42 May 2017 V I D E O A G E an employment agency in Hollywood, California, to see if I could find something short-term. There was a position open at Metromedia Producers Corp., in music royalties. I was told very confidentially that the supervisor was extremely difficult to work for, and I would be considered lucky if I could last the six weeks. To make a long story short, we got on famously, and my six weeks turned into 13 years!” She continued: “During my days at Metromedia Producers Corp., I learned the television business from the bottom up beginning with music royalties, then to accounting, then to worldwide contract administration, and finally to executive director of international sales. My special emphasis was in Latin America. Strange as it may seem, the majority of my clients understood English, and I understood a lot of Spanish. “Even though the ‘speaking’ part was difficult from both sides, there was always a person in the traveling group of executives who spoke English. As time went on, the children of many of our buyers were educated in the United States, and many of them took over the leadership of their TV channels – especially in Central America. [I was] no different really than handling Japan and not speaking Japanese! There is always a way to communicate.” In 1977 Bender was sent to work in domestic and international administration under Klaus Lehmann at Metromedia’s New York City office, where she controlled the activities of 15 foreign representatives for 130 territories. Two years later, she returned to her L.A. office to work under Herb Lazarus and Alan Silverbach. Then in 1982 shewas sent toMetromedia’s Boston office, reporting to Paul Rich, and three years later asked to return to Los Angeles. By then Bender’s office moved from the old Playboy Building on Sunset Blvd. to KTTV, a Metromedia TV station. After Rupert Murdoch’s Fox acquired Metromedia, Bender was looking forward to a vacation before job hunting. One morning at 6 a.m. she received a call from Paramount International Television’s president, Bruce Gordon, saying that veteran LATAM executive Ramon Perez was retiring, and he offered her a sales position to replace him. “Perplexed, I answered that I had to think it over,” she recalled, and then continued, “once off the phone I started to berate myself for such stupidity. How could I have answered that way was beside me! So, I immediately called Bruce back and accepted the offer, but I asked if I could take a one-week vacation first. He said yes, but he wantedme on the lot for thatMay 1986 Screenings. I remained at Paramount for the next 20 years.” The May Screenings in Hollywood were then 22-year-old rituals that in 1983 VideoAge re-named “L.A. Screenings,” and with which Bender was very familiar. She recalled that at Metromedia, starting in 1980, she invited clients to screen at KTTV, followed by a cocktail party on the station’s rooftop terrace. In 1984, Metromedia began having the stars of their shows (like Fantasy Island and Charlie’s Angels) meet with buyers during the Screenings. For studios’ international sales executives, maintaining a poker face while screening a bad show for clients has always been a challenge, hence the Hollywood expression, “if they want me to also watch the show, they have to pay me extra.” Coming from an artistic background, this challenge was more prominent for Bender, who tried “to keep my bias out of judgments. I tried to be fair even though some shows were better than others [for my clients].” The Screenings also involved plenty of dinners with clients. Recalled Marcel Vinay Sr., who met Bender when she was at Paramount and he was a buyer for Mexico’s Televisa: “Susan had a very loud laugh, sowhen she started laughing at a restaurant, the whole roomwould start looking at us.” In addition to screening on the Paramount lot, Bender also traveled extensively throughout the region, even covering small territories, “but never in Colombia because the studio was concerned for my safety,” she explained. The LATAM region presented another challenge for Bender, a woman traveling alone in an environment that Vinay described as “very tough for women who had to deal with very aggressive Latinmales.” “But,” confessed Bender, “I never had any problembecause I demanded and received the utmost respect. As a result, I became a part of their ‘family’ and remain so to this day.” Never married, Bender was “engaged to be married three times, but ultimately I decided that my career was more important. Still, I never returned any of the engagement rings. In effect, I’m an unclaimed treasure,” she joked. After her contract at Paramount expired in 2006, Bender became a consultant (with the title of president) at Frank Agrama’s Harmony Gold, responsible for worldwide sales. At that time, Agrama was enmeshed in Italy’s Mediaset trial for false accounting, among other charges. He was acquitted in 2014 due to an expired statute of limitations. But, said Bender, “the topic was never discussed at the office.” After that one-year experience, in 2007 Bender returned to New York City and formed her own distribution company: Bender Media Services, and hired Sally Treibel, a former TV sales executive at Seagull Communications, headquartered in Lima, Peru. “I always liked New York and I was glad to go back. Plus, I had a vacation house inMaine, where I still spend my summers and falls,” she said. Premising that television distribution is “a relationship-type of business,” Bender acknowledged some challenges she faces now as an independent TV content distributor to Latin America: “Stations are producing and coproducing more, so they’re buying less. My job is now to find out what they need to fill their reduced available slots and alert my producers. Fortunately,” she added, “I don’t have to bid for product.” Indeed, bidding for quality product is becoming a problem for LATAM indie distributors because it increases costs that cannot be transferred to buyers. “This gringa definitely has Latin blood,” she concluded, “The only gringa to handle Latin America for a major studio that always spoke English (I understand Spanish, but am ‘too shy’ to speak it). And as the old song says, “The best is yet to come!” Int’l TV Distribution Hall of Fame Bender at Metromedia with Paul Rich Bender in 1969 Bender (on the left) at the Paramount Studios in 1986 (Continued from Page 40)
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