Who is Margaret A. Loesch?
Margaret A. Loesch is the Chief Executive Officer of The Hatchery LLC, a family entertainment company she launched in 2003 with co-founder, Bruce Stein, former Worldwide President and COO of Mattel Inc.
Concurrent with launching The Hatchery with Mr. Stein, in 2002-2003 Ms. Loesch raised the financing, produced, and in 2004 distributed, the fifth movie in the Benji franchise, “Benji Off the Leash”, with creator/director Joe Camp.
From September 1998 until October of 2001, Ms. Loesch was the first President and Chief Executive Officer of Crown Media United States and its U. S. Hallmark Channel, having built and launched that channel after first restructuring and strengthening its predecessor, the U. S. cable channel Odyssey.
Previously, she was President of the Jim Henson Television Group, Worldwide. During her tenure, she supervised the development and production of the award-winning “Bear in the Big Blue House” and served as its Executive Producer. While with Henson, Ms. Loesch played a key role in the 1998 acquisition of the Liberty Media-owned Odyssey Channel, which was acquired by the Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment. At the request of Odyssey’s consortium of partners, Ms. Loesch moved over to helm that cable channel and is credited with building its programming strategy and ratings, forging a new management infrastructure, and establishing an enduring foundation for the Hallmark Channel, which she subsequently launched in 2001, replacing the Odyssey programming service. Her accomplishments included successfully securing the rights to the full library of Hallmark Hall of Fame episodes for which she created a programming strategy that greatly enhanced the channel’s ratings as well as garnered substantially increased sales revenue for the network. In addition, she built an aggressive slate of acquisitions with a programming strategy that substantially built ratings, and are still delivering ratings, for the channel today.
From 1990 through1997, Ms. Loesch was the founding President and CEO, as well as the key architect, of FOX Kids Networks, Worldwide. Literally, she re-shaped the landscape of children's television with a creative strategy that merged diversified, quality programming with innovative and aggressive marketing. Ms. Loesch’s strategy and vision incubated many program concepts and built them into rating hits which included the highly stylized Batman series, Stephen Spielberg’s Animaniacs, Marvel’s X-Men and Spider-Ma, and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. She also successfully expanded Fox Kids into Latin America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. She resigned as Vice-Chairman in late 1997.
From 1984 to 1990, Ms. Loesch was President and CEO of Marvel Productions, the film production arm of Marvel Comics. Under her leadership, Marvel’s revenues grew ten-fold as she built company from a production boutique into an animation powerhouse. While helming Marvel, the company earned dozens of Emmy awards and industry honors for production excellence. During her tenure, Ms. Loesch executive produced multiple hit series including Transformers, G.I. Joe and enjoyed a six year creative collaboration with the legendary Jim Henson while producing Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies and Fraggle Rock.
Previously, from 1979 to 1984, Ms. Loesch was Executive Vice-President of Hanna-Barbera where she supervised the development and launch of over five hundred half hours of television production, including the multiple Emmy-award winning series which she developed and proctored, the Smurfs.
From 1975 to 1979 she was with NBC TV Network as its Director of Children's Programs, and from 1971 to 1975 she was with ABC TV Network.
Among her awards, Ms. Loesch is a four-time Emmy Award winner, a George Foster Peabody Award winner, a Vision Award, and recipient of the prestigious Chair Award from the Caucus for Television Producers, Writers, and Directors.
She serves on the Board of Trustees of Sesame Workshop, producers of television’s most highly acclaimed children’s educational series, Sesame Street.
