DirecTV said Monday it has named Robert Thun senior vice president of Content and programming. Reporting to Thun will be the satellite giant's new vice president of content and programming, Emma Brackett.
"With programming costs continuing to rise at unjustifiable rates it is critical that we continue to strengthen our Content team with experienced and skilled executives like Rob and Emma to secure the best content, rights and value for our customers in every deal we do," said Daniel York, executive vice president and chief content officer for DirecTV in a statement. "Their diverse experience and knowledge of both the content and distribution sides of the business makes them invaluable additions to our Content organization."
Thun, who reports to York, will be responsible for managing key content categories and relationships with many of the industry's largest network groups, as well as overseeing DirecTV's retransmission consent, sports, Spanish-language, international, and home shopping programming negotiations.
Thun joins the satellite TV giant from Univision where he served as executive vice president of Business Operations. There, he was responsible for leading the company's deal team in developing and executing the distribution strategies for Univision's broadcast and cable television network portfolio. In addition, Thun managed the field sales, business affairs and financial services teams within UCI's Distribution Sales & Marketing department. Prior to joining Univision Thun spent seven years at AT&T. While there he was a key contributor to the launch of AT&T of U-Verse, successfully negotiating deals with many of the industry's top content providers. Prior to AT&T, Thun worked at Fox Cable Networks for over seven years serving as vice president of National Accounts, Sales Strategy and Business Development.
As vice president of Content and Programming, Brackett focuses on Spanish-language, international and the home shopping areas of the business. She will work with Thun and his team to enable DirecTV and its partners to identify, acquire, produce, program and manage the cost of content.
"DirecTV's programming team has a very strong reputation for working hard for its customers to provide them with the best content at the fairest rates," said Thun in a statement.
"DirecTV has an excellent lineup of International and Hispanic programming that offers some of the best content from around the world," said Brackett in a statement. "This is a tremendous opportunity to bring even more high-quality content to our customers who rely on DirecTV to stay connected to their homeland."
Brackett joins DirecTV from Globecast Americas where she served as vice president of Consumer Video. In that role Brackett successfully launched the MyGlobeTV OTT (over-the-top content) platform with dozens of international channels. Brackett also spent six years at AT&T U-Verse, most recently as director of Content, developing AT&T's International and Hispanic content strategy and content.
