Young & Retired? Baldwin Tapped to Head Retirement Living

At 33 years old, Patrick Baldwin might just be the youngest gm out there. The irony is that he was just named gm of Retirement Living TV, a net that caters to the 55+ crowd. Baldwin’s work is cut out for him with his main objective over the next 2 years being to ignite distribution, which is currently at just 1.5mln homes (mainly through Verizon FiOS) for 24/7 carriage. The new gm said RLTV is in "advanced" conversations with major MSOs and expects the net to expand its reach "significantly" in the near term. Baldwin’s also tasked with putting a media ownership structure in place to position the net as a "major media partner." And it’s those partnerships that could be key in getting RLTV’s distribution numbers into the double digits. "There’s no interest in putting the network up for sale, but we’ve always felt that what we really brought to the table from the start… was an expertise in reaching the demographic," Baldwin said. "And now what we’re looking for is to add to that stable and expertise and really augment it with some distribution expertise, strategic expertise and perhaps a content marketing partner as well." RLTV has had ongoing discussions with players in those areas, according to Baldwin, who added that he expects "some big announcement coming out from us in the next 6-12 months." When RLTV launched in late ’06, it bought carriage on Comcast via its CN8 channel and on DirecTV. The DirecTV deal ended on July 4, but CN8 continued to air RLTV programming. "For us, leased time was really about 2 things: a proof of concept and a proof of development," Baldwin explained. "The proof of concept was that we could aggregate this audience… and the proof of development was that a company that isn’t named Viacom or News Corp or one of the traditional media companies can still start a linear offering that excites a brand new audience. I think we’ve accomplished both those steps." RLTV’s challenge is to get distributors on board. There are no immediate plans to end the CN8 paid carriage, with Baldwin noting that it gives the diginet 6mln analog homes—homes of older Americans that he hopes RLTV will help ops move to digital. Lastly, any plans on changing that name? "People who are retired see it as a big positive… People who aren’t often do have negative connotations tied to that word, and in fact sometimes don’t even aspire to retire the way someone my age my think is customary," Baldwin said. "We’re always looking at our brand… and we never strike any option off the table."