Teletrax has done a deal with companies headed by the ex-president of CBS Sports and a former senior vice president of PanAmSat to develop TV sports rights and content-management opportunities for the global-broadcast intelligence company, officials said Thursday.
Teletrax, a video-content tracking service, is partnering with sports consultancy Pilson Communications, whose president, Neal Pilson, was formerly president of CBS Sports; and DPB Communications, managed by Dave Berman, former senior vice president of PanAmSat.
Earlier this week, Major League Baseball reached an agreement to test Teletrax’s digital watermarking service, to evaluate the broadcast-TV usage of postseason games.
Pilson and Berman will work with Teletrax sales and business development director Christopher Golden, who joined Teletrax earlier in the year from The Hollywood Reporter.
Teletrax offers the only digital video monitoring and content tracking service that provides vital broadcast intelligence on a global scale to video providers such as entertainment studios, news organizations, TV syndicators, and the advertising industry.
The company currently maintains a proprietary network of detectors that monitors the television broadcasts of nearly 1,500 channels from more than 50 nations, including all 210 markets in the United States. Its international network covers television stations across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Australia, South and Central America, and Canada.
"There is a rapidly growing need for greater transparency and accountability in the world of television sports coverage,” Pilson said in a statement. “Billions of dollars, euros, pounds and yen are involved in the payment for broadcasting rights and the sale of advertising and sponsorship. With so much value at stake, an electronic watchdog such as Teletrax is not a luxury, but a critical tool.”
Pilson was recently listed among the 20 most influential sports-business media executives by the Sports Business Journal. His client roster that includes NASCAR, Arena Football League, the Rose Bowl, World Series of Poker and JetBlue Airways’ LiveTV. Previously, he held a number of executive roles at CBS, including two terms as president of the network’s sports division.
Berman also served CBS in several capacities in New York and London, including 10 years as vice president of production, operations and administration of CBS Broadcast International, before joining PanAmSat, the world’s largest private provider of satellite-based communications services, which was merged with Intelsat in 2006.
