🎙Episode #014: Ken Basin (Entertainment Lawyer and Business Affairs Executive)

👋🏻 Greetings from Washington, D.C. to all 365 of you on the podcast e-mail list.

This week’s episode takes us across the country to Hollywood where I speak with Ken Basin. Ken is a seasoned entertainment lawyer who is currently the Executive Vice President and Head of Business Affairs at Paramount Television. After graduating from USC and Harvard Law he began his legal career at the law firm Greenberg Glusker where he practiced both litigation and transactional law. After leaving the firm he became a business affairs executive at Amazon, then at Sony, and now at Paramount TV. In addition to his practical experience in the field, Ken is the author of the book The Business of Television. He also has served as an adjunct professor or lecturer at Harvard, UCLA, and Southwestern Law Schools. He spends most of his time behind the camera these days, but he is not a complete stranger having appeared as a contestant on college Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

In our conversation we talk about how to break into entertainment law, the dual business-legal role of a business affairs executive, the importance of learning "the business" to the success of any lawyer, negotiating from a position that everyone can win, and how to shift your mindset as a lawyer from "no" to "no but."  

I hope you learn something from this interview and as always please let me know if you have any comments or recommendations.

See you next week,

Jonah