that she became a household name. Much of the station's success in recent years is owed to Osborne's skills as a strategic planner. This did not happen by chance. It was precisely that background that got the attention of Group Chairman and former Managing Director Lester Spaulding who recruited her. At the time, Spaulding had explained that there was an adequate number of potential recruits in Jamaica with media skills, but few strategic planners. Spaulding must have been at his compelling best because Osborne was comfortably positioned at an American-based global, diversified pharmaceuticals and health-care products company, Abbott, that allowed her to work in 40 countries across the globe. Biodata on her life includes that she was once named by the prestigious Ebony magazine among the leading black women in corporate America and that she had received the Pillsbury Award for outstanding international business leadership among executive women in the United States. Her academic credentials further underlined her credentials for the task at hand. She graduated summa cum laude with a communications degree from Northwestern University, Illinois, USA, and earned an MBA in International Business from UWI.

There is no doubt that her impact on TVJ has been phenomenal. Although Jamaicans can now choose from about 200 television channels, mainly from the once favoured North American networks, today the television remote of most families usually settles on the TVJ channel. Before Osborne's arrival, the station was jostling with its main local rival CVM for superior audience ratings. Due to her leadership, the station can now point to reliable data in support of its claim that it is the station of choice for Jamaicans.

With Osborne in charge, TVJ used superior strategic planning to outpace the competition repeatedly. Case in point was the near 24-hour quality, continuous coverage on election day, December 29. There was also the coverage of the events related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals in South Africa. Despite having no rights to live coverage of the World Cup finals games, TVJ outperformed the rights holders (CVM). Instead of the expected advertising losses, Osborne and her team set about putting together a quality group of analysts complemented by some knowledgeable youths and enhanced by a creative studio setting. The result was that the audience invariably returned to TVJ during the breaks and at the end of each game. It seems everyone wanted to be involved in the half-time and post-game discussions. More important, TVJ's profits far exceeded what they earned four years earlier when they had those broadcasting rights. I gather that similar plans are afoot for the coverage of the 2012 Olympics; Sportsmax again being the bidder which has denied TVJ broadcast rights for those games.

A decade ago, who could believe that a local channel would succeed in offering a balanced proportion of local versus foreign productions? Somewhere around 2003-5, I recall hearing the then minister of information in Barbados commit the state-owned monopoly television station in that country to producing about 70 per cent of their programme needs. Everyone knew that that was an overambitious target at best. Since then, TVJ has shown the way by producing high-quality progammes to run in approximately 50 per cent of the daily prime time slots. It is a model that other stations in the region seek to emulate. Not only has Osborne been hailed for that achievement by the Group's Managing Director Gary Allen, but Allen also credits her for consistently producing higher-quality programmes to replace foreign ones by recruiting capable team members. He added that she was always forward-thinking, as seen in her ability to identify training gaps and implement recommendations for training.

Under Osborne, TVJ can boast that they did not sacrifice traditional values on the altar of commercial expediency. Rather, they have remained committed to preserving their healthy family brand. Her dogged insistence in so doing caused Kay Osborne some knocks along the way, but she admits to feeling that the station's adherence to standards was well worth the effort.

Osborne feels that her departure is unlikely to have long-lasting negative consequences because she leaves in place a young, vibrant and talented team capable of matching and outpacing all competitors in the local market. So adieu, Kay Osborne, and well played!

antoye@gmail.com

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Kay Osborne ends her glorious TVJ innings