Tony Goncalves has been named CEO of Otter Media, the OTT joint venture of The Chernin Group and AT&T formed in 2014.
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Goncalves most recently was CEO, Digital Brands for AT&T, overseeing the Otter Media relationship with The Chernin Group, and leading the strategy for DirecTV Now, the OTT TV service that AT&T launched in November 2016. Prior to that, Goncalves served in number of exec roles at DirecTV, which merged with AT&T in July 2015.
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Talks about having Goncalves join Otter Media full-time started about six months ago, according to a statement from Peter Chernin, chairman of Otter Media and CEO of The Chernin Group, which is Otter Media’s majority owner.
Sarah Harden had been serving as president at Otter Media before being named CEO of Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s production company, full-time last month. The last person to serve as CEO at Otter Media was Virasb Vahidi, who left in 2015.
Hello Sunshine is also part of Otter Media’s portfolio. Others in that portfolio include Ellation, Fullscreen, Rooster Teeth, Crunchyroll, VRV, and Gunpowder Sky. Otter Media estimated that brands in its portfolio engages with more than 90 million unique viewers per month, and generated a combined 100 billion video views in 2017.
“Tony has been our partner on Otter Media for almost four years, and during that time, it was evident that he is a thoughtful, strategic executive who is hugely passionate about furthering the growth of one of the premiere digital media companies,” Chernin said, in a statement. “Over the last six months, we started discussing having Tony join Otter full-time, and we are delighted that he has agreed to assume the role of CEO. We know he will apply his formidable talents to help us take this company to the next level.”
