Former NBCU President Susan Rovner Launches MicroCo
Rovner's new venture brings 'joy scrolling' and the spirit of classic soaps and romances to the vertical format, as more senior traditional executives enter the space.
Former NBCUniversal president Susan Rovner has launched MicroCo, a vertical venture built around what she calls joy scrolling: the spirit of classic soaps and romances, delivered in the format’s episode lengths.
Who Rovner is
Rovner ran entertainment content for NBCUniversal’s television and streaming operations, one of the most senior programming roles in the industry. Her move into vertical is not a side project; it is a bet that the next phase of her career runs through phones.
She is one of several top-tier traditional executives to make that bet this year, alongside Lloyd Braun and Jana Winograde at aTwist and the Fox investment in MyDrama.
The soap connection
Rovner’s framing is telling. Daytime soaps were the original serialized, cliffhanger-driven, relationship-focused daily drama, produced at volume on tight budgets for a loyal and largely female audience. Vertical drama is, in most respects, the soap opera rebuilt for a phone. Executives who understand soaps understand the format faster than those who come from prestige television.
What it means
Major traditional executives are entering the space, bringing with them relationships with talent, agencies and advertisers that the format’s founders did not have. For the industry’s workforce, the association’s interest is consistent: that the standards those executives operated under in traditional television, on pay, credits and conditions, come with them.