With its takeover by BCE near completion, CTV will also undergo a sweeping management overhaul.
According to an internal memo from CTVglobemedia chief operating officer Kevin Crull, president of creative Susanne Boyce, who was often credited with the networks programming successes in recent years will be leaving CTV.
CTVglobemedia’s president and CEO Ivan Fecan will also take his leave though that move was announced several months ago.
“Susanne Boyce is a programming legend,” wrote Crull. “Since joining the company in 1995, she, along with Ivan, has helped build CTV into a broadcasting powerhouse, delivering the most potent television schedule in North America with #1 shows in all genres. She is a champion of Canadian programming, production and talent, believing that our content can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best TV on the continent and around the world.”
Also leaving will be Alon Marcovici, the executive vice-president of digital media who was considered instrumental in CTV’s online efforts including the Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium’s groundbreaking digital offerings during the Vancouver Olympics.
“Alon Marcovici led the game-changing development and distribution of programming throughout various mobile, online, and over-the-top initiatives for the Broadcast Consortium at Vancouver 2010,” wrote Crull. “The unprecedented access and customization sparked 28.5 million video views by 12.3 million unique visitors on CTVOlympics.ca and RDSolympiques.ca.”
A CTV source told Marketing that efforts were made to keep both Boyce and Marcovici, while some of the other departures reflect redundancies arising from overlap with functionality already existing at BCE.
Exiting along with Boyce and Marcovici, will be chief financial officer John Gossling; executive vice-president of corporate affairs Paul Sparkes; and Dawn Fell, theexecutive vice-president of human resources and operations.
“These very special leaders should walk away with enormous pride in not only what they have done to make CTV #1, but also what they have done to shape the broadcasting industry in Canada,” wrote Crull.
As for the team “who will build upon the success of CTV going forward,” many of the replacement executives are already at CTV: Rita Fabian stays as head of advertising sales, for example, while Phil King is head of sports and conventional programming, while adding independent Canadian production to his duties. Rick Brace will stay with CTV to lead specialty programming and in-house production, while Chris Gordon remain with the radio group.
Gary Anderson who had been running Sympatico for 10 years stays on as the Sympatico portal business will be fully integrated into CTV.
To replace Boyce, Crull announced a “programming council” led by senior vice-president of programming Joanna Webb and Mike Cosentino, who has been a senior vice-president in the programming department at CTV since 2006.
“It’s my belief that a core strategic imperative is to view programming assets as interchangeable tools to drive all our businesses-conventional, specialty, digital, and radio,” wrote Crull. “Due to persistent trends where viewers are leaving conventional and profits are concentrated in specialty, we really need to think holistically. Creation and selection of hit programming will continue to be the overriding focus of this executive team, and will therefore receive tremendous attention.”
“For these reasons, we are complementing this organization design with the creation of the Programming Council. This council will be co-chaired by Mike Cosentino and Joanna Webb. Several members of the senior executive team will be participants along with Tracey Pearce, Pat DiVittorio, and Brian McCluskey.
Fred Forster, president and CEO of PHD Canada, said he was notified of the changes by CTV this morning. He would not comment on individual departures and described the changes as more “evolutionary than revolutionary” but made sense as part of an effort to “reenergize” the leadership team.
“I think they have kept a lot of the folks that are important to the ongoing business needs of the organization and they are smart people,” he said.
“We are looking forward to working with Rita [Fabian] and Rick [Brace] and we think it is going to be business as usual but also some fresh thinking that we welcome.”
