Anne Sweeney

Art has been good for my soul. And it's been good for my brain. I think I'm a better painter now than I was a musician growing up. You struggle to see things and translate an image through your hands to a canvas.

Too many times, adults walk into situations, and people have already put them in a box: 'Oh, you write comedy.' Or, 'You're the development woman.' And it's not just our profession. It's hard to look at someone and say, 'What else is inside?'

To have influence, you really don't need to have power. But what you need more than anything else is to have that almost uncanny understanding of what matters to people.

I'm naturally curious, and I've always been driven by my curiosity. Curiosity gets people excited. Curiosity leads to new ideas, new jobs, new industries.

Our future is only limited by our commitment to keep the momentum going. Now that television has been set free from all constraints - including time, place, and all previous definitions - what comes next?

I really moved through my career based on curiosity about something. I never looked at a title and said, 'I want that.'

I am so very honored to be the recipient of MIPCOM's 2011 Personality of the Year. However, the accomplishments that have led to this honor are not mine alone. They are the result of the tireless efforts of so very many talented colleagues.

When you are producing for ABC, you are producing for a big tent network. So when you are thinking about your story lines and characters, you are thinking about broad appeal. When you are producing for a niche interest, you are producing for a different audience.

Piracy is a huge, huge issue for all of these major content companies, and everybody has a different way of addressing it.

I am deeply honored that my team is being recognized by H.S.H. Prince Albert II and the Festival de Television de Monte-Carlo for Disney/ABC's role in creating television that inspires and captivates audiences wherever they live.

The more personalized television gets, the less passive the experience will become.

The more opportunities people have to experience television on different platforms, the more television they consume overall. So there actually has been a benefit, but the ratings have gone down. But we've seen kind of the horizontal benefit of this. And it remains a great, great promotion engine.