After helping to grow some of the country’s most popular cable networks, Courtney White wanted to build something of her own.
So, in March 2022, she left her job as president of the Food Network to launch Butternut, a lifestyle media production company based in Connecticut.
The fledgling venture brings together several observations White had been making as a cable TV executive. She was seeing innovative approaches to content at smaller outlets and on digital channels.
She also saw the need for a woman-led production company in a field that has traditionally been male-dominated, even for shows catering to women audiences.
On a personal note, she hoped to combine home and food, realms that were kept separate in her previous roles at HGTV and Food Network.
“When I was working only on home, I was curious about food. When I was doing food, I pined for home,” she said.
Check out other 2023 Innovator profiles
Then she found the perfect place to bring it all together: A cut-flower farm called Butternut that came up for sale across the street from the farm in Southport where she lived with her husband and three children.
“I could really see myself working out of the barn and creating a lifestyle content company in this lifestyle setting,” said White.
Documentary debut
White, a native of Albany, New York, attended film school at New York University with the goal of making narrative films. But as part of her coursework, she worked in multiple genres.
Documentaries caught White’s attention — and fired her imagination by showing the potential in her Manhattan surroundings.
“The city sort of became a collection of film scenes for me,” she said.
Her passion for the genre deepened after she graduated and began working on documentaries professionally at HBO. White said she enjoyed digging into her subjects, learning everything she could and fitting it into a limited time.
She worked, for example, on documentaries about pets being sold to animal-research labs, and the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on children around the U.S.
After leaving HBO, she worked for independent production companies making documentaries about people like author Jane Austen and chef Julia Child.
Whatever or whoever the subject, White said she looked for ways to make a connection — even when the subject was Pontius Pilate, the Roman official who ordered Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.
“It became a crash course on spending a few months outside of my own world and my own interests, diving into somebody else’s life and just understanding the world through their points of view,” she said.
Then, in 2005, a friend and former boss called her about an opening at HGTV, a relatively small cable channel at the time based in Knoxville, Tennessee. The friend worked at Food Network, a sister channel.
White had questions at first.
“One of the things I worried about in going to a niche network was, ‘Alright, I’m going to be so limited and I’m only going to be doing stories about home, and is that going to run its course?’” she said, acknowledging that she hadn’t watched the channel at that point.
On the other hand, she was intrigued by the opportunity to work in cable, the side of the business that bought shows, she said.
“I felt like even if it were to last two or three years, I would definitely learn a lot,” White said.
Her friend, meanwhile, pitched her on the smart, committed people who worked there.
“I could see how happy she was at Food Network,” White said, adding: “That was all it took for me to be interested enough to check it out.”
She accepted the job, which was based in New York and involved coming up with new concepts for the network.
Lifestyle programming passion
At the time, HGTV did not have a nationwide reach. But it was adding subscribers and aiming to become a top 10 cable network, “which felt like such a brazen and bold and aggressive goal. We were tiny, and we were niche, and we were the network of watching paint dry,” White said.
Then the network hit on stars and shows that became household names, vaulting the network into prominence: Chip and Joanna Gaines of “Fixer Upper,” and John and Drew Scott of “Property Brothers.”
Check out other 2023 Innovator profiles
White went on to work on shows like “Selling Spelling Manor,” in which Candy Spelling, widow of late TV producer Aaron Spelling, put their Los Angeles mansion on the market.
HGTV became the No. 1 cable network among women and, depending on the metrics, the No. 3 network in the U.S., White said.
“It was really exciting to go from something that was so small and not on the radar, to really being the envy of so many other networks,” she said. “It was a thrill.”
White also ended up developing a passion for lifestyle programming, even within relatively narrow subject areas.
“It was endlessly fascinating to me to work in such a confined space, but always looking to invent and create,” she said.
Change of scenery
White moved to Knoxville for HGTV in 2013, and made more than a professional change. She and her husband decided to live in a way they could not in New York City. They bought a farm and started rescuing horses and donkeys.
In 2018, after a stint as head of content for Travel Channel, a sister network, White was named president of Food Network and Streaming Food Content for its parent company, Discovery Inc. She transferred back to New York.
But while she was changing locations, she wanted to keep the same farm lifestyle, albeit within commuting distance of the city.
“We had this very specific house-hunt wish list,” White said.
As a college student in 1996, White had interned in Connecticut for Martha Stewart Living. At the time, Stewart lived in Westport.
“I really thought Westport was just such an idyllic, beautiful place to live,” White said.
A Realtor showed White and her husband places in Westport but also in New Canaan and Southport. She ended up buying her first Southport property in 2019.
As White began mulling the idea of starting her own company, she connected with an old friend who also had relocated to Connecticut — Brent Montgomery, a TV producer and entertainment executive.
She met with Montgomery to sound out whether Butternut could use the infrastructure he was building at The Village, an entertainment-industry campus in Stamford.
But when White laid out her vision for the new venture, Montgomery saw the opportunity. Butternut launched in June 2022 as a joint venture with Wheelhouse, the entertainment company that Montgomery started with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
Montgomery, Wheelhouse’s CEO, declined to disclose his firm’s investment in Butternut.
‘Do-it-yourself mentality’
In addition to working out of the Wheelhouse, White has her office at the Butternut Farm in Southport, which she and her husband purchased in 2021, two years after they moved to Connecticut.
White’s husband, who used to work in finance, now runs the farm’s cut-flower business.
White’s production company employs five people in full-time roles, such as casting and production management, she said. But staffing fluctuates — and can include freelancers — based on the number of shows in production.
Revenue comes from networks and streaming services that commission lifestyle series from Butternut, said White, who envisions her startup becoming the industry’s premier lifestyle media content company.
Montgomery said new production companies face challenges. But, he said, “I just believed that she had the vision, the network, the capabilities and, really, the do-it-yourself mentality you need to start something.”
Check out other 2023 Innovator profiles
So far, White is proving him right.
“She’s come out of the gate and just had an incredible run,” Montgomery said. “She’s sold five or six series in a very short time, when many companies haven’t been able to sell one or two.”
Butternut’s upcoming productions include “Celebrity Family Cook Off,” developed in partnership with actor Sofia Vergara, of “Modern Family” fame. White declined to name others, saying she preferred to let the subjects announce their shows.
But she said Butternut has two home-related series in production and an international food series.
“Our hope is that our slate at Butternut is really diverse, that different shows speak to different people,” said White, who also appreciates the resources she has found in Connecticut and the Wheelhouse, where she spends half her working time.
“I feel like I’ve got the best of both worlds,” she said. “I’m operating what is really a kind of focused boutique operation, but within this really resourceful, smartly run international company where I can tap into the best of the business.”