Arts cable network Ovation has added two new executives as
part of a restructuring of its programming and marketing divisions.
Evan Minskoff has been named senior VP and head of marketing
and brand strategy, while Douglas Strasnick is the new senior VP in charge of
programming and content strategy.
Minskoff had been head of branding for the Gilt Groupe.
Strasnick comes from social media company EQAL.
According to Ovation, the restructuring is meant to help
boost Ovation's original programming and market it to a fragmenting audience.
That includes putting social media under the marketing division and digital
media under the programming division.
Ovation has been a consistent voice in
Washington on the issue of bundled carriage deals, arguing that one of the
challenges of reaching a fragmented audience, particularly for an independent
arts channel, is securing distribution on cable outlets in competition with
bundled programming packages of co-owned channels that give distributors less
shelf space for channels like Ovation.
