Altice USA continued to round out its executive ranks in the weeks after closing its purchase of Cablevision Systems, naming Alan Dannenbaum senior vice president of programming.
Dannenbaum will work under Altice USA Chief Content Officer and former Comcast executive Michael Schreiber. Schreiber joined Altice in June.
As SVP of programming, Dannenbaum will work with Schreiber on programming-related developments, negotiations and agreements across all platforms.\
Dannenbaum is an industry veteran, putting in more than 20 years at Comcast in various roles before leaving in April 2015 and forming his own consulting business, Dannenbaum Consulting. He joined Comcast in 1993 as associate general counsel and most recently served as EVP of Satellite Services Inc., from 2009 to 2014.
Altice closed on its Cablevision acquisition on June 21. Programming cost negotiations will continue to be an important part of the business, especially as it tries to shave $900 million in costs out of the business over the next four to five years.
Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei told the Wall Street Journal last month that program carriage agreements will be a focus going forward and that about half of its programming deals are coming up for renewal “soon.”
So far, Altice USA has said it will drop Glenn Beck’s The Blaze from its New York area systems by the end of August.
