Interview With Geraldine Laybourne

For the first time in her life, Geraldine Laybourne is unemployed. Last month, she left Oxygen Media, the women-centric cable television and internet operation she co-founded nine years ago with Oprah Winfrey and Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, the major investor who forced Oxygen's sale last fall to NBC Universal for $925 million. At the moment, Laybourne and her husband, Kit, are traveling abroad, recharging their batteries, and figuring out the future.

Laybourne—who started her career teaching at a progressive private school and eventually reinvented the Nickelodeon TV network—gave Portfolio.com a guided tour of the changing media landscape in an exclusive interview. The new world of media, it turns out, is a very scary place.

Lloyd Grove: So how do you feel?

Geraldine Laybourne: I feel fine. I don't really feel relieved. And I don't really feel scared. And I don't really feel sad. I just feel like, Wow, something else is going to happen soon. And our plan is to travel. My husband is taking a sabbatical.

L.G.: He's an animator, right?

G.L.: He's a teacher and a writer and an animator and a producer. He teaches at the New School [in New York City]. And so it's great. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We both worked hard for 36, 37 years, so that's fine. But I'm not retiring. I've just been on vacation. Today is my first back-in-the-city day.

L.G.: I see. When was your last day at the office?

G.L.: December 21.

L.G.: So you're going to smell the flowers.

G.L.: I want to just have some new input. You know, you get on a treadmill with the juice of business and excitement of building stuff, and I just want to observe and take things in. So we're going to places we've never been—Bhutan, India, Africa, the Amazon.

L.G.: Excellent. So tell me, what's that like? You know, you built this company from scratch, and it's been almost 10 years.

G.L.: We raised money at the end of '98, and it took nine years.

L.G.: And there was a bright spotlight on it from the very beginning.

G.L.: Microscope.

L.G.: A microscope. And there were endless things written about it. What's your perspective on all that? It was quite hard to begin with.

G.L.: Everything is hard in the media business. And whether you're in a big, cushy company or an entrepreneur, it's all hard. We do it because we love it and we love the challenge. And the payoff is so fabulous, if it works. And I've been on a pretty rough uphill climb with Nickelodeon. So I was no stranger to how you build something from scratch, with not many resources. With Oxygen, we had more financial resources than we had with Nickelodeon, but there were a lot of things that we were missing. We didn't have any cross-promotion. We didn't have any of the infrastructure of a good company. I called Bill Roskin, who is the head of administration for Viacom, right after I started Oxygen, and I said, "I want to have lunch with you, and I want to apologize because I never appreciated what you did for me. I never appreciated the fact that you always arranged for me to have space, that you negotiated the leases, that you had benefit plans." Starting a company from scratch, you have to do everything.

L.G.: Did you buy the lunch, Gerry?

G.L.: I did buy the lunch.

L.G.: And did Paul Allen pay for it?

G.L.: No. You know, Paul Allen did fine on Oxygen, I think, in the end.

L.G.: He did, because unless I'm mistaken or I misread something, he put in about $200 million.

G.L.: You know, because we're a private company, we don't really disclose.

L.G.: You don't have to. But you can, you know.