Linda Burakoff, Julia Dai, Carrie Bocian, Alia Simson, Paula Brower, Dallia Kim
There’s a persistent stereotype that women struggle with negotiations. But anyone who’s sat across the table from DIRECTV’s all-female retransmission consent team would disagree. It only takes a minute in the distribution world to understand that negotiations between broadcasters and video providers are fiery, sometimes resulting in public standoffs that leave viewers unable to watch their favorite shows or sporting events.
DIRECTV SVP, Content & Programming Linda Burkaoff leads a team of five other women— Dallia Kim, VP, Content & Programming; Alia Simson, Associate VP, Content & Programming ; Julia Dai, Senior Director, Content & Programming; Carrie Bocian, Senior Director, Content & Programming; and Paula Brower, Senior Director, Content & Programming—who have no problem drawing a line in the sand when it comes to reshaping the future of television with new packaging while working to keep it cost efficient.
Is it rare to have an all-female negotiating team? “I think it is. And it kind of happened by happenstance,” says Burkaoff. “Obviously, we didn’t go out and recruit and say we really want to get female negotiators… Retrans historically has been pretty male dominated. So, I do think it’s unusual, but I feel like we’ve assembled the best talent in the industry for this very niche kind of negotiation skill.”
Her team oversees negotiations to provide 1,500+ local stations from America’s largest broadcast groups, including Nexstar, Sinclair, Tegna, Hearst, Cox Media Group, Scripps. There’s been a few blackouts over the years, including a months-long dispute with Nexstar in 2023 and a week-long skirmish between DirecTV and Cox Media last year. It’s a job that could get even trickier if FCC ownership regulations are loosened to allow more broadcast consolidation, such as Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna.
“There are so many headwinds. The broadcasters, they’re facing these increasing reverse retrans fees from the networks. The networks are facing all these terribly increasing sports costs, but at the same time, the networks are pulling all the key content away from the broadcast feeds to favor their own DTC products,” Burkaoff says. “There’s decreased localism, they’re putting added pressure on fees because now they have their targets for their synergies that they’ve told the Street they have to hit. So, they’re kind of squeezing it out of us, and the audience is just increasingly fragmented.”
She credits the team’s diversity for some of its success. “Personality wise, we’ve got extroverts, introverts, in-betweeners. And they have very different styles,” reflects Burkaoff. “I’ve learned over the years that you don’t have to be the loudest one in the room to be effective. Some of them are quietly persistent, and others are more kind of in-your-face. And they’re all very effective.”
Burkaoff singles out Kim as a leader who serves as a mentor for others at DIRECTV, literally bringing team members into calls to see different ways to approach an issue. Kim oversees the day-to-day retransmission consent activities, so there’s never a dull moment. “Retrans discussions are often incredibly complex, in part because the market is continually in flux—broadcasters buy, sell and swap stations and network affiliations, and, more recently, acquire local sports rights,” says Kim. “But we’re really fortunate to have an incredibly facile, engaged, and passionate team who know the lay of the land and are able to negotiate successful agreements.”
As if all that wasn’t enough, this team has also helped DIRECTV score broadcast deals for its genre packs that launched in January. Other departments across the company help with the load—which for many team members includes other deals beyond broadcast.
“These deals are contentious. They’re very public. The disputes that we have, 90% of them are with broadcasters…You’ve got every single department involved. You got PR, you’ve got customer service, you’ve got marketing, the ops team, engineering, the commercial department is affected, because of the bars and restaurants who don’t have the game,” Burkaoff says. “The company really trusts this that this team is always going to do what’s best for the customer, which sometimes is a dispute. That seems a little counterintuitive, that you’re taking content away from the customer, but at the same time, we have to do it, because the escalation of the cost is just going to come back and hurt the subscriber at the end of the day.”