Fox Cable Networks last week promoted Lindsay Gardner to the newly created post of president of affiliate sales and marketing, overseeing all distribution activities across a fast-growing portfolio of 28 channels.
Gardner, 45, formerly Fox Cable’s executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing, will continue to report to Fox Networks Group president and CEO Tony Vinciquerra. Gardner’s department has more than 100 people, with more than half of them in the field, in 14 cities across the country.
Michael Hopkins has been promoted to fill Gardner’s former slot, while Michael Biard was elevated from vice president of national accounts of affiliate sales and marketing to the post of senior vice president of affiliate sales and marketing, reporting to Hopkins.
Gardner said his one of his priorities this year is expanding Fox Cable’s new-media offerings, the kinds of services that his affiliates are clamoring for.
“It’s keeping up with the increasing demands of our customers,” he said. “All the distributors want more HD. They want VOD. They want line extensions of our television brands into the broadband space that they can use.”
In addition, cable operators such as Time Warner Cable and Comcast Corp. “all want to do new things in terms of video on demand, for both broadcast and cable,” according to Gardner.
A veteran of Cox Communications Inc. and pay-per-view content provider Viewer’s Choice, Gardner has served as Fox Cable’s executive vice president of affiliate sales since May 1999, leading all distribution and affiliate-marketing activities on behalf of FX, FSN, 15 Fox Sports Net owned-and-operated regional sports networks, Speed, National Geographic Channel, NGC HD, Fox Movie Channel, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Reality, Fuel TV, Fox Sports en Español and Fox College Sports Atlantic, Central and Pacific.
“We’ve launched an average of one new network in each of the past five consecutive years and Lindsay and his organization are key to that success,” Vinciquerra said in a prepared statement.
Gardner said that under his staff and with Vinciquerra’s leadership, “Our affiliate revenue had grown dramatically.”
Hopkins, 37, has been senior vice president of affiliate sales since 2003 and, before that, was vice president of national accounts at News Corp.’s Fox Cable.
Biard, 37, has been vice president of national accounts since 2002 and, prior to that, served as vice president of affiliate business affairs at Fox Cable.
