ProSiebenSat.1 shuffles exec deck
Management revamped after bad first quarter
|
More Articles:
Most Viewed:
Taylor Lautner to star in 'Max Steel'(3434 views)Jack Black animates film pitch(3225 views)'Blind Side' tackles box office competition(2703 views)Nine(1518 views)Bennett Miller to direct 'Moneyball'(1397 views)Overture nabs rights to 'Stone'(1041 views) |
Company has appointed ProSieben channel topper Andreas Bartl managing director of German Free TV, a newly created job.
Bartl, who will report to ProSiebenSat.1 CEO Guillaume de Posch, will oversee the group's four main channels, Sat.1, ProSieben, Kabel Eins and N24, and will be in charge of programming and positioning them.
The move signals an effort to focus on a much-needed programming overhaul at the troubled Sat.1 by strengthening content, improving networking between the German stations and installing content managers to co-ordinate them.
Bartl has been credited with leading ProSieben out of its ratings malaise two years ago, and will now spearhead efforts to revive Sat.1, whose poor performance was partially to blame for its parent group's disappointing figures. Sat.1 has sustained substantial ratings and ad losses in recent years.
Thilo Proff, Bartl's deputy at ProSieben, will take over as managing director at the channel.
The new setup, which to a large extent consolidates the group's German operations under one roof, adapts a structure used by the group's foreign channels, formerly owned by SBS Broadcasting, in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Norway.
It also reflects a similar structure at rival broadcasting group RTL, where Anke Schaeferkordt heads flagship channel RTL Television and also is CEO of RTL Germany, directly overseeing the group's four other channels.
While ProSieben and Sat.1 had operated independently, the new strategy is seen as a managerial takeover of Sat.1 by ProSieben.
Supporting Bartl will be a team of content managers that includes Sat.1 fiction manager Joachim Kosack, who will oversee all scripted fare at the channels; Thomas Zwiessler, ProSieben's editor-in-chief, who will be in charge of infotainment and magazine shows; and ProSieben deputy manager for entertainment Michael Schmidt, who will coordinate light entertainment for all the stations.
Kosack, Zwiessler and Schmidt will, for the time being, handle their new duties in addition to their work with their own channels.
"Content and channel brands are our most valuable assets," de Posch says. "To secure sustainable growth of the channels, I have decided to reinforce content and brands by reorganizing the German family of stations along these two axes. This will allow us to better develop programming and to more efficiently tune the profiles of our stations on TV as well as the Internet according to their target groups."
De Posch is expected to focus his attention on the continued integration of ProSiebenSat.1 and the former SBS channels, which it took over last year.
ProSiebenSat.1's German channels have increased their combined ratings by 0.5% to 29.3% year to date compared with the same period last year. Sat.1 and ProSieben have seen increases of 0.5% and 0.2% percentage points to 11% and 11.9%, respectively.
